Gender roles is one of the hottest topics in society today, and it certainly is a topic that some Christian circles are fixated on, to the point that their entire theology on based on the question of gender roles. While submission of the wife is an important doctrine and is not to be neglected (Ephesians 5:22-23), and indeed should be taught more, owing to the constant perversion of it to qualify this teaching, some have gone to the other extreme to misapply gender roles. This is itself wrong and must be addressed, for it is well understood in most church circles that a wife must submit to her husband.
Most reasonable non-fundamentalist Christians, irrespective of denomination, acknowledge that a wife is obligated to submit to her husband as part of her obligations towards him. But gender roles go both ways, in that the husband also has his obligations towards her, and are far more complex than the literal text of Ephesians 5 than fundamental Christians make it out to mean in making gender roles to be about only the woman submitting and the man being the one who simply dominates her by making her his literal property, or slave in the true sense of the term.
Many effectively teach that a wife should be made subordinate to her husband, and love to teach that Eve was made from Adam's rib, not from his feet so that he can oppress her, nor from his head so that she can dominate him. They often attempt to make it sound more palatable by saying that such subordinate is not abuse, making a distinction between abusive subordination and non-abusive subordination.
However, marriage is not about subordinate of one person to another, but about a man and wife united together before God with respective roles, with neither side being intended by God to be the oppressor or oppressed. Marriage has never been oppressive towards women or men. It has never been about making a woman a sex slave or property, or oppressing men by giving women all the benefits of sex, children and money, at the expense of men.
Some more extreme fundamenalists go so far as to teach that a wife is effectively the sex slave to her husband by using 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 which teaches mutual sexual obligations (not rights), and even just tolerate serious abuse such as rape and violence in the true sense of the term.
While this may sound unbelievable, this mentality is evident in the attitude of many, as demonstrated by their indifference towards domestic abuse. That itself is the manifestation of the attitude that a wife should just allow herself to submit to abuse, and ironically (or perhaps unironically) as cruel abuse or perversion of the doctrine of submission.
The pastor with the most sound teaching on this issue is Derek Prince who neither waters down the scripture to qualify or exceptionalise submission to please women as many do, nor read into the text unscriptural, unsound and oppressive views about gender roles. The result is an understanding of gender roles that is just and fair towards both sexes, and not one that is warped in favour of either one.
The problem is the fundamentalists is the sola scriptura approach to scripture which literalist approach often leads to unsensible, legalistic, primitive, simplistic, unduly rigid or oppressive interpretations of scripture. This misinterpretation and misapplication of scripture is the result of every person being his own pope, and the rejection of church authority and the Church Fathers who never made gender roles as prescribed by scripture to be oppressive.
In contrast to much of contemporary fundamentalist 'christian' teaching on gender roles, St Thomas Aquinas taught "If a husband were permitted to abandon his wife, the society of husband and wife would not be an association of equals, but instead a kind of slavery" (ScG 3.123). Aquinas was not only condemning the idea that marriage is to be a kind of slavery whereby the wife should simply tolerate abuse. He was saying that marriage is an "association of equals", showing that God never made marriage to oppress women or men.
While of course, a husband is the head of his wife, and the wife must submit to her husband, the idea of 'gender roles' in which certain actions are legalistically prescribed to the respective sexes, is perversion of scripture. It is the abuse of scripture that can be and is often used to oppress or abuse people or manipulate people. For example, such rules are used to unjustifiably stop a woman from getting out of the house except without her husband's express permission. Such rules are also even used to justify a woman's divorce from her husband when he fails to find a job, owing to the legalism applied to the text of the scripture.
Of course, there are certain responsibilities that each respective spouse has. The husband has the responsibility to provide and protect his wife and children. The wife has a responsibility to rear children. But apart from that, marriage is not an institution and was never designed as an institution of slavery of woman or for that matter, man, whereby a person's sole existence is to satisfy the personal desires of the other, and whereby that person himself or herself cannot have his or her own emotions, feelings, opinions or beliefs.
Some try to make marriage out to be an institution where a man exists solely as a cash cow, sperm bank and sex provider for the wife. Others try to make marriage out to be one where a woman exists solely as a sex provider (sometimes sex slave) and cookie baker. Both views are totally ridiculous and are never intended by God.
God designed gender roles for the good of humanity, not for the oppression or abuse of people. God designed man to be the head of household and leader, and woman to be his helper.
And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
(Genesis 2:18-25)
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