Constantly by men in the church who fixate on their wives submission rather than on taking responsibility to love and letting her figure out her own part.
The Bible doesn't say to let everyone else figure out their own part. It says to exhort one another daily lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. It says speaks to truth in love, not leave everyone else alone and let them figure out their own part. Husbands are told to follow the example of Christ who washed the church with the washing of the water of the word. The Corinthian wives are told if they have any questions to ask their own husbands at home, which implies that husbands are to teach their wives, at least if they have questions. It is not wrong for a husband to encourage his wife to follow the teachings of the New Testaments for wives in marriage.
If I weren't loving my wife right in some way, I'd want her to point it out, and I believe she will do so if she identifies an area. If she's not following Biblical teachings on marriage toward me, I should do the same. In other areas of our lives, we do this. With our children, we tell them if they aren't doing right. Even parents of grown children may have to do this from time to time. If you manage employees, to do your job right, you might have to point out if they aren't doing something right. Even with co-workers on the same team but on the same level, you may have to do this.
I rarely, very rarely, see any man on these forums argue against any of the Biblical instructions for husbands. I don't ever recall any man ever trying to argue that he doesn't have to love his wife like Christ loved the church. If there is a difficult marriage command, a difficult standard, what could beat that? Yet I never see men say go look at the original Greek and the word 'love' doesn't always mean love, so in this context, it doesn't really mean love, it means something else. I don't see them arguing that the definition of love, honor, etc. has been wrongly interpreted for 1950 years and that modern interpreters have really figured it out, cite some book that says that, etc.
Do men who profess faith in Christ always love their wives as Christ loved the church? No. But at least as far as the principle goes, I don't see any arguing against it.
Sharing power in marriage has a lot to do with mutual submission
Eph 5:21.
This is something that can be discussed on the submision thread, since I think it is off topic here. I think I've posted on the contextual reasons for seeing this as dilineation rather than as mutual or purely mutual.
There are mens forums. You are not our teacher. It is not up to you to go around fixing us, telling other mens wives that we need to respect our husbands, defer to them, etc.
ValleyGal, usually your verbage is polite and restrained. In spite of this, I find our comment here unreasonable and rude. As a Christian, I am required to speak the truth in love. I may be a bit direct at times and not afraid to point out if I disagree with someone, but I try to do this. The Bible also tells us to exhort one another.
You'll also notice the Bible puts not restrictions at all on men teaching women. Can we say the same about the opposite? You seem to be trying to teach me with comments like this.
In these forums we discuss ideas. Sometimes we disagree. I've disagreed with some of your posts and told you why. If you are going to respond with comments like this, why don't you just not engage in the conversation? I find it kind of rude. I don't want to misuse the word 'hypocritical' and use it in a kind of vernacular, unbiblical way, so I'll use 'inconsistent.' It's inconsistent of you to pontificate like you do and then get on my case for 'teaching' you when you can choose whether or not to engage in conversation. If you want to engage in conversation yourself, please don't try to shut me down with comments like this when I engage in conversation, on a thread I started, btw.
We came here to discuss a book not the substance of the book.
I've got a question for you. Does that quote make sense to you when you read it back to yourself? I'm not seeing the difference between those two things myself.
If you want to assume you are a teacher of this kind of information, go and teach the men how to love their wives rather than preach about how women need to be respectful.
Ironically, a brother from church and I had a conversation where we encouraged each other about understanding our wives in marriage this morning. But I'm not going to talk about that topic in a discussion room full of women.
If you think it's wrong for a man to teach women to respect their husbands, might you not have a problem with the way you think about these things? Aren't you making up your own ideas about what is right and what is wrong? Paul was a man, right? Peter was a man, right? Were they wrong to write those books of the Bible?
Older women are told to teach the younger women. Paul, a man, taught older women and younger women. We know this for sure because some of those teachings were written down for us and we can read them.
