Any Husband?

I received a support letter from a non-profit organization recently. I will not give the name so that I am not appearing to sound slanderous. I like the organization and do not want to paint them in a bad light. I only want to point out one thing that was in the letter. It began with this statement:

My wife has made up her mind (like any husband, all I can do is comply).

Cute? Not really. I do not find it funny at all; I find it sad. It is sad because people apparently think this is funny (and if it is true and not just a joke, then it is even worse). My sincere prayer is that I am not the only one who sees this as an example of the collapse of the godly family. I thank the Lord (it is all by His grace) that I can say I am not like "any husband" that the author refers to. I have never been in a situation with my wife where "all" I could do was "comply". No, my wife is not a "passive puppy" who follows me around like a muslim slave, nor am I a domineering totalitarian patriarch (ask anyone who has spent any time in our home). We have not been in this situation because we both make it our goal to love Christ first, and love each other second only to Him.

Yes, sometimes it is easier for a husband just to comply, but that only means that he further damages his relationship with his wife. To anyone who is married and realizes that there are times when the wife puts her foot down and all the husband can do is comply, let me say this: you have some major problems in your relationship and they need to be dealt with (even if you are happy to ignore them). Scripture is filled with references to wives who Lord it over their husbands, and husbands who refuse to stand up like our Lord Jesus and die for the sake of their wives. Self-sacrificial love is contagious and it leads the other spouse to desire a godly marriage.

The Word of God is clear when it says to wives that they are supposed to "submit [them]selves to [their] own husbands, as unto the Lord" and that husbands are to "love [their] wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it". I know that this is rarely practiced today (to the detriment of our families), but that does not make it acceptable to ignore this mandate. The paradigm that we are given when the Apostle Paul says this in Ephesians chapter 5 is that of Christ and the Church. Paul is not saying that "it is a neat similarity" between human marriage and Christ's marriage to the Church. He was saying that every marriage in the world is an image of Christ and the Church; it is either a good image, or a bad one--either a true image, or a lie. Just as every human bears the image of God (James 3:9), and every Christian bears the image of Christ (Colossians 3:10), so also every marriage bears the image of Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:22-32). Let me take the paradigm and turn around the original statement that I quoted above:

The Church has made up her mind (like any husband, all Jesus can do is comply).

Yuck! If that statement does not make you uncomfortable, then your heart is hardened. Christ is not like "any husband", and therefore we husbands should not be like this either. If you desire to reinterpret the Word of God (like so many Christians today do) and make Paul's command into a mere metaphor, then you make Christ's relationship with the Church into the very same metaphor. A horrid example is given when someone willingly disorders their marriage in this way. The Apostle was not joking, nor was he describing an archaic practice (unless it is also archaic for Christians to submit to God!).

This is the order that the family is supposed to follow, and we are doing a dishonor to Christ when we reject it and choose our own way. Jesus does not call us to practice marriage in the way that we think works best for us (the current divorce rate proves that we do not know how to improve upon Jesus' rules). In case you missed it, there is a clear correlation between disordered marriages and the current rebellion against the historic traditions of the Church that Catholics have fallen into. Modernist rebellion against godly marriages leads to a modernist rebellion against godly Church order. If husbands and wives can choose their own way to interact, then the Church can choose her own way also. These two forms of disobedience feed one another and we need to repent of both of them.

I weep for the man who wrote those words (even if he was only joking). This is not the place for me to outline a detailed exposition of how the relationship between a man and his wife is supposed to work, but if a couple is not even trying to obey the commandments God has given, then they are in rebellion against God. I am not trying to claim that my wife and I have been perfect in our obedience; we have not. Yet, we are aiming at the goal that Jesus gives us for our relationship (me doing my best to represent the self-sacrificial love of Christ for the Church, and my wife doing her best to represent the joyful submission of the Church to Christ), and we do not joke about disobedience as though it were cute.