Cheryl Schatz

Tiro,

I agree that women who are caught up in the hierarchical mindset have difficulty seeing the abuse that is inherent in that system.  Often these are precious women whose only desire is to be pleasing to God and to their husbands.  They are also the ones who can feel their own condemnation if they don’t submit with a good attitude.  It is difficult at the best of times to have your person taken over by another person’s will without freely making each choice along the way yourself so that it is then a joint decision.  Sometimes it takes years to see this system for what it is.  Sometimes a woman will go into depression and not even know why.  In listening to several CBMW tapes where some of the key players of the hierarchy movement admitted that their marriage was in trouble and they had to seek help.  The problem was their making decisions for another person in essence dismantling the wife’s own personhood.  She may as well be a robot because her decisions are not used.  The leaders who spoke about their marriages had to back off and give their wives more room to be a person.  What does this tell us?  It tells us that even those who are dedicated to making hierarchy a godly system are incapable of taking authority over a woman without it affecting their marriage and her very being as a person.  The entire system is flawed because no matter how much they push this as godly, it is not God’s way.

God’s way is for the two to work together as a one flesh union each honoring the other and making decisions together.  Sometimes the solution is that we just don’t wait on the Lord for help when we cannot come to a joint decision.  To give all the power to the one who has been prophesied in scripture to be an abuser of that power, is not a wise move.