2. Church Views on Marriage

My marriage is so important to me, but my relationship with God is also important. I want to understand and protect both. So I am discussing beliefs churches have regarding marriage and trying to make sense of it all before my brain explodes.

What I understand that the mainstream Church usually believes & teaches:

• Marriage is a good thing

• The man is the head of the house & the woman must “submit” to the man

• Men and Women are created to be equal but different

• Once a couple is married they are considered one

Disclaimer: While I can’t speak for all churches, this is my understanding from the churches I have been to or have knowledge of their statements of beliefs.

Point one is easy to agree with, but am I the only one to see a conflict between the other points?

How can people be equal but one is the boss? How can a couple be considered one, but half is in charge? It’s a bit like me deciding that my right hand side is the boss and my left hand side is not – weird.

To get some understanding of what this all means I have teased out a few of the concepts below.

Head of the House:

An issue is that the phrase “head of the house” has no real, clear, universally understood definition. It is usually explained as the man has the final say and makes the decisions (especially regarding money). In more modern churches it seems to be phrased as “the man is the team leader”, and churches do emphasise that the man should listen to his wife and discuss things with his wife. It is often teamed with the word submission.

Submission:

When I hear the word submission I tend to think about how in wolf packs the wolves lower in the pack roll on their backs to expose their soft under-bellies to acknowledge the senior ranking of the alpha. I am not a wolf.

The word has been used as a weapon against women, and it is no surprise that the modern church admits that this has been misinterpreted over time and is not meant to be a way to put women down. But churches still teach the word submission but in a fuzzy way (“team leader”), all the while trying to teach that men should consider their wives in all things.

I am not sure that a true team needs an official leader. I was talking about this with the husband and he pointed out that when you are as close as we are it is very hard to say that one person makes decisions. We talk about everything. The money is ours, the house is ours, and everything we have is joint. No decision can be fully made until we are both in agreement. Because he would not be happy making a decision that I didn’t agree with and similarly I would not be happy doing something that upset him. How could one of us be truly happy and content if the other is not?

Equal but Different:

Lots of churches have the official view that God created men and women equal but different. They even let women have positions of senior leadership and opinions.

Obviously men cannot give birth to children, aside from that I find it hard to believe men and women should have distinct roles in a church.

When I have heard this “different” thing taught, it was unscientific and based on generalisations. Such as women are more likely to be relational and men are more likely to be goal oriented and task focussed. Not always true.

I am personally not particularly relational but I am goal oriented. The husband is relational and excels in making friends and supporting people. Would forcing me to work in a relational type role be helpful? No it would make me angry, exhausted and I would feel mistreated.

I feel like a lot of this stuff “equal but different”, “head of the house” and “submission” are words that are often taught as a matter of rote learning, without any exploration or depth of understanding and that annoys me.

Become as One:

I do believe that a married couple are meant to become closer and closer, and to be seen as one unit. This is the ideal right? That I will know my husband so deeply that I instinctively know what he will like, what he would want to do in a situation, that I consider his feelings in all that I do?

How can a church reconcile the teaching that a couple are one, but then divide the couple and say one is in charge. It doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t sound healthy or promote the “as one” ideal.

In general what I am saying is that a lot of church teaching I have heard on regarding marriage is not well thought out. Sometimes it’s taught just because it is the official position of the church, and the pastor himself hasn’t really thought about it at all.

If Christianity is real (as I believe) and the bible is the inspired word of God (as I believe) then we must be able to use it in our everyday lives, it must be relevant for us today in some way, it must be able to be understood at some level and it must make sense.

I want church teaching that is bible based and makes sense in the real world, and I don’t think that is too much to ask.

KG