Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7:1-5
Marriage is at an all-time low in many parts of the modern world and has been a trend that has been maintained for years if you are in the western world. As one of the tenets of the feminism fight, this should count as a massive victory seeing as more women are being set free from the oppression and patriarchal expectations of being a housewife…and yet that is not nearly the case. While it remains clear that feminists who are at least 40+ still believe in their cause (at least that is what Google tells me), the patterns of how relationships work in the world have largely shifted. After the waves of divorce, statistically more likely to be caused by women, hit the modern world following the rise of the second and third waves of feminism, a lot has changed, much of which has truly undermined courtship and I don’t believe the Church is spared from this. Even as I write about this, I will struggle to maintain a more balanced tale but kindly bear with me.
Last time, we spoke of attraction and how some of the pitfalls that we discussed might have led both men and women to have very unrealistic standards on looking for someone to be with in a relationship. Today, we are going to discuss where that attraction ought to lead someone as far as believers are concerned and connect a couple of things happening with relationships now and how Ruth has a very interesting story of courtship, one we might all be able to learn from. From the text we have here, it is clear that Paul prefers for people to remain celibate and in the whole chapter offers a lot of advantages to being single, many of which we may cover in the next part but for now, he makes it clear that in order to combat sexual immorality of any kind, let every man have a wife.
At a time when marriage is highly disenfranchised, those who still seek it look for those who are or claim to be religious, specifically the Church of Christ to find a partner, even if they are not believers themselves and there is good reason for it. It has to do with one word that the world and specifically two who seek sexual satisfaction seem to lack in this age; submission.
Submission
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-33
Submission is one of the few things the world has been taught to hate in its entirety. This is because the concept of submission runs parallel to the idea of autonomy and hedonism. If you are seeking to please yourself, unless you have a good reason to be compliant to something, you have no good reason to waste your time on it. It was how the Westerners were divorced from Christian fundamentalism since the idea of submission to a God who might not exist was questioned. Then came the freedom era in tandem with the second wave of feminism and later the third that influenced the rest of the world. Every time I go back to this, I always want my readers to understand that there was a purist era of feminism where what they stood for was genuine and worth fighting for. However, because God was no longer at the forefront of the minds of people and the relationship of that with sin, there had to be an enemy. One incapable of being destroyed by design since the issues that were being fixed still ran into a brick wall. Evil still happened against women and to date, no amount of legislature was capable of changing that. It was the patriarchy. And so began the war that could never be won.
Men took the obvious hostility as a sign that they should not also be fixed to the fundamentals of being gentlemanly and naturally this did not sit well with women who still desired that, feminists included. So what changed was an era of gas-lighting, one that still prevails today. I do not use this word lightly. Women who were radical feminists did and still do want to both hate men and then have men be useful when they are needed. I do not benefit from remaining nuanced on this particular segment. I genuinely believe that feminism wants the benefits of equality but not the responsibilities that come with it. It is not designed to work any other way except in favor of women. This is largely what ended up making them enemies when a new class of the oppressed arrived and why they are unable to combat trans activism.
All of this serves as great context as to why marriage and courtship have become such a real struggle. Women have largely watched as the support they would get from men without question disappear in ways they never quite expected. So the gas-lighting I mentioned earlier took effect; some women began to tell men that they were unmanly and toxic if they did not take care of women like they were expected to. That women were to be accepted as they were and that if they did not like it, then they weren’t as strong men. In time, even this slowly lost effect as with the absence of God, men rarely if ever lacked the moral incentive to be well-mannered. As a result, dangerous tactics developed. Governments of some countries have now resulted in begging their men to take their women and some women have attempted to trap men into relationships. As a Christian man or woman, you look at the world and you honestly can feel like being in a relationship is not worth it. That’s where God’s Word comes in.
Verse 21 of chapter 5 actually talks about the first state of submission, namely to each other out of reverence to Christ. This is the most important part of the puzzle. If it was a bad idea to look for a worldly person to be in a relationship with before, it is probably worse and I personally think it was God’s design. There are a lot of selfish people and if you seek romantic resolutions there, you will come out a mess. Some of you might need to test it to see but the corruption of men has never been clearer than in the world we have now. You would rather remain celibate than go that route. In the body of Christ, the system is different. The group of people you are dealing with are diverse, true, but they have one thing in common; they are all depraved people who lean on Christ alone. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the first or second person you ask will automatically date you because they are believers. Everyone has preferences and standards. However, it does mean that when you do find someone to date, you are on the same page; submission. It is this first level of submission that makes the second one easier.
