Christian Woman Power

One of the most commonly misinterpreted verses in the bible is Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit to your own husbands.” Historically, this verse has been skewed in favor of misogynistic ideals to support husbands in the seat of absolute control over their wives. This ideal has been abused heavily during several different periods of history, which most of us are already familiar with. During the second half of the 20th century, as misogynistic ideals gave way to feminism and equal rights movements, this notion was held under heavy scrutiny, and it was found by scholars and theologians alike that this verse was actually speaking of a reciprocal treatment.

The full verse goes on to describe that a husband and a wife must submit to one another. The bible describes the relationship between a husband and a wife as one where each partner must fulfill the other’s needs. And although they are different types of needs, they are equally valid and equally protected by God’s plan. Outside of a husband and wife relationship, men and women are described in the bible as both having equal access to God. Men and women both have a full identity in God outside of marriage. When marriage is added to the situation, and a husband and a wife naturally come to one another to have certain needs met, their needs are similar but not at all identical.

The bible describes women as needing a significant amount of affection and protection from their husbands. The bible mentions nothing about women needing men to do their thinking for them or to make them whole as people in anyway. They need affection because they have a need to feel adored and precious to their husbands, and they need protection as an extension of that affection, to know they are so loved by their husband that he would lay down his life for them. Reciprocally, men need to feel that their perspectives, contributions, hearts and minds are respected and cherished by their wives, which allows them to properly care for their wives by knowing they take their perspectives seriously.

The bible is frequently sited by Christians as a depiction of what gender roles were meant to represent. The bible is full of not only examples of men and women interacting under God’s plan, but also scripture about what men and women should be to one another. The more narrow-minded faction of people who live by scripture do so ignorantly, without understanding its meaning. They refer to biblical principles that have been skewed in favor of some kind of bias in order to perpetrate a gender role that comes from their personal culture instead of the bible. Upon examining what is true and what has been skewed, one comes to a much clearer picture of what gender roles in the bible look like.

The lie that the overbearing, dominant and largely misogynistic culture in North America would have people believe is that the bible supports the notion that men are greater and women are lesser. People who hold this notion to be true manipulate verses in the bible to inform others that women are vain, mislead and impressionable, and must therefore submit and defer to men in all situations. Many cultures, both contained to North America and across the globe, have found ways to try to validate this sentiment through use of the bible.

However, when one takes a scholarly look at the content in the bible, one will find a very different set of values described there. The writers of the bible esteemed women, not for being good wives, but for being faithful servants of the Lord. The bible is full of examples of Godly women who took steps of courage to defend God’s commandments, to other women, to the public and even to (gasp) their husbands. These examples do not portray a man knowing best and a woman following his direction. They depict women with hearts and minds that belong to God and serve as examples to all people, regardless of gender, of how to walk in faith.