Kay

“I’m not sure what you would clarify John Piper as, but from the sermons ive heard him talk about marriage, it is very similar to what i have said.”

Mark,

Perhaps to give you more understanding about why some of us have so many misgivings about John Piper’s teaching, I’ll offer this quote by him concerning a wife’s submission to an abusive husband from his website on Aug. 19th:
“She’s going to say, however, something like, “Honey, I want so much to follow you as my leader. God calls me to do that, and I would love to do that. It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership. But if you ask me to do this, require this of me, then I can’t go there.”
Now that’s one kind of situation. Just a word on the other kind. If it’s not requiring her to sin but simply hurting her, then I think she endures verbal abuse for a season, and she endures perhaps being smacked one night, and then she seeks help from the church.”

I feel for women who because of their circumstances have no other support then pastors who give this kind of advice. “then she seeks help from the church” “Then?” what if she does not survive until “then”? It is obvious from his advice that Piper has never worked in a women’s shelter or been the victim of domestic violence because his advice is the kind that escalates the abuser’s behavior and gets victims killed. By allowing husbands to sin against their wives like this, isn’t Piper allowing them to proclaim they know better than God? These are the kinds of statements that give me great pause about Piper.

There are no limits set in the scripture concernint the rulership of a man in marriage because there was no rulership given to him by God. When a man believes that denying his wife her freedom to live by her own choices is the best way for her, then he has no help from the scripture since there is no rulership program there. The question that we should be asking is why God hasn’t made these limits clear? Why are there so many grey areas in whether it is a sin or not for a woman to do certain things? Why is it that all these limits and role duties have to be set by writings outside the Bible? Like, for instance by CBMW – they spend so much of their time working on the restrictions.