I Am Submissive

This month is my 11th-year wedding anniversary, so I thought I'd give myself (and you) a blast from my past by posting the blog I composed before my wedding.  I'm happy to report that I still buy into the ideas of younger me.  I'm also happy to report that none of the "dark side" considerations ever came to pass -- but it never hurts to be mentally prepared!  ~ Yolanda Ramírez, 08/2024

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FLASHBACK: From June, 2013

In March of 1998 -- about half my life ago, as I write this -- I made the most important decision of my life.  I chose to become a daughter of God, His doula, as the Greek has it: servant girl, bondswoman, slave.

In August of 2013, I will be making my second most important decision: turning that life in Christ over to the guidance and authority of a son of God, and living in joyful submission to his spiritual leadership.

Yeah.  I just said the words "I" and "submission" in the same sentence.  Some who know me personally will smirk and ask, "Really?  Yolanda, submissive?" (or, to quote my brother, "Is the sky plaid?  Is the ocean tall?")

But yes, I really do stand on the cusp of the second-greatest act of submission I plan on making in this life.  I have even included the words of Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 (the "wives, submit" passages) into the ceremony for our wedding.  I didn't do that for my own benefit, since in my heart I've already embraced the commitment.  I included them as a witness to those attending the ceremony.  They need to know that, in obedience to the Lord, even the most independent, quippy, willful, and self-driven daughter of the Most High can find a point in life where she will pause, point, and declare: "There, ahead, is a worthy calling.  There I will take my role.  There I will submit."

This Blog Post Is About Submission

Don't worry.  I'm not about to fall into a long, gushing blog about how absolutely awesome my fiancé is.  Read Song of Songs on your own, and that will pretty much cover my emotions of the past two years.

Instead, I will be writing to myself today (and letting you watch) about exactly what I mean when I say I will submit to my husband.  My goal isn't to offend anyone, conservative or liberal, with my ideas, but to clarify in my own mind what I expect of myself -- what the Lord expects of me -- in this new submissive role.

SUBMISSIVE, NOT SUBJECTED: It's important that I remember I choose submission daily.  Ephesians 5:22 clearly says, "wives, submit yourselves" ... and not "husbands, make your wives submit."  My act of submission to my husband, like my initial act of submission to Christ, is made voluntarily and renewed at every sunrise.  I am not conquered against my will.  I enter into this relationship and life clear-minded, open-hearted, and uncompelled by anything but my own desires and the Spirit within me.

SUBMISSIVE TO HIM: Ephesians 5:22 doubles down on the idea that I am submissive to my husband himself, not a woman submissive to all men.  "Submit YOURSELVES to your OWN husbands" Paul writes.  The text does not say or even imply that as a Christian woman I am in a position of inferiority to all Christian men I now meet.  I only say this here because I have met many over my years in Christ who like to suggest that Ephesians 5 implies just that.  They are incorrect.  I will, in fact, submit to them as Scripture directs us (all to submit one unto another), but only one man will get the special level of submission awarded husbands.

TO HIM AS TO THE LORD: This short passage in Ephesians goes to the trouble to state in three different ways that I am to be submissive to my groom in exactly the same way I am submissive to the Lord.  I know that may be an idea that irritates some women, those who feel that somehow, in some way, there must be some differentiation between how I serve God and how I serve a mortal man.  But examine the three verses carefully.  Verse 22 says I submit to him as I do to the Lord.  Verse 23 says he is my head in exactly the same way Christ is head of the church.  Verse 24 emphasizes again that just as the church submits to Christ, so I must submit to him.  There is no wibble room.  There's no footnote saying, "Unless you're not in the mood" or even "unless you feel God's will is something else."  I am to submit as I would to Christ.  If you feel uneasy about the implications of that, and if it raises some "Yes, but" objections in your mind, then I can only respond that you are reacting to Scripture and not to me, and that the full importance of that verse is beginning to hit home for both of us.

SUBMIT WITHOUT EXCEPTION.  Verse 24 ends with even more force than the preceding verses.  Wives, it says, are to submit to their husbands "in everything."  This less-than-modern assertion might give contemporary Christians pause.  "Surely by in everything, the Scripture doesn't mean you should submit to insane plans he makes about the finances, dangerous moves that might bankrupt the family."  But Scripture says in everything.  "Still, surely not if he starts drinking heavily and becomes verbally abusive and not a good Christian head."  But Scripture does not say, "except"  or "unless" or "provided that."  Scripture says in everything.  "But surely, surely not if he is cheating on you, womanizing behind your back, turning from God and rejecting the faith he had when you met him!  Surely not then!"

A heartbreaking scenario, and in far too many Christian homes, a heartbreaking reality.  So here it is that I turn to my father in the faith, Peter.

Submission Is A One-Time Deal

We are a generation of victims and whiners, and I count myself as one in a generation that has learned that our own self-worth and self-preservation is of the utmost importance.  That sense of privilege has seeped into and throughout the church to the extent that we have justified separations and divorces at the slightest hint of inconvenience.  It might be time for us to reconsider that me-focused mindset when it comes to marriage ... because if there is anything that makes us move from the Me and into the Other, it is the unity of man and woman becoming one flesh for life.

For life.

We are people of the Word.  That Word contains the Book of Job.  Yet we, who claim to believe the Book of Job, are mind-numbingly quick to assure one another that God would never, ever expect a spouse to stay with a mate who [fill in your bad behavior of choice here].  Raised in a culture that rejects all trials and tribulations, we've come to expect that we are entitled to a Christian walk that's free of challenge.  We've come to define our happiness in terms of conflict avoidance and freedom from the very troubles that refine us and make us better.  Good times mean we are blessed!  We must be healed, for God wants us healthy and buff!  We must be prosperous, for God wants us richer and getting a return on our offerings!  We must be in endless marital bliss ... else we will leave this marriage situation we always suspected was simply temporary anyways.

