So many times I have heard the phrase, “The husband is head of the household.” This phrase is so foreign to me, though I’ve heard it my whole life. It is foreign to me because, like so many others I know, my mother managed the household when I was growing up. We were one of those “traditional” families where my father was the “bread-winner.” He basically handed his paycheck to my mother, and my mother handled everything from there. She paid the bills, did the laundry, planned the meals, did all the shopping and decorating, and carted my brother and me to every event under the sun. If it had anything to do with household management, she was clearly in charge and my father liked it that way. She was the typical Proverbs 31 woman. She was amazing.  he was Superwoman.  

So if this is what the Bible says, how did we and so many other families come to be this way? First of all, it’s not what the Bible says.  This idea probably comes from Ephesians 5:23 which actually says nothing about the “household.”  It says that “the husband is head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.” NOW WAIT JUST A MINUTE. Please give me a moment to set this up in context … 

First of all, the families of scripture are in no way, shape or form a prescription for how God desires we live in relationship with each other. If you’ve ever read it start to finish, you know it is the juciest soap opera ever written … with drama, betrayal, incest, murder. You name it, it’s in there. Even the patriarchs and matriarchs? ESPECIALLY the patriarchs and matriarchs! Once you get more than one woman in your life fellas, it’s all downhill from there! What God is really showing us is that God is committed to working in and through us in spite of our continual failures. God is showing us through these families (and in our own still today) that God is not in the business of giving up on us. Ever. 

Second, culturally, women in the Bible were little more than property. We can still see some of these cultural norms in many of the same Middle Eastern countries today. Unable to own property or receive inheritance because of their gender, they were completely dependent on fathers, husbands or sons to provide a place to live and a way of living for them. If a husband divorced his wife, he kept the children and basically prescribed for her a way of life unimaginable to us today. Unless a male in her own family were willing to take her in (bringing her shame and defilement upon his own household), her only means of survival from that point forward was either begging or prostitution. Imagine Jesus’ agony from the cross when he looked upon the disciple he loved and prescribed him to become the son of his own mother, and for she to take him as her own son. Not only was Jesus demonstrating that by his action we are all one body and one family in him, but he was probably making means for his mother to be provided for after his death! 

Third, the Greek word for “head” actually can mean “origin” or “source” (New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Abingdon Press, 2003). We are all familiar with the tradition from Genesis about Eve being created from Adam’s rib. God’s intention was to create a “helper” or “partner” to become “one flesh” with him. She was never intended to be his property nor his tail! 

I believe Paul has a three-fold purpose in his address regarding wives and husbands. First, he is trying to establish that marriage is precisely NOT an imposition of the “pecking order.” Paul’s words are not about establishing authority. They are about the love and honor and sacrifice and teamwork on both parts that it takes to make a healthy relationship work. Second, Paul is using this illustration of marriage as a metaphor to demonstrate not Christ’s extravagant exercise of implicit authority over his bride (the church), but Christ’s extravagant and self-sacrificial love for his church. Christ loves and is committed to her in a profound and awesome way. Third, Christ is the origin of the church. Without Christ, the church could not and would not exist. The church has been created to be a partner with Christ, to extend the message of his love to all of creation by word AND example. God has not simply selected the church for this purpose. God formed the church from Christ’s very nature and being for this purpose.

God is no more interested in wives being the property of their husbands than slaves being property to their masters (read on to chapter 6). I believe what God is saying through Paul’s words is, “I’m not so excited about your cultural norms, but I am willing to work in and through you in spite of them. The way you relate to one another is really just telling me how you relate to me. I am not the authoritative god you think I am, just waiting for you to step out of line so I can smack you or kick you out of my house. And I by no means am giving you the authority to do this to someone else. I am the head-over-heals-in-love-with-you-God who loves you enough to die for you even in the epitome of your unfaithfulness and deception and failure. And since I love you this much, it’s your job to teach the world about my love by the example of how you treat one another. If you don’t love your neighbor, then you don’t love or know me. And that’s fine, I’m still committed and am not going to give up on you. But in the meantime, stop teaching the world about me by the way you treat one another because it’s wrong. You have to get this right first before you can begin to understand who I am. Learn how to love one another, the kind of self-sacrificial love I have given you by my example. Then you will know who I am.” 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 04:32 PM.

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