Kristen

TL, I’m a bit confused by this:
“Even though I don’t believe God gave husbands authority over their wives, the world does believe so.”
I think perhaps there is a typo here? The ancient world believed so; and those who followed Zeus/Jupiter as their god, did so especially. I’m sure you and I are in agreement that the church’s belief in this idea came about largely through the influence of Aristotelian thinking on early Christianity.
I suspect that what you actually meant was that the church (or portions of the church) believes so. But the modern world tends to believe neither in God nor in husbandly authority.
And what you and I have both seen is that openness to God by those in the world is directly, and negatively, affected by this issue– in the same way that they still blame the church for clinging to the institution of slavery (forgetting that Christians were also largely responsible for movements that ended slavery in America and Europe). They see a God who would order husbandly authority as unjust, unrighteous, and unworthy of being followed. Paul’s whole emphasis on submission to the institutions of the world that Christians found themselves in “that the gospel not be hindered” has been rendered ineffective by the church’s insistence on clinging to tradition rather than studying to see what he actually meant about husband-wife relations. The gospel is hindered by the teaching of husbandly authority over wives– and such teaching was never Paul’s to begin with.