Submitting to his authority

Yes there is a lot of I here. I'm used to taking care of myself. It's been expected my entire marriage. I know that he does not consider me his responsibility. What responsibility he chooses not to take, defaults to me.

 

What I said is as the breadwinner, I need the authrority to protect that position because it is important to my family.

The sermon that prompted this discussion was about how God gave man the authority BECAUSE he has the responsibility and the responsible person needs the authority to handle the responsibility. In our house, I have the responsibility.

Um, yeah, I have a survivor mentality. My husband made it clear, years ago, that the only person he will take care of is him. I'm on my own. I'm expeted to support us and not bother him with my needs. They're my problem.

I'll disagree on the Christian marriage counselor. My marriage issues aren't religious in nature. We've been in marriage counseling with a relationship specialist and he has been in counseling for alcohol abuse.

I don't believe that God ever intended the person who is sober and of right mind to hand the authority to the other person just because he is a he.

 

"If you're going to explain away the wife being submissive to her husband as an outdated idea, then toss out your Bible - it's not worth reading if you don't take it as God's Word"

That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, I believe some things taught in the bible no long apply because they were written for a different time but that doesn't mean the entire book is useless.

Reality is, back then women did exist in a separate sphere. A woman couldn't be expected to know what went on outside of her home other than what her husband relayed to her. Therefore, she was not capable of making decisions pertaining to matters outside of and many inside her family. She didn't understand how things interacted.

Today women can be well educated and well informed. Women, today, exist in the same sphere as men. I think the passeges in the bible that say women are to learn in subjection and be submissive apply to a time when women lacked the information they needed to make decisions. I don't believe these passages were ever intended to say women aren't smart enough to make decisions. They are admonishing women to accept the limitations of their positions at the time.

Note that there are passeges in the bible that talk about slaves obeying their masters yet we accept today that slavery is wrong. The bible often speaks to the realities of people's lives. If you are a slave, it's best you obey your master. If you are a wife in a time when you exist in a separate sphere and lack the information needed to make good decisions, it's best to defer to your husband who is better informed than you.

In this day and age, I'm not so sure that authority shouldn't go to the party better able to handle the responsiblity of the family. Given my husbands drinking history and the fact he's still in recovery, I'd say the last thing God expects of me is to be submissive. Someone has to take care of this family.

 

I don't think the kids understand that their father is still in recovery. This gets to heady to explain to them. It took me months of working with a counselor and a substance abuse expert, in the course of the divorce, to realize what we are up against. My kids know that their father was drinking too much and that because of that, he did some things he should not have.

I have a tendency to cover up things, like days when he reverts back to old behaviors (called dry drunk syndrome. They can revert back to the same sick thought processes that dominated their lives while drinking even when sober). Fortunately, it's usually only a day when it happens now. Dry drunk syndrome explains why it took him 12 weeks to actually sober up after he stopped drinking. Now he has good days and bad days, more good than bad but it will be a full year after his last drink before we know what a full recovery looks like for him.

I've seen some promising signs and some disappointing ones. It's promising that he seems to care what I think about him now where he didn't before. It's disappointing that he has never sat the kids down and admitted the things he's done were wrong. They need to hear it from him not just me. I don't push this because his counselor says that what he needs to concentrate on now is just not drinking. After the first year is up, he can turn his attentions to making ammends. Though he already has made an attempt there by writing a letter of appology to my family. I can't help but wish he'd write one to his daughters.

I think he thinks that doing so shows weakness and would undermine his authority as a father. Reality is it would show strength and elevate his authority. It takes a big man to say I was wrong.

 

You are assuming he cares about the sin issue. The day he seeks religious cousel for his sin issues is the day I'll walk into christian marriage counseling. All a christian counselor will do at this point is tell me to submit in spite of the fact he is not someone anyone in their right mind sould submit to.

The counselor we are working with is dealing with his recovery from drinking. That's his specialty. That's what we need right now not someone preaching how all our problems will go away if I was just the good little wifey and did everything I was told. :BangHead: They won't go away. You don't submit to someone who isn't in position to take leadership.

