Marriage

The Church in America has had some interesting ideas about what roles within the marriage ought to look like. Some good. Some bad. Some … are just weird. We looked at the wife’s responsibilities in the last article. Now, we turn to the husbands. 

What the Apostle Paul actually says about this topic is not nearly as complicated as we’ve made it. Like so many things in the eternal struggle between Christianity, culture and tradition, Paul’s remarks here aren’t complicated at all – but they’ve become complicated by the baggage we each bring to the table.

Let’s see what Paul says. Again, the translation here is my own.

If you’re a Christian who wants to think the right way about marriage, you’ll have to decide whether God has anything to say about roles of men and women … and whether you care.

Are male and female distinctions just learned behavior? Are there no bedrock differences? Good differences? Wholesome differences? Complementary differences? Is all this just socialization?

One sociologist suggests¹ men have deliberately combined together to create social structures to limit women’s power, to push them down, to squeeze them into a very particular mold. In fact, the theory goes, the only reason we think of “gender roles” the way we do is because we’ve internalized them, we’re immersed in them, they’re all around us, we drank these roles with our mother’s milk.²

So, there is no such thing as “masculine” or “feminine.” These are ideas we’ve imposed on ourselves! Or, more specifically, that men have imposed on women because they have the power.

So, we must break free of them! Create a new paradigm! We must imagine new rules about gender. One of those rules being there really is no such thing as gender—because that’s a social construct, too!³

Are we just sexually androgenous beings with no “maleness” or “womanness”? Are we generic Walmart USB charging cords—bland, interchangeable, anonymous?