gengwall

It seems to me that one of the weakest areas of complementarianism is in the issue of an abusive husband. They seem to want to dance around the issues because after all the husband is the priest-king of the home according to their doctrine. That makes trying to “discipline” the husband a very touchy subject. How are they going to do that anyway? It is no wonder that most complementarian pastors will focus their advice with the wife and tell her to be more submissive. The subject of the king appears to be easier to counsel than the king himself. This is where the unbalanced nature of the comp argument shows up as weak and ineffective. This kinds of counsel make me very sad as it reminds me how a person’s doctrine can affect every area of their life.

I wanted to comment more on this as well. Many have noted above how any “intervention” by the church almost always focuses on the wife’s submissiveness. This is the sad but true hypocracy in the complimentarian approach to abusive husbands. Although they recognize that the husband should be loving and sacrificial, they make the exercise of that love and sacrifice conditional on the wife’s submissiveness. This is in direct opposition to Paul’s instruction, which calls for the completely unconditional love and sacrifice that Christ exhibited. While acknowledging Paul’s words they simultaneously deny them! The truth of Ephesians 5 is that the husband is to love and sacrifice for his wife, putting her above himself, regardless of how she behaves. In fact, he is really supposed to ignore any and all bad behavior. By “ignore”, I mean he is to have an attitude like God’s in relation to our forgiven sin. She is to be seen as “washed clean” in his eyes. He is to consider a wife’s bad behavior as having never happened. He is to regard her as he does himself, reflecting the golden rule. The unconditional nature of the husband’s love, sacrifice, and regard for his wife permeates every verse of Ephesians 5:25-32. For complimentarians to place conditions on the wife of an abusive husband to receive the love and sacrifice that Paul demands be unconditional is the epitome of “adding insult to injury”. No wonder wives avoid such church “leadership” like the plague in these situations.