Signs of an Abusive Relationship

 

Over the years, I’ve encountered various situations with women who are experiencing domestic abuse and violence. These situations are often extremely difficult to deal with, because abusers are so good at controlling and manipulating their victims. An abuser in a church environment will often use Scripture as a weapon. He’ll insist that his abusive behavior is due to your lack of submission, or claim that because he is the head of the household, he has the God-given right to control and dominate you. This is a distortion of what the Word of God teaches. (Read what complementarian pastors have to say about this.)

If you’re in an abusive relationship, chances are you feel drained, depressed, frightened, ashamed, and confused. You’re probably reluctant to let your family, friends and church community know about the abuse. You might make excuses for your husband, blame yourself, minimize or overlook the abuse, or hope that he really has changed this time around.

Perhaps the abuse isn’t physical. You might think that physical abuse is far worse than emotional abuse, since physical violence can send you to the hospital and leave you with scars. But the scars of emotional abuse are very real, and they run deep. Emotional abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse–sometimes even more so.

The trouble is, without  intervention, abuse usually gets worse. Verbal, emotional and psychological abuse can progress to physical abuse. Infrequent episodes will progress to more frequent ones. Less severe episodes will progress to more severe ones. Please believe me when I tell you that it’s easier to deal with the symptoms of abuse early on than to wait until it has deteriorated into an ingrained cycle of control, destruction and violence, and the chance of saving the marriage has dimmed.   Continue at Mary Kassian

The Covering for the Woman's Head

Some students wore hats in our services. Some were from Holland and others came from similar congregations where all the women wear hats. Another student was convicted by this and began to raise the subject with her friends and finally came to me. ‘You say you believe the Bible, but here is plain teaching in 1 Corinthians 11:5 and you and the congregation ignore it. Why is this? You are not consistent.’ What did I tell her?

If I preached and told the women to wear hats none of them would do so. There is not a single one of them who is wearing a hat now. They are not going to turn up the following Sunday to my exhortation with hats that they have retrieved from their wardrobes or gone out to purchase. I would have turned half the congregation into guilty unhappy people. I do not want to be the kind of minister who tells the congregation ‘Wear hats,’ and immediately they do that or they are disciplined for not doing so. Such ministers are cult leaders.

There are far greater priorities I would want for the entire congregation than that the women wear hats. I would want many of them to come to the mid-week meeting. I would want them to love their neighbours as themselves, to turn the other cheek, to be more prayerful and forgiving, to display evangelistic zeal, to be faithful in personal devotional exercises. Wearing hats is way down my list of exhortations.

It is a great challenge to us to be seen to maintain in the congregation the headship of men. We do so by having just men as elders and deacons, men making the announcements, welcoming people at the doors, giving out the bread and wine at the communion, and the men taking the lead and praying in the Prayer Meeting. For this to be appreciated and supported is an achievement, while insisting on hats being worn by the women would detract from that.  Continue at Puritan Rising

Obey Your Pastors and Submit to Them

Few passages are more commonly misread, or simply avoided, than Hebrew 13:17:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.

It shouldn’t surprise us that this passage often goes avoided. This is bound to happen in a culture where postmodernism rejects all claims of authority and where examples of abuses of authority are not hard to find in the news.

To make matters worse, a surface reading of this passage seems to sanction some form of authoritarianism, an unqualified obedience and submission to pastors in all matters. But that’s not the message of this passage, as we will see.

What follows are a few important thoughts on this passage, beginning with a closer look at the idea of “obeying.”

Here is how W. E. Vine defines the Greek word “obey” (πείθο):

In Hebrews 13:17, believers are commanded to obey their leaders. The word used is peithō which has the usual meaning of “convince” or “persuade.” The “obedience” suggested is not by submission to authority, but resulting from persuasion. Peithō and pisteuō, “to trust,” are closely related etymologically; the difference in meaning is that the former implies the obedience that is produced by the latter.

Peithō, “to persuade, to win over,” in the passive and middle voices, “to be persuaded, to listen to, to obey,” is so used with this meaning, in the middle voice, e.g., in Acts 5:36-37 (in v. 40, passive voice, “they agreed”); Rom. 2:8; Gal. 5:7; Heb. 13:17; Jas. 3:3.  Continue at Obey Your Pastors

The Myth of Mutual Submission

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21).

This 11-page chapter (available for free as a PDF) concisely and convincingly explains why the phrase “mutual submission” is unhelpful at best:

Wayne Grudem, “The Myth of Mutual Submission as an Interpretation of Ephesians 5:21,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood    (ed. Wayne Grudem; Foundations for the Family Series; Wheaton: Crossway, 2002), 221–31.

1. Background
2. An Acceptable Sense of Mutual Submission
3. Objections to the Egalitarian Sense of Mutual Submission
   1. The following context specifies the kind of submission Paul has in mind.
   2. The absence of any command for husbands to submit to wives
   3. The meaning of “be subject to” (hypotassō)
   4. The lack of evidence for the egalitarian meaning of hypotassō
   5. The meaning of “one another”
   6. The meaning of Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:5, and 1 Peter 3:1
4. Practical Application

(The entire book is available for free as a PDF.)

HT:  Peter Cockrell

Wives Speak Out

Can we be anecdotal for a few moments? To be clear, TGC and the women represented in this article believe what they believe about marriage not primarily because of experience but fundamentally because of God's Word. But I've been impressed lately by a host of strong, gifted married women who actually, joyfully, and productively give witness to the beauty of Scripture's pattern for marriage---headship and submission and all!

