gengwall

I don’t have an answer for you personally but I can give you the standard response: “rule by committee doesn’t work”. What “soft” complimentarians will say is that somebody has to make the final “call” on issues. Since it has to be somebody, God has ordained it to be the husband.

I find a couple flaws in this. Kay points out the first. The bible never says this. The second is that there is no provision in our design that makes the male (or the female) qualified to make “the call” on every decision. We are all differently gifted and have different experiences which make us suited to be the expert on certain issues. In our house, my wife and I each defer to whoever is the most qualified to make a decision. And if the issue is contentious or there is no persuasive argument, we postpone making a decision until we can pray about the issue and gain more clarity (or better arguments).

A final argument in favor of male leadership is that “men are built to be leaders”. As if we have some leadership gene. Now, being a man, I can certainly agree that we males want to be in charge. But that doesn’t necessarily ever make us better leaders. Put any 5 males and 5 females in a room and, given the situation, there are multiple hierarchies that make sense, some with a man at the top and some with a woman. So, the “leader by design” argument not only is not very persuasive biblically, but it fails in practical application too.

Having said that, I do believe there are some inherent differences in males and females that make us better suited to certain tasks. But I don’t believe we are unilaterally gender differentiated. If for example, I believe that women generally make better nurturers because of their different brain structure and hormonal make up, that doesn’t mean that men can’t be good nurtureres and it certainly does not absolve men of the responsibility to nurture. It also doesn’t mean that there isn’t some overlap between genders on the nurturing spectrum, although I might argue that such overlaps have more to do with our own “nurturing” as opposed to our “nature”.

None of that isneither here nor there. I find nothing in our makeup or in our shared experience that would indicate to me that men are better leaders or designed to lead. Nor does the bible ever say that men are to lead there wives. My wife and I are co-leaders of our family, each “taking chrage” where we are better gifted or experienced.