The exhortation last Lord’s Day spoke to austere fathers. Today I want to address women who tear down their households with their own hands, and with their own tongues.
Scripture has a great deal to say to us in our particular stations and callings. Men are addressed one way, and women another. In a community such as ours, where such things as submission and headship are taken for granted, it is very easy to adopt the language of the Bible, and the “uniform” of those who seek to apply it, but all the while having hearts that are far away from the spirit of the thing.
Over many years of counseling, I have seen a number of remarkably unsubmissive wives, and one common feature they frequently shared was a strong commitment to external cultural indicators of submission. Various traditional values, educational commitments, cultural conservatism, and domestic duties, are all readily substituted in for the attitude and demeanor that God requires.
The apostle summons Christian women to a gentle and quiet spirit. This does not mean that women must be wallflowers in their own homes—far from it. But it does mean that Christian women should be sweet, not contrary and difficult. I spoke last week of fathers who are impossible to please, and it is a grave problem. But it is by no means a problem limited to men, and if a woman is a dripping faucet in her own home, if she tears down her children with her carping, she cannot then solve the problem by putting on a metaphorical bonnet. The way to fullness of life in the home is submission to God first, here, in worship, and submission that is appropriate will be manifested elsewhere.