Different Kinds of Flies

I recently wrote a piece on marriage and sexuality that included this:

“12. What is the most important word in the marriage vows?

In our time, because of the peculiar form our disobedience has taken, the most important word is obey. And it is the most important word whether or not it is included in the vows. Like a father who has abandoned his family, that word can dominate through its absence.”

Since this kind of thing is almost guaranteed to cause a Facebook Freakout, which it did, not to mention a series of comments from the peculiar kind of misery on parade at CREC Memes, I thought a few additional comments in order. Cream invariably rises, but I am afraid crecmeme is not in that category.

First, a reminder. The New Testament — not the Old, mind you — repeatedly reminds us of the duty of wifely submission and obedience. “Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well . . .” (1 Pet. 3:6). “The aged women likewise, that they . . . may teach the young women to be . . . obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:3-5). “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord” (Col. 3:18).

Confronted with such passages, one feminist technique is to get out the trusty eisegetical pliers and rearrange the verses into a shape more suitable to the 21st century, and more in line with human flourishing. But if there is not enough time for that, another trusty alternative is to utterly misconstrue what the people who still cite such passages actually have in mind.

Whenever I think of hierarchy in marriage, something like this is what comes to mind.

“Portia wished that for Bassanio’s sake, she might be trebled ‘twenty times herself.’ A thousand times more fair, then thousand times more rich,’ and protests that, as things are, ‘the full sum of her Is sum of nothing,’ ‘an unlesson’d girl.’ It is prettily said and sincerely said. But I should feel sorry for the common man, such as myself, who was led by this speech into the egregious mistake of walking into Belmost and behaving as though Portia really were an unlessoned girl. A man’s forehead reddens to think of it. She may speak thus to Bassanio: but we had better remember that we are dealing with a great lady” (Preface to Paradise Lost, p. 114).

But what a certain kind of mentality asserts I am arguing for is something more like this. Of course that kind of throwback sexism is perfectly appalling, but we have to remember that this stuff was being used in ads back then because that is what all the Mad Men cool kids were coming up with, and a certain kinds of Christians were in fact attracted to it back then, mouths agape. The same kind of gullible Christians have the same kind of approach to worldliness now, mouths still agape, with the only difference being the kind of flies that buzz into them.

And there were of course objections to this statement. “In our time, because of the peculiar form our disobedience has taken, the most important word is obey.” Different folks were huffy about this, because the most important word is obviously cherish. Well, yes, it is for normal people, but we are talking about feminism. Remember that my point was that obey is the most important word “because of the peculiar form our disobedience has taken.” This is the current epicenter of our current rebellion against the Word of God. We hate obedience. This is the point where we are defying Him. This is the place where, if repentance is to occur, repentance must occur. People in rebellion against the glorious duty of obedience — men and women both — can have no idea what it means to cherish.

Meanwhile others might insist that the most important word in marriage is communication, but let us be frank. It is hard to communicate with people who only hear every third word you say.