Let me point out something modern minds might find troubling.  When Peter speaks about women submitting to their husbands in the third chapter of his first letter, he starts out: "In like manner, wives should submit themselves to their own husbands."  Nothing new here, it would seem at first glance, until we notice the words "In like manner."  In like manner to what?  Clearly this passage demands a context, because Peter was just speaking about something else, and we need to know what wifely submission is being compared to.  Peter obviously wants wives to submit in the same way as he was just talking about.

What was Peter just talking about?  The previous chapter is about servants submitting to their masters.  To make matters more interesting, he was specifically speaking about how mistreated servants ought to remain submissive to their masters, even if they are being unfairly punished for things that are not their fault.  Peter says that wives, in a like manner, should submit to their own husbands.

I will pause while you consider the implications of that.

Done?  Good.  And I confess, it is a pretty daunting sequence of thoughts, the kind that doesn't fit at all into modern-day ideas about relationships society taught an early-Gen Y millennial like me.  My regular readers will here expect me to say, "However, there's a twist ..."  or "Still, when we look at other Scriptures, we learn ..."  But this is all I will say: If I am submitting to my husband as I submit to Christ; and if of Christ I would say, "Though he slay me, yet I will trust him" as Job 13:15 says of God; then why, even if he might lose his faith or treat me badly or cheat on me, would I abandon my role in my commitment to my husband?  I made an oath, my Yes meant Yes.  I selected a path of submission, and the only qualification Scripture requires of my husband for receiving that commitment ... is that he be my husband.

But ... But ... But ...

But if my husband loses faith, aren't we unevenly yoked?  And doesn't that excuse me from the marriage?  No, wife Yolanda, it most certainly does not.  First of all, the instruction that someone must not become unequally yoked with an unbeliever is advice to the unmarried, not to those already married.  It has nothing to do with getting out of a marriage, and everything to do with being careful about getting into one.

On the contrary, Peter, in the chapter I was just referencing, speaks directly to believing wives of unbelieving husbands and makes it clear that it is their good behavior and silent evidence of the goodness of God that may very well win the husband to the faith.  Recall, Peter has said this in the context of telling servants to submissively accept punishment from bad masters, unjust men.  There is little doubt that Peter entreats the believing wife to remain with the unbelieving husband ... and his context places that forbearance in the midst of some very bad behavior.

It is a witness of the enduring wife, a testimony, when she remains with the unbelieving husband and lets her silent testimony draw him back to the Word of God.  Our world and our culture says she is to flee.  Our Scripture indicates she reaps rewards in the Kingdom when she stays.

"But the husband who follows Christ shouldn't strike her!"  No.  I agree.  He shouldn't.  "If he doesn't provide for his family, including physical provisions like safety, he is worse than an infidel!"  Yes, he certainly is.  "And she should be free to dump him and run away from that situation!"  Well.  Maybe.  There might be a time it's right to finally shake the dust from your feet and flee.  But convince me via the Word, not through appalled outrage based on modern expectations.

Wow, That Turned Dark

Yes, a blog post that started as a declaration of joy has now turned to a bit of a downer.  But fear not: I'm still a blushing bride, I am still intolerably giddy when you get me to discuss my upcoming marriage, and I am still blissfully pathetic when I go on and on about this man of God whom I love.  But one thing I'm not is naïve.  I understand that the winds of life and fortune are fickle, and that the trials that lie before me are known only to the mind of God.  To pledge my submission with only the good things in mind would be the impulse of a teen.  I'm not middle-aged yet, but I am no longer a teen, and I will make my life's second most important decision with my eyes wide open and my blissful hopes tempered with faith-based understanding of a future unknown and God's principles to guide me.

But permit me to finish on an up note.  Permit me to declare the glorious side of submission, now that I have hazarded a glance at the darkness:

• I will have a guide.  That old saying that Eve was made out of the rib of Adam so she would be neither above nor below him is cute, but wrong.  I am marrying a man I am confident can lead me in Christ.  I think he is better than me.  I consider him my superior.  Not all men are.  But he is.

• I will have beauty with purpose.  All my life, I've wondered why I stayed trim, why I tried to look beautiful without being trashy or overly enticing.  Now I know why I continued to keep this temple of the Holy Spirit in decent shape -- for this one I will submit to.  Enough on that -- as I said earlier, go read Song of Solomon for details.

• I will grow and share inner beauty.  A woman's true beauty, Peter says, is the piety, gentleness, and reverence she carries within.  Now I will have a man to honor with that part of me hidden within, while benefiting from his wisdom as he helps me develop still more inner beauty which, unlike external, only grows with years in Christ.

• I will be a We.  I praise God for the ministry I have had as a single woman and a deaf teacher of deaf children.  But I confess it is not good for woman to be alone, and I rejoice that the Lord has brought me a mate and his new family with similar passions for service.  I will no longer have to read Scriptural references to Priscilla and Aquila with longing, because I will be part of a lifelong Gospel team.

• I will make babies and I will raise them to know what real submission is ... submission to parents, submission in service to others in the body of Christ, submission to emperors and governments and church authorities the Lord may choose to put above us, and, at last, submission to a spouse they select.

Like any bride, I have dreams, hopes, aspirations, and desires for the future.  I can't control which ones will come our way.  One thing, however, I can control: my submissive role to one man of God, to act toward him as the church acts toward Christ.  With reverence.  With humility.  With obedience.  With joy.  With surrender.  With an eye toward his needs as my priority.

And to those who wonder how someone as sassy and independent as me could want such a submissive role in a marriage, all I can say is: Why would I consider marrying anyone I wouldn't give all that to?

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx / YoYo Rez