Christians often start off at a significant disadvantage when we talk about a wife’s submission to her husband. Like Commodus’ fateful words to Quintos, after slashing Maximus: “Strap the armor, conceal the wounds” the Christian takes the cultural lacerations and then tries to go toe-to-toe with the common objections. This is always frustrating and often unproductive. Today biblical femininity, when acknowledged, is mocked. It is deemed repressive, antiquated, and unfulfilling.
My suggestion is to deconstruct things a little bit first before diving in too deep.
The widely popular, progressive worldview operates out of the red. There is a lack. In other words, you don’t have something and therefore you need to obtain it. The argument is that people, particularly women need to be liberated. There needs to be freedom. This is the talk of captivity. It’s bondage. The pursuit of self-discovery, progressiveness, and a redefinition of thinking is the cry for freedom, but it is not freedom. It is an acknowledgement of captivity. The striving is a striving for freedom.
In contrast the Christian worldview, and in particular the complementation view of genders, operates out of the black. There is an abundance. Instead of bondage there is already liberation. Christians have already been set free from bondage. Because the Christian woman has already been liberated from the futile pursuit of self-discovery she is free to rest. Instead of operating out of an evaporated self-sufficiency she lives out of Christ’s eternal-sufficiency. Jesus is the basis for identity, joy, acceptance, hope, and consolation. She is free to lovingly put herself under her husband’s leadership because she is already resting under the care of her true and greater husband, Jesus. As a Christian, particularly a Christian woman here, her whole experience pivots out of the black, a net positive!
At the end of the month the colors black and red make a big difference in your business or your home checking account. At the end of the day the same is true for the Christian man and woman. The Christian woman is working out of the black. Instead of being defensive and defeated about this issue Christians should highlight the bounty and bankruptcy of the opposing views here. One is striving and the other is resting. One is wanting and the other is delighting. One is blindly walking after human flourishing and the other is actually flourishing. One is crying out for liberation and the other is singing the songs of deliverance.