Kristen

A few thoughts on the authority issue:
“All authority which exists is established by God.” Yes, no doubt we need government, for without it, as Hobbes said, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” But I would submit that in recent times, in free societies, authority structures in the world much more closely resemble the way Jesus said they should be in the kingdom of God, with no one lording it over anyone else and everyone having equal status before the law. Why? Because we finally recognized and understood that authority in the hands of fallen humanity is prey to oppression of the weak by the strong. God, while accommodating His message to the world as He found it, set up the Law to contain some checks and balances– most notable being that the judges (and later the kings) were under the law themselves, rather than being able to consider themselves above it; and also that priestly power and governmental power were separated and not both held by the same person. Modern society has expanded these checks and balances– and also brought into the social structure something that both Jesus and Paul taught as the norm for the kingdom of God: that no one should have inherent authority over another based on the flesh (their birth), rather than on their calling, character and qualifications.

And yet much of the Church still insists on reading flesh-based authority back into the very Scriptures which, understood in their original historical/cultural context, were clear messages that authority in the kingdom was based on the callings of God and not to be flesh-based, for He said He would poor out His spirit on all flesh, on His sons and his daughters– and that husbands were to lay down their worldly authority over their wives and raise them up, just as Christ raised up the Church to rule beside Him. The result in modern society is that the message of the gospel is hindered, for the world sees such authority now as fundamentally unjust. This is the very scenario that Paul was trying to prevent in Titus 2, when he advised women and slaves not to rebel against the then-current social structures, that the “word of God be not blasphemed.” The gospel is “blasphemed” among unbelievers now for the inherent injustice of male authority over the female in marriage and in the church. I am convinced that such was never Jesus’ idea, nor was it Paul’s, or that of any writer of the New Testament. Male authority over the female was a part of the culture, which those in the kingdom were to rise above in the dignity and equality they gave slaves, Gentiles– and women.
So– applying this to what Tiffany said:
“Likewise complementarianism does not equal the wife forsaking who she is, what she loves, her desires and hopes and calling from God to submit to someone who has decided he is God’s oracle for the family and that only he hears from God.” —
The problem is that when husbands have this authority-by-birth, and no checks or balances on how they are allowed to exercise it, then each wife is at the mercy of her own husband’s benevolence or tyranny. A lot of them choose to exercise tyranny, and a wife has no recourse, for the Church so many, many times only emphasizes her submission and does not address the husband’s issues at all– for is he not the authority in his own home?
I maintain that God never mandated that anyone have authority purely on the basis of who they were born as. Those who exercise such authority based on their supposed birthright, may or may not have any character or ability to be gentle, sane, godly leaders. This is entirely a worldly institution which God’s word (while working within the institutions of the societies within which it was spoken) works to circumvent on every level.