Women and the Fundamentalist View of Marriage

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I believe the bible teaches us that it is a voluntary submission of the wife to the authority of the husband.

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Who gave the husbands their authority?Please show me all the scripture where God decrees that a husband has authority over his wife/wives.As a Marine Corps veteran, I understand rank and authority.Since you were in the military, let me ask you this. For the purposes of this question your rank is SGT. OK. You and another SGT (both the exact same rank and both men) are given a project to accomplish. The project has various tasks to complete. Your CO did not specify who does what, just get the job done. How do you and the other SGT decide who does what to get the job done?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

This is God's punishment for Eve.
God didn't say this punishment continued for all women. In reading the OT, God seems to be very precise when he wishes curses or punishments to continue through the generations.Why does Christianity feel this applies to all women?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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It's been a way of life in human cultures since recorded history.

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What has been a way of life?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

Not obvious! Taking the Bible at face value, the serpent and the ground were cursed.
Adam and Eve were not cursed.Abel kept the flocks and Cain worked the soil.So Abel didn't work the ground. Noah cursed Canaan, not God and Canaan didn't even do anything.
Are the descendants of Canaan servants today? This one is even more interesting. It has been a while since I read this story. But no curse spoken here. God didn't say they did anything wrong, he just didn't like mankind working together to build the first skyscraper.In another thread Why Wasn't Jesus Married I commented

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Imagine if we took Adam's punishment literally.
No meat for men!

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and Jex responded

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Not really the subject, but the whole eating grasses thing was overuled after the flood:
"Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything" - Genesis 9 v.3

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So Adam's punishment of not eating meat wasn't carried forward forever. So that should have released women from their punishment also. Flood wiped out everything, we are starting anew."No" you groan, "That doesn't release women from Eve's punishment because it wasn't mentioned? You can't jump to that conclusion!" (Thought I'd save you a post.)

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...revisionists want to change about everything natural and sensible...

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So you don't agree with anything I've said so far and it is obvious to you that the curses continue.Now for the questions:
Whose sins did Jesus die for? Those in the past, present, future or all of them?
Did Jesus pay the debt and mankind started with a clean slate, erasing all past punishments or do we still bear the burden of the sins, curses and punishments of the past?
Has God forgotten the sins, but not the punishments?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

You didn't answer all my questions. Your answer to my last question was:

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Individual sins shouldn't be confused with degenerative curses.

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I looked up degenerate and found:
1. having sunk below a former or normal condition, etc.
2. morally corrupt; depraveddegenerating:
1. to lose former normal or higher qualities
2. to become debased morally, culturally, etc.I understand the way CrashFrog used the term degenerative in Message 116, but not sure about your use concerning curses.Are you saying that curses that cause mankind to lose former normal or higher qualities will never end?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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If not, then isn't the reasonable and consistent interpretation of this passage not that it's God's plan for men to rule women, but that men will have a natural and degeneritive tendancy to try to rule women, which constitutes the curse? (Much as we don't have to put up with toiling in the soil for bread when we can buy it at the store?)

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Much more reasonable. Love it!

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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Even before the curse, the woman was made as a "helper" to the man and the helper follows the lead of the one helped.

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Help the man do what?The man didn't need help to survive.
Since he was to live forever, he didn't need to reproduce.
He could talk to the animals and God, so he had plenty of company.What did the man truly need help with?

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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I think absolutely the Genesis verse about men ruling over women has been trumped by Christ’s sacrifice, but I don’t think the New Testament’s call for wives to submit to their husbands is a punishment for sin, nor do I think it means a wife is less than her husband in any way. It’s a matter of position not importance.