It amazes me that men want the power in the marriage, yet they expect their wife to do all the adapting, which places far more marital responsibility onto the wifes shoulders than he has. Imo, power and responsibility go together. If you want the power in your marriage, you should be the one adapting to her rather her adapting to you
Maybe you've got a different set of personal experiences that you are thinking of that I can't relate to. In my own marriage and talking with men about their marriages, us guys adapt quite a bit. It doesn't matter if we are talking about Christian men who hold to the same sort of interpretations of Ephesians 5 that have been taught for 1900 years, or the more recent teachings that emerged in the past 50 years or so, we all have to adapt.
Link, I also read parts of your post about your own marriage. Just because you and your wife went through the experiences you did, does not mean that your way is the right way.
Everyone's marriage is going to look different. There are Biblical principles, though. My own experiences taught me to pay attention to some Biblical truths that I believed in in theory. My wife and I both payed lip service to the same Biblical concepts of marriage that we still hold to today back when we were dating. But it took us a while to learn to put some of them into practice, and we are still learning and growing.
Reading the Bible, commentaries, articles, etc. all confirm beliefs I hold to about marriage and that would be enough for me. But it is nice that the Lord also spoke to my wife's heart about these same principles in the Bible when I prayed and asked Him to.
Something I learned as that as a husband, I need to be concerned with my wife's walk with the Lord, even in the areas that deal with how she relates to me as a husband. Maybe I had a type of false humility about that, or just wasn't paying enough attention. Most of her growth in this area seems to come from the Lord working on her in her relationship with God. But God also works on us through other people, including other believers, including our spouses. We both encourage one another in our walk.
It simply means that is what worked for you. My husband and I have an egalitarian marriage where power is shared and we actively seek conflict management and each others best interest. We value and respect each others opinions and mutually influence each other. We interpret the Bible to say that because Jesus has given us all authority through his Spirit, that the bride has equal authority and neither of us abuse this honour.
I've got a more traditional interpretation of the Bible, (one consistent with sermons and commentaries going back to the days when people spoke the same language that the New Testament was written in, for e.g. parts of John Chrysostom's sermon on marriage, a Greek speaker only about 300 years removed from the language of the New Testament.) You have a more egalitarian approach. Whatever approach we take, all marriages need to have good conflict management and we need to look out for each other's best interest. In a love marriage that is more patriarchal where the husband loves his wife, he still has to make decisions in her best interest, so that can mean the same process of talking things through. The big difference people like to point out is when the couple just can't agree. But the other big difference I see is just the attitude the wife has toward her husband, and it may show up also in the husband's sense of responsibility toward his wife.
As far as the bride ahcing equal authority? You don't mean with Christ do you? I don't see that. Christ has all authority and said therefore go preach. But He still has authority. I'm guessing you mean each member of the body has equal authority? I don't have any reason to think that. I don't see where the Bible says that people are 'equal' in authority. I don't think I have the same authority to make decisions in a church as the elders of that church or a missionary who founded it for example. I don't have equal authority in another man's home. Within my home, my children don't have equal authority to me or to my wife.
Americans and some other western people's are obsessed with equality. George Orwell's Animal Farm show how silly some statements about equality can be. 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others'-- that's a paraphrase if not an exact quote. Americans think we are all equal. But I can't play basketball like an NBA player. That's not equal. I'm not as tall as most of them either. More inequality. I'm not as good at math as this fellow grad student of mine who has a 3.9 even though he's in his second semester of econometrics courses. I'm not equal to my wife in breastfeeding or giving birth. I have no ability at all in those areas. She's not my equal in lifting heavy objects, though. The only time I can find 'equality' in the New Testament, its about churches giving excess funds to one another in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians.
We will believe the Bible and believe in the union of Christ and the church over hierarchy any day.
There is hierarchy in the relationship between Christ and the church. He is Lord. We call Him Lord. He told His disciples, "Ye call me Master and Lord and ye do well for so I am." Jesus does not call the church His 'lord.'
God called Abraham 'lord', not his lord, but Sarah's, the word 'ba'al' which translates as 'lord'/'husband.'