Bright Hearth is a podcast devoted to recovering the lost arts of homemaking and the productive Christian household with Brian and Lexy Sauvé.
In this episode, Brian and Lexy discuss one of the most frequently asked questions about marriage, submission, and the interplay of men and women in the church: Should women wear head coverings today? What is 1 Corinthians 11 all about?
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MUST READ:The Christian Woman’s Legitimate Sphere of Action and Influence (The Transformed Wife)
“Once in a while, I enjoy looking at the commentaries of old to see what they have to say about a verse so I did it with this one. Do they think this verse was only relevant to the time it was written as many believe? Were the women back then loud and obnoxious in the churches so this verse is not relevant for today?”
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For some of us, submission may be unfamiliar — not because the term is foreign, but because the concept is unclear. In many marriages, it’s not common for the husband to ask his wife to “obey” him in anything particular. So, it can be hard for the wife to objectively gauge whether or not she is really being submissive as the Bible says wives should be.
“Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord” (Colossians 3:18 KJV; see also Ephesians 5:22; 1 Peter 3:1).
Since biblical head covering represents the woman’s acceptance of the man’s headship (leadership), it helps to have a clear idea of how to apply that concept practically.
“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God… For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1 Corinthians 11:3, 7-9 KJV).
Though there are wives who have husbands with demanding personalities, there are others who have husbands with very laid-back, relaxed attitudes. This article is meant for those wives, as advice in how to honor their easy-going husbands. That’s exactly the type of man my husband is.
“Am I A Submissive Wife?”
The other day, I asked my husband (only a little apprehensively), “Am I a submissive wife?” His response was right to the point… and I’ll tell you what it was in a moment. But first, I’d like to share with you what the word submission implies, to him.
In his mind, this word carries with it some negative connotations: slaves submit to their masters, and animals submit to their owners. The image of a groveling, spiritless creature always pops up in his imagination, largely as a result of his cultural upbringing. However, my husband has never expected me to act like his slave nor does he ever want us to interact in that way. He wants me to be his wife.
He described it to me this way: “In order to have a good marriage, we need to have good communication. We need to have conversations where we — the both of us — share our opinions respectfully. Even though the Bible says that I’m the leader, I value your input in making decisions for our family.” It’s true: he does like to hear what I think and will sometimes even change his mind about something based on an insight I’ve shared. He respects me. But what about me? Do I respect him?
When I asked him if I was a submissive wife, do you know what his answer was?Read more
The following article is a part of our re-blog series where we seek to give exposure to those who are writing interesting pieces on Complementarianism and head covering. We are not the author.
When I first told my husband I wanted to use a head-covering, and explained that the Bible tells women to do so as a sign of submission, he gave me a frown. Submission? The word was distasteful to him. It made him think of a brainless dish rag subjugating herself to every whim of her tyrant master. But, that’s not what he was! So, why submission? After we realized that the Bible uses the word submission to mean that the wife respects her husband’s leadership, we were back on familiar ground.
Similar to how my husband respects and “submits” to the authority of his boss at work, God expects me to respect and submit to the authority of my husband. It doesn’t mean he’s better than me; it means his role and my role are different. He has been given by God the responsibility of leading his family. I have been given by God the responsibility of respecting his opinions and “following through with his orders.” I don’t think submission is so hard to understand when put in those terms.
It’s fairly easy to follow through with orders when what your boss asks of you is something you also agree with. But what about when your boss asks you to do something you don’t agree with? What then? If my husband “disobeys” his boss at work, he could get fired! In the work realm, disrespecting your boss’s orders can get you into big trouble. In much the same way, when a wife disrespects her “boss’s” orders (or wishes), trouble is just around the corner. Marital problems develop. Finger pointing and blaming worsen the situation. Things might get uglier than that; things could end in divorce! That’s not a biblical solution, of course. But, if we don’t want that to happen to us, if we don’t want problems in our marriage, we need to think about how toprevent them before the situation gets serious. There’s got to be a better way of dealing with disagreement.
So, I’m going to throw out a few examples of how one might deal with differences of opinion in a marriage. Of course, these are my own opinions, and even though I will sometimes use quotations from the Bible to support what I believe to be the best solution, you are responsible for reading the Bible for yourself, and obeying God according to your best interpretation. Just watch out for those sneaky preconceived notions that can sometimes get in the way! In this post, I’m going to address head-covering. In subsequent posts, I will tackle other issues.
April Cassidy runs a blog called “Peaceful Wife” where she writes encouragement to women on biblical womanhood. She’s also practices headcovering and shared her testimony with us here. I got an e-mail from April in August 2014 telling me that she had been picked up by a Christian literary agent . Shortly after I heard the great news that her book was going to be published through Kregel Publications. It’s almost a year later now, and her book “The Peaceful Wife” is about to release on January 27th.
Here’s the book description and cover:
What happens when a woman becomes the wife God desires her to be?
In today’s world, women are often rewarded for having type A personalities. Driven, demanding women achieve higher positions, better salaries, and praise for their ambition. They learn to be confident, take-charge leaders who can handle anything on their own. Yet when it comes to their marriages, those same traits can backfire. After all, no one goes into marriage hoping for a promotion. What is a wife to do?
April Cassidy knows this struggle firsthand. She thought she was a great Christian wife and begged God to make her passive husband into a more loving, involved, godly leader. Instead, God opened her eyes to changes that she needed to make, such as laying down her desire for control and offering genuine, unconditional respect–not just love–to her husband. The Peaceful Wife focuses on Cassidy’s experience and its life-changing properties, providing a template for others to follow.
Cassidy’s conclusions may be as shocking to readers as they were to her, but she backs up her own tale with stories from her blog readers, and also includes recommendations for further study. She walks through baby steps on how to change, addressing questions such as:
What is respect?
How can you show respect?
How is being respectful different from being loving?
In the end, The Peaceful Wife is a powerful path to God’s design for women to live in full submission to Christ as Lord.
One of the things we’re really excited about is that on page 171 she gives positive attestation to head covering. Here’s what she says: Read more
