I realize for some it will seem that I am trying to cover up the inherent inequality I have advocated with hand-waving about “beauty” and Jesus. I am sensible to the fact that comparison of husbands to masters and wives to servants requires at least one kind of inequality between the married couple.  This has bothered me for years. Why should a human be unequal to another human due to a happenstance of birth — in this case, gender?

Eventually I realized that humans are always being born unequally. Leaving aside gender entirely, some are born healthy and some are born sick. Some are born dead, for that matter. Some are born to wealthy parents and some to poor. Some are born into society full of opportunity and some are born into society with no opportunity to be found. It is a very deep part of the American mythos that all humans are born equal and have equal opportunity to succeed, but this is simply not true. You cannot make the stillborn equal to the healthy and wealthy.

Infant health can be statistically related to economic wealth. Prosperous societies tend to have more healthy babies. But the trend is not a rule. Ultimately God gives life and health. The unwanted girl in China was put there just as much as the cherished daughter was given to the affluent couple in the United States. If inherent inequality is a disgrace, God is already disgraced; nobody through their free will can choose their parents.

I do only speak of certain kinds of inequality. If we speak of the inherent worth of a human, the unwanted girl in China is worth exactly what any other boy or girl on the planet is worth. If we speak of the ultimate state of humanity, we know that there will be no gender-based differences in role in the new creation. We know that the new creation will fully show the presence of God in all of his light, love, justice, and grace.

But we also know that this creation often shows the nature of God indirectly. Our demand that everyone have the exact same material circumstances for fairness is simply not in line with the manner of God’s revealing himself and his son. Adam and Eve ate the same fruit but received different penalties. Woman, as the bearer of the promised Seed, has a different role all throughout scriptural typology, a library of images constituted by the entire creation. Nothing was created apart from Christ and the purpose of anything cannot be understood apart from Christ.

It is not a person’s circumstances which determine his moral or spiritual worth but his attitude. Today we almost always mean emotions when we speak of ‘attitude,’ but the word has its roots in the position or orientation of a thing. Merriam-Webster online says that attitude can refer to “the position of an aircraft or spacecraft determined by the relationship between its axes and a reference datum (as the horizon or a particular star).” It is our attitude relative to Christ that determines our worth. We are either oriented to him and by him, pointing toward him, revealing his nature; or we are oriented away from him and against him. This attitude is not constrained by our circumstances (or by our emotions). Just as there are an infinite number of lines that can intersect a given point, so also we can point to Christ from countless different places. Beginning from a certain place does not make us more or less Christ-like. It is our attitude that shows our true service.

I have grown up mistrustful of authority in principle, and extremely unwilling to admit that anyone has any right of authority over me. It was a crusade of mine, positively a holy war, to make sure I never submitted to my oldest brother unless I thought I should. Oddly enough I am quite obsequious around some authorities. I am not likely to talk back to police officers or to deliberately snub authorities I see as several levels “above” me. But in the main I am not fond of authority on principle, and I will always try to convince myself that I am respecting someone’s merits when I listen to them, not their mere authority.

I particularly don’t like authority in Christianity–neither in theory nor in practice. For some years I pondered off an on how to explain away every reference to authority in the New Testament. Authority to me was a synonym for Satanic usurpation of the just order of things in order to establish oppressive power over others.

Because I saw having authority as synonymous with pursuing evil designs, I also thought of myself as abstaining from the exercise of authority myself. I wanted to avoid any position of authority in the workplace because such authority was an institution of man designed to coerce and exploit others.

And certainly workplace authority has been used to coerce and exploit others. Notwithstanding abuses that have taken place and do take place, however, it turns out that a great deal of contemporary teaching on authority emphasizes that coercion is the least effective form of authority and really a failure of authority. The boss who says “do it because I’m the boss” has the least useful and effective authority. The most effective authority is trust; people comply to their best ability and understanding (fulfilling not just the “letter” of the request but also the “spirit”) when they trust that doing so will result in the best outcome. I can aspire to be trustworthy without a qualm.

As I have over the years been taught more about influence without authority, or soft authority, or inspirational leadership, or whatever you want to call it, I’ve realized that although I have never managed anyone officially, I have exercised authority. People have done as I asked and people have trusted my decisions. Talk about becoming what you hate!