Complementarians often hear that women's gifts are being ignored or unused. Certainly in some cases this is true. However, in an effort to soften or eliminate biblical distinctions between women and men, women's hardships are too often blamed on those distinctions rather than on sinful human hearts that---whether they lean toward complementarianism or egalitarianism---so easily pursue selfish gain rather than the other's good. Might it be possible that the gospel lived out in marriage can by God's grace restore to the headship and submission of husbands and wives their rightful, Christ-reflecting beauty?

The following words from women are not proofs but glimpses of such grace. The focus here is limited, as we peer briefly into the lives of a few married women---acknowledging that such stories of grace, strength, and productivity emerge from all kinds of lives, married or not. But marriage has been on our cultural minds lately, in many ways, not just in the church. All the forces battering this institution have actually brought it vividly onto the public stage for a hearing. Because of these cultural battles, but especially because of the way the Bible talks about it, marriage is a crucial subject for all of us no matter what our relational status.  Keep Reading >>>

7 Misconceptions about Submission

This morning I had an interesting conversation with Rachel Held Evans, who is writing a book on “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.” Though Rachel and I would likely disagree on several points regarding the Bible’s teaching on womanhood, I deeply appreciate the opportunity for us to dialogue and engage on the topic. Rachel asked me to answer three questions about submission:

• What are some common misconceptions about what it means to be a “submissive wife.”
• Why might some (think secular audience) be surprised to learn that you submit to your husband. In other words, how do you yourself defy the stereotype?
• How long have you been married, and how has submission worked out practically in your marriage? (In other words, what does it look like when you submit to your husband?)

Those are excellent questions!  Here’s how I answered her first question, “What are some common misconceptions about what it means to be a “submissive wife?”

Seven Misconceptions about Submission:

Misconception #1: Submission is universal—the directive applies to all women, even those outside of the faith community.   Keep Reading >>>

Thinking through the Tension of Congregational and Elder Authority

I have long appreciated the ministry of 9Marks. They have consistently provided extremely helpful resources for the local church. In a recent article they demonstrated another commendable quality: they talk about tough issues.

The title of the article: How Congregations with Authority Submit to Elders tells us something of where this is headed. You have a situation where the church is led by the elders while the congregation serves as “the final court of appeal.”

The author, Bobby Jamieson, asks two helpful questions:

If the congregation as a whole is the final court of appeal, what does it mean for a church to submit to its leaders?

and

Do you see the dilemma? If the Bible located church authority exclusively in the elders, the idea of submission would be simple: the elders would make the decisions, and the congregation would submit to those decisions. But what does it mean for a congregation to submit to its elders when the congregation itself holds final authority?   Keep Reading>>>

How Congregations with Authority Submit to Elders

If the congregation as a whole is the final court of appeal, what does it mean for a church to submit to its leaders?

The Bible teaches that elders are to teach the Word, set a godly example for the flock, and oversee the affairs of the church (1 Tim. 3:2; 1 Pet. 5:3; 1 Tim. 5:17). Scripture therefore calls all Christians to “submit” to the leaders of our churches (Heb. 13:17). At the same time, Scripture teaches that the congregation as a whole has final authority in matters of discipline (Matt. 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:4-5) and doctrine (Gal. 1).

Do you see the dilemma? If the Bible located church authority exclusively in the elders, the idea of submission would be simple: the elders would make the decisions, and the congregation would submit to those decisions. But what does it mean for a congregation to submit to its elders when the congregation itself holds final authority?

Instead of considering this question in the abstract, let’s do it in an actual setting you may encounter.

Consider a case of church discipline. I would argue that, even in a congregational church, the process of discipline should be led by the elders. To work to work to restore someone who is in sin requires spiritual maturity (Gal. 6:1, Jude 23). Therefore, it makes sense for the elders to be the primary group who work behind the scenes to address sin issues in the congregation.

 

Still, the congregation maintains final authority. The decision to excommunicate must finally be theirs. The elders cannot simply “announce” that they have excommunicated so-and-so. They must bring all irresolvable cases of unrepentant sin to the congregation for a final decision.     Keep Reading>>>

The TV Church

What is the 'electronic church'? If you turn on your TV, you will find a variety of religious broadcasting, from Roman Catholic masses to traditional Presbyterian services to charismatic talk shows. Some of these programmes are rather amateurish local broadcasts of local worship services. Others are sophisticated and expensive programmes syndicated all over the world. Some of these programmes are produced by honest, earnest people trying to be helpful to others. Others seem to have questionable messages and methods. In one sense, all these programmes are part of the electronic church.

Usually, though, 'electronic church' is used to refer to those programmes distributed beyond a single local area and supported by the contributions of viewers. For the purposes of this article, the 'electronic church' will refer to any TV broadcast that becomes a central part of the religious experience and practice of its viewers.

My concern here is to argue that the electronic church at its best can only be a religious supplement in the life of the Christian. There are indeed many useful supplements for Christians today, including Christian bookstores, radio stations, and a host of local, national and international organizations for various educational, evangelistic and welfare goals. But the purpose of this article is to maintain that all those supplements must remain subordinate to and supportive of the Christian's commitment to the local church. Keep Reading...

Submission and Authority in the Home

Conrad Mbewe continues his exposition of biblical submission and exercise of authority, based on 1 Peter. This message – #4 of 6 – focuses on the family. We see here that rebellion against parents is not a narrow issue which one can work around. As with proper teaching about the broad intent and application of the 10 Commandments, biblical instruction about our responsibility to submit to God’s Word is comprehensive and our ability to obey is wretched. Hence, the Word convicts us of our need of Christ, in every area of our lives.

Messages 1 – 3 can be found here.

Submission Is Harder Than You Think