I thought he was kidding at first. As we finished our meal, we left our spouses in the living room and stepped into his man cave. A talented woodworker, my friend showed me many of his creations, and then somehow our conversation drifted toward gender and sex roles: “When I get time, maybe when I retire,” he said, “I want to write a book called WIMP. It would be an acronym with the subtitle Women in Men’s Pants.” Surprised, I smiled, again, thinking he was joking. But soon it became clear: No. He wasn’t. He was dead serious. Not only did he really think he had a good book title, he also genuinely believed that much of the world’s problems would go away if just more women submitted to male authority.
That was thirty years ago. I didn’t agree with him then and I certainly don’t agree with him now. Moreover, and especially on this side of the #MeToo movement, I don’t understand how anyone—especially a Christian—can find any satisfaction in championing female submission over female protection.
Although I’ve written about it previously, my goal here is not to weigh in on the complementarian vs. egalitarian debate. Rather, as I said last week, my goal is to “look at a few different views of headship and try to steer this whole topic in a very practical direction.”
Whether you agree with the concept or not, male headship is certainly taught in the Bible (e.g. 1 Cor. 11:3, Eph. 5:23), but what does it mean? Further, even if it looked like x,y, or z in the first century or in ancient Near Eastern culture, what does God want it to look like now? To say it more simply, if there’s something good and holy about being “the head” of your house, how should you view your role?
Here are three options I’d like to explore briefly:
- Headship= authority
- Headship= responsibility
- Headship= source of goodness
For me, the “headship= authority” focus has never been very helpful. Admittedly, I’m sure the authoritarian church culture I grew up in has influenced my perspective. With what went down there, power and control led to a lot of depravity, diminished potential, and abuse. Another anchor point for me is Eph. 5: However one understands Paul’s command for women to submit to their husbands in v. 22, v. 21—the prelude to his whole discussion, clearly teaches mutual submission for all adult believers—including those in a marriage relationship. And, after 35 years of marriage, this makes a whole lot of sense. My wife is often smarter, wiser, or more creative at problem-solving than me. Why wouldn’t I want to submit to her? In synch with that and for similar reasons, why wouldn’t she also want to submit to me? Certainly, none of us are immune to at times being proud or control freaks, but here’s the point: Asserting authority just doesn’t come up in our relationship and it doesn’t in other healthy marriages; mutual submission does—all the time.
What about the “headship=responsibility” option? In the twelve years I worked for National Fatherhood Initiative, I quoted the heck out of the following perspective from the late British theologian and pastor, John Stott. Note what he says headship should mean for Christian men—especially good fathers:
“On the one hand, headship must be compatible with equality. For if ‘the head of the woman is man’ as the ‘head of Christ is God,’ then the man and woman must be equal as the Father and Son are equal. On the other hand, headship implies some degree of leadership, which, however, is expressed not in terms of ‘authority’ but ‘responsibility.'”[1]
Stott’s take on “headship= responsibility” has served me well and I still think it’s a valuable starting point. Two years ago, however, I finished a little book called Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves which is now my favorite on the subject. It gave me a fresh perspective on headship; that is “headship= source of goodness.” Here is Reeves beautiful insight on how this plays out in the Triune God:
“This turns out to be hugely significant, as the apostle Paul observes in 1 Corinthians 11:3: ‘Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.’ In other words, the shape of the Father-Son relationship (the headship) begins a gracious cascade, like a waterfall of love: as the Father is the lover and head of the Son, so the Son goes out to be the lover and the head of the church. ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you,” the Son says (Jn 15:9). And therein lies the very goodness of the gospel: as the Father is the lover and the Son the beloved, so Christ becomes the lover and the church the beloved. That means that Christ loves the church first and foremost: his love is not a response, given only when the church loves him; his love comes first, and we only love him because he first loved us (1 Jn 4:19)… Such is the spreading goodness that rolls out of the very being of God.”[2]
And here’s the practical takeaway for how this applies in our homes: What if husbands and fathers started to view their headship as a source of goodness, like a gracious, cascading waterfall of love? What if you viewed your role that way? Think about how transformative this would be! Even more down-to-earth, how will you be a source of goodness to your spouse or kids today?
[1] Authentic Christianity, ed. Timothy Dudley-Smith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1995), 370-371.
[2] Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2012), 28-29.