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I do think that Christ's sacrifice would have absolved Eve's curse, but interestingly enough, Jesus didn't call for women to submit to their husbands. As seen below the verses covering a wife's position are from Paul or after. My feeling is that Paul and the rest were instructing their people how to live Godly lives within their culture, within their own time. Their teachings benefited their time and circumstances. There are general principles within those teachings that still speak to us today, but not the cultural rules. He lived in a culture of arranged marriages. Love wasn't always part of the scenerio.In today's culture, women no longer hold a secondary position, so there is no reason to hold us to the rules of an ancient culture. Jesus stretched out his hand to raise women up to a higher level. Churches should be continuing his example, not Paul's. Paul is not God or the Messiah.It would be very detrimental for women to truly be in a submissive relationship. My mother followed those rules. It worked fine until my father died. It is hard after 40 years of letting someone else make the decisions, to jump right in and make decisions. She continued to let him make decisions even when he wasn't mentally capable. He made some unwise decisions that impacted her after his death. Now my mother turns to me to help her make decisions.Since we marry for love today and not arranged, there should be no need to tell a man to love his wife or a wife to love her husband. They are coming together as companions, partners.

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I personally have never known any Christian wife who is in complete biblical submission to her husband, has anyone?

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What is complete biblical submission? I'm guessing the women in Paul's time weren't competely submissive. Someone needs to explain to me how submission is supposed to work in this society, within the laws of this society.

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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All wives in all cases? What if the husband was living up to his end of the bargain, loving his wife as Christ loved the church?

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Maybe this is another topic also, but how did Christ love the church? What are the characteristics of Christ's love for the church that a husband should show towards his wife? Christ is head of the church, which means what? Christ isn't physically dealing with the people of the church on a daily basis. IMO churches are functioning mostly by what Paul has told them to do. How is the church subject to Christ? Again not dealing physically with anyone on a daily basis. Are we talking about intimate love or just benevolent love? Again how did Christ love the church?

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I have two questions and maybe these should be new topics. Is a wives attitude toward her husband, especially in the area of submission, indicative of her attitude toward God? And conversely, is a husband’s attitude toward his wife, especially in the area of unconditional love, indicative of his attitude toward God?

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I would need to know what is meant by submission today. I hear the word, but no one gets specific.Why do churches feel that we are bound by Paul's decrees?I know I'm answering questions with questions, but I think what you said earlier about what is meant by biblical submission today needs to be addressed before I can give a reasonable answer.

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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"He gave himself for her" --- Agape love is "selfless." The bride of Christ needed a Savior, and Christ gave himself for his bride, the church. Agape love fulfills needs.

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I thought he died for the sins of mankind.
Besides, how selfless is it to give up your life if you know you are going to be raised up?
For those who believe that Jesus is God, then he didn't give up anything since God is immortal.

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"He set her apart" --- the word "sanctify" means "to set apart for a special purpose." The bride of Christ, the church, is chosen by God to love, sanctify and cleanse.

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"He presented her glorious" --- the word "glorious" is the Greek word "endoxa" which means "to hold in honor.

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How did Christ do this since there was no church at the time of Jesus.Again you are dealing with a culture that had arranged marriages. Very different from what we have today.I found an interesting web page: Biblical Submission Within MarriageAs the point is made in this article, the Bible does not make the husband head of the household, does not make the husband the spiritual leader of the household, does not tell wives to obey their husbands, and the Bible does not give final decisive authority to the husband.
I like this phrase in the article: Excerpt from number 11 in the article about submission. Now this is obiously not a fundamentalist viewpoint.Give me a sample scenerio of what fundamentalists consider to be submission by a wife in today's culture.

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A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

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Its really not all that hard, you've got Micro-wave, tv dinners, washing machines, Cars, dishwasher, vacuum cleaners, canned food, etc... In the older days they had to everything by hand, you really have nothing to complain about. Right?

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Nothing to complain about? Where to begin? Microwave (makes my food unhealthy), TV Dinners (chemical preservatives, unhealthy meat, HFC, sugar), canned food (chemical preservatives, HFC, etc.), Cars (high speeds, dangerous), vacuum cleaners (ear damage, dust). It is harder to find truly healthy food for our families since we don't have as much direct control over our food sources. I have to do medical research so I can make sure the doctor is actually addressing my families' medical needs, so we don't get stuck with useless charges or treatments. Same with mechanical research.

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If I'm wrong and the bible does not say the greater serves the lesser, then correct me, but I think girl your in the drivers seat in a Christian Marriage.

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It is more like driving from the passenger seat.

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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton