Christians have a happy-marriage advantage

Equal in dignity but with different ways of serving the family.    Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

Christians have an advantage toward achieving a happy marriage because they acknowledge how God has created each man and each woman in His own image, especially with regards generous love and fecundity. They know that God gives each man and woman an equal dignity though in a different way, and this complementarity is oriented toward the good of the marriage and the flourishing of family life.

So we observe the equal personal dignity of husband and wife since both are created in the image and likeness of the personal God. However, to avoid a stalemated clash of wills, God offers a pattern for family life that also appears in His orientation of the Church, and that is referred to as "headship", where all conditions being equal, one of the parties is called to exercise a vocation to be decision-maker. Self-sacrificing love and a commitment to the common good are the guiding principles for the exercise of such a vocation.

C S Lewis's The Four Loves has a section that examines headship: 

And as we could easily take the natural mystery [of sex] too seriously, so we might take the Christian mystery [of marriage] not seriously enough. Christian writers (notably Milton) have sometimes spoken of the husband’s headship with a complacency to make the blood run cold. We must go back to our Bibles. The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church—and gave his life for her (Eph 5:25). 

This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife received most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism [anointing] of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. 

Phil Monroe, a psychologist who can speak from a Christian perspective, concludes in support of Lewis's insights into the husband's headship, "when we must refuse a loved one or confront them about their flaws, it should be done for their sake, and not our own". 

Furthermore:

There is great power in choosing to set aside personal desire for the sake of another. The same can be said for women who are trying to figure out how to “submit” to “unworthy” husbands.

Note that "headship" does not refer to the type of behaviour where the husband is addicted to "bossing around" his wife. As one female writer put it:

If I am to enter into a marriage one day, I would expect that we at least consider that my thoughts, opinions, and decisions are as important as my husband’s. If not, then you won’t find me at the altar. I am not alone in this — I have a troupe of lovely lady friends who will tell you the same thing.

Rather, she concedes, it is "when fair discussion is exhausted and compromise is impossible, that Lewis suggests that it must be the man who is the 'head' of the family".

But Keri Wyatt Kent questions why a husband and wife need to have someone to break the tie: I [suggest] that God would break the tie, if you continued to seek God’s wisdom, asking to be led by the Spirit to unity. In a way, giving the man the deciding vote keeps God small, and prevents the man from actually having to do what Ephesians 5:21 says: submit to one another. If you know you’ve got the deciding vote, you aren’t really submitting.

If you trust that God is able to lead and give you the right direction, why does one person need to be the tie-breaker? Is it impossible for God to lead both a man and a woman to peace about a decision? Why the man? Can men hear God better than women? Is God incapable of speaking directly to both husband and wife?

Support for this view might be seen in the assent given to the equality of partners: “Children, obey your parents, and honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:1-3).

However, Wyatt Kent seems to focus on where power lies, as if the wife would suffer with regards a loss of personal empowerment in the marriage, and by extension in the life of the household.

A different perspective is given by Stella Morabito, who admits to a long struggle in reconciling her own views as a young woman on roles in marriage with that of Christian teaching. 

When responding to the modern arguments about the role of women, I had to ask myself: Does the order of creation as described in the Scriptures signify the inferiority of women? A number of annoying biblical terms haunted me: Woman is the "helpmate" of man (Gen. 2:18); the wife is to "submit" to her husband (Eph. 5:22) and "obey" him (I Pet. 3:4-6); and the woman is the "weaker sex" (I Pet. 3:7).

In our culture there are no two ways about it: All these terms are now pejorative, all these concepts are now reviled. And, to make matters worse, many men habitually exploit those passages for their own worldly and selfish gain. On the surface, this apparent male bias and condescension seemed to be a strong case for "editing" or rewriting Scripture passages that deal with the order of creation of male and female.

I could not deny that God intentionally created humanity as male and female — one species with two halves, each having different functions. I could not deny that Jesus Christ came to us in the form of a human male born of a human female. And I could not doubt that Christ died for the sins of both men and women.

Morabito examines how modern sensibilities have made this area of teaching more provocative:

[Paul] definitely sounds chauvinistic to contemporary ears. We so easily view the idea of headship of the husband as a position of power. This is not only the modern worldly view of headship, but an ancient view as well. However, the Christian view — Paul's view — is neither. The headship of the husband is not a position of worldly power. Rather, it is a function of total surrender to the Cross.

I finally came to terms with Paul's call to submission in marriage when I began to reflect on Christian marriage as a two-partner dance. Leading in a dance is simply a function. Following in a dance — i.e., "submitting" or "obeying" — is merely the reciprocal function. Both the husband and the wife are subject to Christ, as a man and a woman are subject to the music as they dance.

If the husband's role is to lead, and the wife's role is to follow, so what? What's the big deal? How does it make the wife inferior? The husband superior? To claim such things of dance partners would be as nonsensical as stating that an axle is superior to the wheel attached to it. They are simply acting as one unit. In fact, they don't get anywhere unless they act as one unit. The most important element of the dance is that both partners must follow the same music.

Contrary to popular revisionist belief, the writers of the Scriptures do not advise [a wife] to wallow in her suffering and to submit to abuse from a wayward husband who doesn't obey the Word. None of that is part of the solution offered in 1 Peter: that the wife, by example, show her reverence for the Word in order to bring her husband back to the Word (3:1-2). This passage reminds the woman that her first allegiance is always to Christ. She must, figuratively speaking, just keep humming the music of the Gospel to let her husband know he is out of line and out of step. Her tune should remind him that they are both called to total surrender to the Cross.

The wife can't easily do this if she loudly complains about his sins or tries to lead him or push him around the dance floor. The best bet is to remain humble yet active, and firmly determined to let the Holy Spirit lead her thoughts, words, and deeds. Then the husband is most likely to be brought back into the dance. Otherwise, there can be no dance, no Christian marriage.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul prefaces his whole discussion of headship with a statement clearly indicating that neither party has power over the other: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph. 5:21). 

Feminists seek to replace Paul's formula for organic unity with the formula of secular equality. It is an unordered view of equality where there are no specific or reciprocal functions. The result is chaos, where there is really no room for the Cross to be the tempering, binding, and ordering force in marriage. It's a dance where everybody leads and nobody follows. 

[Revisionists] refuse even to entertain the possibility that headship and submission to headship can be reciprocal functions of total surrender to the Cross.  

By virtue of valid baptism, we are — regardless of our sex or other circumstances of birth — united into the One Body of Christ in the world. But how does that translate into the notion that God intended all Christians to have the same function? How does that translate into the absence of any specific God-given order for our creation as male and female — the only basic distinction in the creation of humanity? Revisionists ignore the fact that we are incarnational beings, created as male or female. The task of Christians is to deal with God's creation as He wills, not as we will. Therefore, our bounden duty is to put aside our egos.

When we filter out the modern distortions of Paul's message, his logic becomes obvious and plainly positive. If a man and a woman are to unite as one flesh that submits to Christ, they must perform complementary functions in order to work together as one.

One flesh, one organism, in marriage, but "male and female He created them" in the order of creation. Therefore, husbands must respect their own dignity and not contrive to get their way on trivial matters, but instead serve their family and provide it with authentic leadership that is pleasing to Christ. 

A final thought is this: The vocation of headship does not grant infallibility to the husband. A husband, in good conscience, though in the face of opposition from his wife, who does submit to the husband, may make a decision involving the family that does not achieve the desired goal. Such an outcome is not an argument against Christian headship. Rather it can be viewed as a "What's good luck, what's bad luck?" scenario. Humanly speaking the outcome may be a failure, but with a spiritual lens we see God blessing the family with valuable insights, a character-building experience, and success in enriching family life.  

See also: Women's full equality in the Christian family  

                Complementarity and Spiritual Headship

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