The Bible understood for centuries that women have a natural tendency to both fear and perhaps despise submission to a man. This is why the exhortation begins with the wife. But I want you to notice something interesting. This particular passage not only talks about submission but rightly points out the biggest issues men and women currently have. A man’s greatest fear in a relationship is rejection and his natural response is apathy and that has led to a culture of men that refuse to take responsibilities over women either out of hatred or fear. This is why the exhortation for the husband is to love the wife. A woman’s greatest fear in a relationship is misplaced trust, that is a man that either refuses to be responsible or abuses their responsibility and her natural response is rebellion. Thus the woman is instructed to submit. Submission here is not a dominant function but is addressing the core issues of both man and woman in marriage. It is not meant to be an easy solution. There is a good reason men seem emotionless to women and women seem overbearing to men. It is something that is meant to be worked on with time for the glory of God.
The problem here is both sides are never taught to be patient enough to get there. They are told as early as possible that they don’t get what they want immediately, they should run, and that the perfect person for them is someone who will definitely be what they want him or her to be. Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to date and hopefully marry a repentant sinner such as yourself. Kindly look into the mirror and then read Matthew 7 to help you sober up a bit. I have a big issue with dealing with this myself but the person you are going to end up with is probably going to be uniquely weak in areas you expect them to be strong. You will see it while you date them and you will brace yourself to honor Christ with them in marriage if God wills it.
The perfect person you are looking for is the Lord Jesus Christ and you are already married to Him. Kindly, like me, do the heavy work of seeking satisfaction from Him. Everyone else you meet will definitely not be Him.
I will not talk more about marriage from this point onwards as I have not experienced it and thus would be intellectually dishonest about anything I say. Look for the nearest elder for positive and negative experiences. We’ll transition to Ruth for a bit as we end.
Ruth Empowered
And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
Ruth 1:15-18
Ruth has one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible. David, Moses, and Joseph do not compare in the slightest. The reason I think this is the case is that in the 3 men, we often forget how little agency these people had in their lives. God practically charted their narratives from birth and literally, every single aspect of their lives was lined up with God’s will perfectly. However, since the things they were involved with were quite miraculous, the lack of agency gets lost in the mix and we just remember the parting of the sea or the saving of the people. Ruth however lacks that flair and instead we see a simple story of a woman who would end up in Christ’s lineage without even planning for it.
For starters, she was in the land of Moab so that meant that the narrative had to come to her and it did in the form of Naomi, her husband, and the two sons. Then an inciting incident occurs in the form of all the males dying meaning that Naomi has to return and Ruth, at that moment, makes a life-changing decision to move the plot of her life that pretty much brings her to one opportunity after another. The reason I love Ruth as a Biblical narrative is because this is the kind of story that radical feminism might find lacking in agency because she ends up with a man in the end. Never mind the fact that every literal plot point is moved by women; Naomi has to return to her home, Ruth chooses to join, Ruth decides to work in the labor fields and her hard work is noticed by Boaz, Boaz makes possible her ability to harvest more plants and Ruth takes the initiative and even gets some more food to carry home and then…nothing happens.
Ruth’s story is not a romantic tale of love at first sight. Very few, if any, Biblical tales are indeed such. In fact, many of the times where the characters involved were burning with passion, it often led to bad decisions or bad outcomes. Samson and Delilah, David and Bathsheba, Solomon and his wives, the list is huge. This is not to say that one should not seek romantic attraction but that that should not be the one and only identifier of love. Very often, you might hear tales of friends that later married or even people who took years to get used to each other or even know the other existed. This might be your specific narrative or it may not. Moreover, Ruth’s love story was not even one of sending notes or love letters. Naomi felt one day that Ruth should seek Boaz for the sake of her security and Ruth felt it was sound advice. It seems weird that Ruth did not have an ‘I’ll marry for love attitude’ despite the fact that she could have very much chosen to be independent still. She, after all, had most of what she needed; Naomi supported her as a mother and her work got her enough food for a time. Ruth chose marriage because she felt it was the right decision and it clearly worked out. She did not quite have all the agency when it came to the arrangement but she made the first move.
A lot of feminists would hold that the key to a good relationship is one where you are fully in control and are not likely to lose it. This is, to be fair, something even anti-feminists would hold. If you are the most important aspect of your life, then it only makes sense to worry about yourself after all. It, therefore, makes sense that a Christian marriage is a nightmare as you lose control of two figures in your life; to Christ that He may satisfy you and to your husband that he may take care of you. This is a huge gamble and one you may never take if you are not prepared for it. You may never even need to and can serve Christ in celibacy. However, if you do desire a husband and children and security, you pretty much have two options; cheat your way into one to preserve your sense of self or die to self and take the leap. The former sounds plausible but look for the evidence. Not many women who picked the former stay for long with their trapped partner for the sole reason that no love abides. You don’t have to pick the latter but you might have great joy in it, even if it comes at the cost of your beliefs.
To those of us who seek grace in marriage, God’s grace be with you all. To those who are temporarily or permanently seeking celibacy, we walk to the next part of the series.
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