 

God is the same but the structure and realities of our lives are different. That's why he gave us brains to sort through these things. Just as the passage admonishing slaves to obey their masters doesn't apply in my country today, I don't think the one admonishing women to learn in subjecteion and submit apply here today. God may be the same but life is totally different. I see the logical reason for both the passages pertaning to slaves and women in the time they were written in. They may or may not apply today.

Slaves were told to obey because their reality was they were slaves and had no authority. Likewise for women. Women had no voice then. She placed herself in grave risk to usurp authority over a man. She could end up out on the street with no one to support her in a day and age where she was dependent. Times have changed a lot from them.

The passages being discussed here were good advice for the time they were written. They were never intended to be anything more than good advice. Just as you cannot turn the passage around about slaves to say the master has authroity over the slave (because we now recognize slavery as wrong) you cannot say that the admonishment to submit is a commandement. It's recognition of the times as thy were then. Both passages are.

Slavery was a reality back then and so was the fact women had no rights, were not even citizens in their own right and could not take care of themselves. In that time, it was great advice to say do what you have to to please him because you may pay a heavy price if you don't. Women had a lot riding on keeping their husbands happy back then. Namely, their survival. This doesn't mean God even condones that situation any more than the passages on slavery mean God condones slavery. It's just the way life was back then and what was good advice then does not make a commandment now.

These passages aren't even commandments. They are advice on how do deal with the realities of life. You have to use the brain God gave you to decide if they apply to you today. I don't think they do in my case. I'm the one responsible for this family. Until that changes, there's no need to try and apply passages of scription that come from a world vastly different than mine.

And yes, the person who has the reponsibility does change things. As the person with the responsibility to support this family, I think of things differently than the person who helps out financially. In our case, I plan more, play what if more, position my career better, keep my education fresh, network, etc,etc, etc... things my husband doesn't think of because HE DOESN"T HAVE to. He knows he has me to fall back on. I have no one to fall back on. Just as men had no one to fall back on in biblical times. Either they made it happen or it didn't happen. Either I make it happen or it doesn't happen. To the person responsible for making it happen hast to go the authority needed to make it happen.

There are also passages about the husband being the spiritual leader in the household. If I obeyed those, my children would never have set foot in a church. God expects us to use our God given brains here. It's not his intent to have my children grow up without religion because, for years, my husband maintained he had no use for religion. At first he fought me on this but later he decided he liked his Sunday mornings home alone and actually started encouraging us going to church. That never would have happened if I'd blindly obeyed the passages that say he is the spiritual leader. You kind of have to be spiritual to be a spiritual leader.

You don't blindly follow the bible, except the 10 commandments, those were given as commandments. What Paul writes about isn't commandments but advice on making things go smoother and that advice is reflected in the times it was written in. It may or may not apply to you. I'm not a slave and don't live in a country where slavery is allowed so no one here has to obey their master. Likewise, on submission. You have to live in a situation where submission makes sense.

 

Not if he does not change.

He either stays dry or we don't stay married.

and yes.

I will never return to the way life was when he was drinking. PERIOD. I don't think God intends me to. Why people here think I should just put up with abuse because God said so is beyond me.

(Edited to remove profanity)

 

I disagree on that. You think my attitude is wrong because I say he either stays sober or he's out? No, your attitude is wrong here. He has to change or we're done. We are talking about a man who had my then 11 year old daughter in on the planning stages of the divorce. He had her out apartment and furniture shopping helping him set up his new home while keeping the fact he was leaving me a secret from me and YOU think I need an attitude check because I say we will NEVER go back there?????

All I can say is WOW!!!!

 

You might want to read my posts. I came to see if I could find someone who has dealt with my situation. In particular being the responsible party and the issue of authority. I know that the authority has to go to the responsible party. It's simply not possible to live up to responsibility without authority. That's what the bible is talking about when it tells women to submit to their husbands. However, it ASSUMES that the husband is the responsbile party. Some of us deal with realities where we are the responsible parties.