Equally confounding for me, I have realized that some people really just want authoritative direction. I don’t mean that universally, as though some people want to be told every little thing to do or to live in abject slavery. But although I very much want to understand why something is a good idea before I do it, some other people only want to know what they are “supposed” to do so that they can go and do it. There are limits to this willingness; people are not looking for medical advice from their car mechanic. But in specific contexts, such as the work environment, there are people for whom evaluating the various options is a miserable process and who much prefer to follow an authority.

For me, willingness to follow an authority has always been tantamount to immorality; you should think and decide for yourself, not accept some person’s word for what is good! But this simplifies life into a constant parade of moral decisions. A moral question might arise over any decision, and in a moral quandary you cannot pass moral responsibility off to another. Your decision is always your own. But a person unaware of any moral question is not obliged to invent one so that he can then choose the “right” course of action. Outside of those moral choices, there is no harm or shame in leaning on the expertise of another.

Oftentimes decisions which seem benign at the moment can lead into moral quandaries down the road. This is another aspect of authority that I was always uncomfortable with. If you give someone else direction or advice and they follow it, they could wind up in an unpleasant situation or one which seems to force an impossible choice on them down the road. If you say to someone, “Sure, hire So-and-So, he’s a great guy,” but for some reason he turns out to be  a poor fit for the job, the manager will now have to decide between extra expense in training and possibly ongoing accommodation or the odious step of revoking someone’s livelihood. And you will have contributed to this impasse!

But life is full of such consequences, full to the brim beyond any possibility of avoiding them all. One can only avoid the most noticeable and try to ignore the rest. But this is no way to live, and no way we are called to live. Rather than avoiding having any kind of “authority” (really, responsibility) over anyone else, we are called to look out for the welfare of all our brothers and sisters. This does not mean imperiously commanding them to do just as we say, but it does mean that when they fall into hard times we come along side them, not step back and say “Whew!  Glad I have no part in THAT mess!”

A person rightly exercising authority often takes responsibility for more than he can control. Rather than saying “That wasn’t my decision so that’s not my problem,” the good leader understands that many things will happen outside his control but that his responsibility is always to make the best of things as they are, not point fingers for how they got that way.

In your life you have probably met some leaders better than others. The better leaders probably took more responsibility for things outside their control (not power-grabs to control things belonging to them, but a willingness to fix problems dumped in their laps) and probably demonstrated a concern for the well-being of those under their authority in their use of their authority. Beyond this there are often differences in style; some people leaders prefer a lot of discussion and dialogue, others just cut to the chase and move on. But loving care and intercession are hallmarks of a good leader, and you will find them in his actions whatever his style.

None of this personal commentary necessarily means that husbands ought to have authority over wives. I get that first from the scriptures, as I have done, and not from my personal observations and conclusions. But I will say that the marriages that have appeared to me to “work” always seem to have an aspect of the husband’s authority in them – even in those marriages where both spouses would insist that they are equal partners. There is not one simple way in which a husband’s authority is expressed. It is not as though there is a rule that he must balance the checkbook or he must always drive the car or this or that nonsense. Any one thing you might decide is an exercise of “authority” might be delegated. Wise leaders always delegate tasks to their most capable crew. But however it appears, in healthy marriages I always see respect from the wife for the decision of her husband.

Contrarily, when it is clear that a wife does not respect her husband, that marriage is always clearly unhealthy. Several marriages I know as well as I know any marriage aside from my parent’s have exhibited this disrespect, even while the wives in question might insist that they, as good Christian wives, respect their husbands exactly as they ought. Mere obedience is not really the same thing as submission. You can poison someone’s food and you can poison your own obedience. It is not pleasant to watch.

There is a corollary with husbands to wives for which I cannot think of just the right word. You might call it consideration. You might even call it respect, but there is some subtle difference in the husband’s regard for the wife versus the wife’s regard for the husband. Perhaps you could call it affection; a wife must never lose the affection of her husband and a husband must never lose the respect of his wife. Of course they do, both of them, fail; we are as ever in need of grace. But even in cases where at first I would have said that a wife had the leading role in a healthy marriage, in time I have come to see it as only the more active role; more outspoken, perhaps. And authority runs deeper than merely having the last word.

I do not justify my conclusions with such observations, for my observations are few indeed and flawed. But I must confess that what I can see with my eyes matches what I read in the Bible, even if on principle I do not like what I read.

