Marriage Part III

Marital Obedience

Now this will really tick some people off. But I’ve never really cared about being PC. I DO care about Truth. And my experience has related well with the following from the same pamphlet I’ve quoted in Part II.

“Saint Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, gave divinely inspired advice for happiness in marriage, writing, ‘Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things.” (Eph. 5:22-24—I find it very interesting that this passage of the New Testament is rarely, if ever, preached on from the pulpit. I think there is one main reason. That it is not understood. The second reason is that it is incendiary. Truth cannot be negotiated or patronized. Sometimes language gets in the way but on the whole it is Truth that people want to hear—and hear they must at oftentimes a great cost, i.e. change of life style, behavior, confrontation of self, etc.)
Most modern brides resent the idea of being subject or obedient to their husbands. But let them stop to consider this calmly. This idea is not “old-fashioned.” Rather, it is ancient, as ancient as the very creation of the world, and God Himself is the author of it. Where there is harmony, there is law and order. The man leads, the woman follows—carrying with her, like an alabaster box of precious ointment, the secret wisdom of her heart. And a woman is truly wise who recognizes the necessity of man, as husband and father, being the head of the family. When a woman usurps a place that is not hers by right of nature, disorder and discord work havoc in that household. A man’s natural reaction, if his wife will not let him exercise his prerogative of being the head of the family, is to slip out from under the yoke, and let her carry both her burden and his!
Sara followed Tobias (in the Old Testament if you didn’t know what this passage was referring to) without a murmur into a strange land, far from the house of her childhood. Centuries later, the Mother of Our Lord, Mary Immaculate, set an example of obedience and humility for all wives and mothers in ages to come when she followed St. Joseph—to Bethlehem, to Egypt and again to Nazareth—without a question, without arguing or complaining, accepting the part assigned to her by the Divine Will.
Perhaps someone may quickly protest, “These men were Saints. My husband is far from being a Saint!” Obedience and submission in a wife, is not to be confused with downright slavery or servitude to an unworthy husband. For, as St. Paul said, “The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church.” (Eph. 5:23) From this we are to understand that the wife obeys her husband for the sake of Christ and she obeys him only in those things that Christ approves or that Christ permits. Consequently, the husband cannot order her around just as he pleases, nor can he expect her to cater to every one of his whims and fancies. Christ would not approve of that. (Why? Because He came as servant to us all, even commanding his apostles that if they wanted to be first in heaven then they needed to serve, to be the lowest.)
Just as it is in no way humiliating for the Church to obey Christ, so also it should be in no way humiliating for the wife to obey her husband. Besides, this admonition, if borne in mind before marriage, would prevent many a young girl from rushing into an unsuitable marriage (and for that matter a guy as well. For our natural instinct is not to serve but to be served). For she would stop to consider whether the man she expects to marry actually has the qualities of character which merit her lifelong respect and obedience.
In the same Epistle, St. Paul instructs husbands to love their wives “as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify if.” (Eph. 5:25-26) The husband must love his wife and show the same boundless and self-sacrificing devotion for her that Christ showed for the Church, even to the extent of gladly giving up his own life for her, if need be. If the husband shows this love and lives up to this side of the contract, the wife will not have any difficulty in keeping her love and respect for him.”

Another couple of caveats: I have found in my life that there are basically two elements that Marilyn wants from me—she wants to feel that she is loved first and primarily, and secondly, she wants to feel protected. Through reason, and the gals that I dated in prehistoric times, I think the same applies to most of society today. Through business I have come in contact with many people—half of them women. It’s amazing to me the comments that have come from these gals, mostly older, that they actually like having doors opened for them, having dinner made for them, in short, doing guy things for them. And guys also like gals doing gal things for them.

Recently I was at a St. Paddy’s Day celebration and was talking to a couple of one of my son’s friends. I asked in their dating life was there any romance. Both of them looked up at me at the very same time and said the very same thing, “No”. And I thought how very sad. If Christ is the very glue that holds marriages together, then ‘romance’ is, to some degree, the tinsel strength of that glue—which is also of Christ. I would put money on it that no one has thought of Christ as a romantic. But He is, He is!