And I'm not the one who needs to change here, he is. I have made it clear and stand by that if the drinking comes back I'm gone. This is a contingent reconcilliation and he knows it.

What I came for advice on is the situation where the woman needs the authority because she has been given the responsibility. Not giving it to her is tantamount to telling someone to run a business but not giving them access to the company bank account. It can't be done.

I don't mind that I've been made the responsible party anymore. It used to bother me but over time, I've learned just how capable I am. Early on, I didn't think I could do it and it was very scary being made responsible for us. I was angry for a while but I've come to view that as a blessing in disguise. I would not have been as strong as I needed to be for my kids if it hadn't happened that way.

There is more to my story than just who needs the authority, as I've posted (I'm not looking for advice there only posting so others understand where I'm coming from) but what I was looking for here is how to deal with the authority issue. Problem is, handing it to him doesn't work. Then no one is responsible for us. I can't do what I need to do without the autority to do so. He won't. That is my reality. That part is fine if I can just get past the autority issue. I'm kind of used to our support being my job now so I don't mind continueing to do so. What I can't do is continue to do so without the authority to make the decisions I need to to make that happen. If he's calling the shots, I can't live up to my responsibility.

 

Just wanted to add that accepting the bible as God's word doesn't mean taking words out of context and applying them where they don't belong. Taking Paul's advice out of the situation it was given in is taking it out of context. Given how much society has changed over the years, you have to look at who Paul was speaking to to get to the bottom of what he was saying. What would have been obvious to them is not to us because we don't live like they do.

I accept the teachings that say the wife should submit as teachings to women who were dependent and had no rights. Those women had one avenue to protect themselves and that was their husbands. In such a situation all you COULD do is try and win him over. For good or for bad, they were at his mercy. In that time my situation could not exist!!! A man couldn't hand responsibility for his family to his wife. He could fail to care for them but then her only recourse would have been to go back to her parents or to the church or to live on the street as she couldn't support her fmaily herself. You can't apply what Paul said to a situation that was against the rules at the time the advice was given. Times have changed and interpretations have to be updated accordingly.

I do not accept that Paul was saying that women have to exist in sitations they know are harmful and just deal with it because that is not what he was saying. He was talking to women of that day about how to handle the ONLY avenue they had to take care of themselves.

If you have not been made responsible for your family, you don't appreciate that you need the authroity that goes with the responsibility to handle the responsibility. I posted here hoping to find other christian women who have walked where I've walked. So far, I've not heard from one on how she handled this. Just from people who don't seem to understand the situtation or wha Paul was really talking about.

There is a reason God gave us brains. One of them being so we can tell when advice we're reading is dated material and have the sense to compare situations in order to decide how the advice applies today.

There are other passages of scripture that say the man is the spiritual head of the household. That's another area where my husband has deferred responsibility to me. Fortunately, he doesn't question my authority here as he does in the wage earning arena. He was just happy to have us out of his hair for 3 hours on Sunday. Now that he is attending church, he's still not trying to pull the authority away from me here. He's fine with me leading the kids and having the authority to do so. Should he decide he wants this responsiblity, I would hand him the authority too but he can't take one away and not the other from me. They travel together.

There is some kind of underlying anger with regard to my job I don't get. This is what HE chose. He turned his attention years ago towards advancing my career so he didn't have work to advance his. Now that we're totally dependent on my career, he wants to pull the authority to manage it away from me. Problem is, he doesn't understand my industry and isn't in position to make the decisions that need to be made. They require insider information.

 

To those who think I should hand him the authority in spite of me having the responsibility, could you please answer the question I've asked several times? How does one live up to responsibility WITHOUT authority? The two go hand in hand. I fully understand giving authority to a husband who is responsible for the family. Now you can give authority to someone who isn't responsible but it won't do any good. What you cannot do is give someone responsibility wihout the authority to take care of that responsibility.