Particularly distasteful to me is the idea that a man can have the kind of authority over his wife that an unjust master has over his servant. But I have never said the Bible encourages this. No, a master should be kind and merciful, mindful of his own master; and a husband should be ever gracious. But to say that a husband doesn’t have the power to be an unjust master seems only wishful thinking. Domestic abuse is far and away a crime of men. Even in a society where women are relatively free to get away (relative to many ancient and contemporary societies) women still very often remain under the power of cruel men. I am not saying that abuse is right or justified or permissible, but pretending that men do not have power over women seems about as useful and worthwhile as pretending that we won’t all die. Far better to say that the power men have over women demands of men their extra concern and responsibility not to misuse that power. Given that it is so, consider well how you will live.

One last note. I have neglected to say much in my formal writing about the responsibilities men have to be Christ-like in their love for their wives. I have alluded to it throughout, I think, but not addressed it much head-on. This is a cultural accident. I think we see ourselves as Christians in America who all follow the Golden Rule and who love one another. All Americans have Christ-like love for their neighbor! Obviously this is absurd, but given that we think of ourselves this way it is stating nothing out of the ordinary to say that we should love like Christ.

I have never been happy to hear complementarians (who usually assign a priestly role to the husband as well as kingly) talk about how the husband’s role is harder than the wife’s, so it is all fair in the end. Nominally, yes, it is hard to be like Christ. It is impossible to fully be like Christ, in fact. But husbands and wives are both called to be like Christ. Christ in his submission came as a servant of all, not as the conquering king of all. Yes, he still exercised authority over his disciples, the church, but with respect to authority he showed us how to live under godless authority. And that is the example our wives will need! We are not going to succeed in being mini-Jesus so our wives will have to live with us as men who sin!

I have heard men talking who don’t care for their wives as they should. They complain about their wives’ needs and wants and do whatever they can get away with. They seem to think that their wives should be privileged to have them around and that if their wives want to leave, good riddance. This pretty nearly demonstrates the opposite attitude husbands ought to have toward their wives. For both the husband and the wife, the marriage relationship is an ongoing struggle to put the priority of self below the best interest of the other.

But, although I do not think the husband’s responsibility is easy, it is really the responsibility over the wife that I have the most trouble accepting. To me, unmarried that I am, selflessly saying “as you wish” to my wife’s every whim sounds only romantic; giving up on some personal ambition to better care for her, only chivalrous. “Do whatever you want, just be happy” is the simplest and easiest thing I can think of to say.

This extremely unhealthy, however. This is neglect disguised and benevolence. As with a sports team, project team, working group, military unit, or any other organization under authority, a marriage needs to operate with a single purpose. This purpose does not come wholly from one person. It is not merely the extension of the ego of the leader. But whoever is in charge does have the responsibility to draw the diverging goals of the member together into a unified purpose. “Do whatever you want” may sound permissive but it is actually dismissive.

“Make your wife happy” is a command that sounds to me most pleasant to obey. I may live to find out differently, but the more superficial aspects of loving your wife and caring for her are all easy for me to assent to now. The harder thing to think is that it may sometimes be my responsibility to make my wife unhappy – not capriciously, for my own amusement, but from a sincere belief and decision on what would be best for her and for both of us as servants of the living God. It is much easier for me to think, “We’ll do what you want, and if it turns out badly – fine! I’ll manage and it will be your fault. You’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.” Far preferable to “I made the wrong decision. I’m sorry.”

So yes, I see an inequality of authority between a husband and a wife. I have thought it ought to be different and read or listened to arguments insisting that there is equality between the spouses. I have wished for the arguments to be more convincing. But the more I looked into my own disquiet the broader the problem became, until instead of inequality between husband and wife I was staring at the inequality between God and man. I am not saying the two inequalities are the same; they are extremely different in magnitude and scope. But you cannot “fix” the inequality between man and woman without fixing a million other things, one detail at a time, until eventually you have redesigned all of creation. Once you are done renovating creation, what separates you from God?

There are many unpleasant things about being a creature — many kinds of powerlessness, many kinds of suffering, and finally death. We will not find our happiness by complaining about these, or trying to abolish them, wishing them away or pretending they don’t exist. We find joy and freedom in these things which we would not esteem when we see Christ in them. The suffering of this present creation is truly inseparable from the grace of Christ extended to sinners. So also the differences in gender, joined in marriage, afford us opportunity to learn of the grace, mercy, love, and humility of Christ.