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SWEET SUBMISSION #4

HAIL TO MRS. CHIEF

She was the first big gun to leave the Bush administration. Karen Hughes, age 50 and arguably the most powerful woman ever in American politics, was leaving Washington, D.C. and returning to Texas to spend more time as a family with her husband, Jerry, and 15-year-old son, Robert.

"George W. Bush's vaunted Iron Triangle of political advisors — Rove, Albaugh and Hughes — has lost one of its sharpest corners," wrote William Rivers Pitt in an Internet editorial for truthout.com. "Karen Hughes, violet-eyed warrior queen of the administration, has surrendered her spear for the familiar, if dusty, environs of her home state of Texas."

According to Pitt, Karen Hughes "was the Message Delivery component of [Bush's] cabinet." In the AP story about the stunning Beltway announcement, Ron Fournier, White House correspondent wrote:

"Under orders to attend every White House meeting in which major decisions are made, Hughes, [a virtually irreplaceable aide], reviews and often rewrites every statement Bush makes. She travels with him to make sure pictures of his road trips match the message. She manages more than 40 aides who staff the communications, press secretary, speechwriting and media affairs offices. She confronts reporters and harangues White House surrogates who step outside the administration's line. She maintains an iron grip on information, an enforcer against leaks."

Another Internet story revealed that it was Hughes who wrote George W. Bush's campaign autobiography for him a few years ago. "When Bush speaks in public, her lips move along with his."

So why'd she do it? It's true that there were cynics who looked for some underlying "spin" to her departure. But one top White House assistant said to conservative columnist Cal Thomas, "[It's] one of the most admirable decisions I have ever seen in my life." Thomas went on to editorialize:

"Her choice . . . speaks volumes about priorities. . . . I traveled with Mrs. Hughes and her son during the 2000 campaign. She never treated him as secondary to her ‘real work.' He IS her real work and the other, while important, is less so."

In that "Truthout.com" news story, Mr. Pitt conceded:

"If [her claim is] true, it represents one of the most profound professional sacrifices in modern memory."

Well, friend, whether you cheer for the comings and goings of our 43rd American president and his team, or can't wait until the 2004 election to roll around, this is still a fascinating story . . . and it gives us something to think about here in Ephesians chapter 5. We've been discussing the spiritual concept of "submission," where two people, both of them equals, has one of the two voluntarily agreeing to accept the leadership and the priorities of another person. We kicked off this week of study with a painfully difficult verse 22:

"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord." Then verse 24: "Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands IN EVERYTHING."

In a surface reading — which might frustrate a very large segment of our listening audience — a Bible student could understandably surmise that according to the Word of God, a woman might as well not even travel to our nation's capital. Just stay home on the ranch in Texas, sweeping floors, baking cookies, and helping your man pull off his boots at night. The Supreme Court should be nine men in black robes, the Senate a hundred men in blue suits, and the House of Representatives 435 people who all line up to use the men's room during breaks in the voting and lawmaking.

Well, obviously Mrs. Hughes herself didn't feel that way, because this born-again Christian WENT to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and put in 18 months in the very pinnacles of power. Almost everyone agrees now that within the next 20 years or so a woman will sit in the Oval Office, not as an aide or a secretary or a maid, but as the President of these United States. That day is coming — and I'd like to suggest to you that according to the Bible, it would be an entirely acceptable thing. AS LONG AS — let's notice this point — the biblical frameworks for family and church stay intact.

Well, what does THAT mean? Let me share with you a helpful bit of commentary from the Tyndale study materials for Ephesians. Francis Foulkes takes us through this very hard soundbite: Wives should submit to their husbands IN EVERYTHING. How does that play here in 2002 — besides disastrously? We mentioned yesterday how, just back in 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention got into political hot water adopting a resolution plank about "submission" that read virtually word-for-word from Ephesians 5. But take a listen to this Tyndale commentary piece:

"The final addition in every thing," he writes, "might seem more than can be accepted as God's purpose by this present generation with its stress on the emancipation of womanhood, and the place of woman outside the home in every sphere of life that man occupies." Bear in mind this was written back in 1956. "Has not a woman equal rights with a man to self-determination? May not a married woman make herself a career as well as her husband?" Can a woman be President? we might interject. "The answer that the New Testament would give is that she may do so, PROVIDED" — notice this now — "that it does not mean the sacrifice of the divine pattern for HOME life, for FAMILY relationships and for the whole Christian community." If she happens to be a believer. "She may fulfill any function and any responsibility in society, but if she has accepted before God the responsibility of marriage and of a family, these must be her first concern, and this is expressed here in terms of her relationship to her husband as head of the home. ‘As the Church wholeheartedly devotes herself to Christ, so the wife wholeheartedly accepts her place in the family and devotes herself without reserve to fulfill her function as wife and mother.'"

That's a borrowed quote Francis Foulkes got from J. A. Allan's equally good treatise, Commentary on Ephesians. Then he wraps up his essay:

"Subject to her husband in all things does not mean, however, that she is in the hands of one who has authority to command what he pleases. She is nothing short of the highest demand of self-giving love. Her subjection in the light of this, and in the light of the high ideal of unity that is to be expressed in verses 28-31, is such that ‘she can never find grievous or humiliating.'" That's from Allan too.

What does this mean, then? I think we can summarize — bearing in mind the million shades of gray in our world today — that both men and women can rise just as high as God empowers them to. As Bush's dad said eloquently in HIS inauguration speech back in 1988, "Use power to help people." Men can do that, and so can women and wives. But our trips to the stars, our journeys to the halls of power and influence have to be subjected to the blueprints set down in the Bible: for marriages, for homes, for churches, and for the global Body of Christ. Our duty to God and to His word trumps every other ambition we might have.

And really, friend, this is true not just for wives, but for all of us. In his book, Kingdoms in Conflict, Chuck Colson — who also sat in the Oval Office many, many times — writes about the fact that U.S. Presidents and other world leaders almost HAVE to lie sometimes . . . to protect lives and delicate operations. And we say, What?! During the Reagan years, the government had covert operations going on against Libya's Mohammar Khadaffi, a tyrannical strongman who was killing many innocent people. And Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz, quoted Winston Churchill as follows:

"In times of war, the truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

And Colson cites the Bible story of Rahab, the Old Testament heroine who saved the Hebrew spies by lying. However — and I say this quickly and clearly before our blood pressure begins to rise — Colson expressly sets forth the Bible principle we're discussing here today:

"If the situation forced the Christian [in public office] to lie AGAINST HIS OR HER CONSCIENCE, the Christian should resign."

In other words, the Bible and its rules trump everything. How high can you rise in Washington? As high as the Word and your conscience permit. How ambitious can a husband or wife be in politics or in business? As ambitious as the Bible and your conscience let you. In fact — and friend, PLEASE take note of this point — the Bible's hard-to-swallow Ephesians command right here, "Wives, submit to your husbands IN EVERYTHING," is itself subject to the rest of the Bible. A wife might be married to an unbelieving man who demands of her things that God's Word forbids. In that case, she does NOT submit. The Adventist Commentary, perhaps remembering the apostle Peter's bold statement, "We must obey God rather than man," wisely concludes:

"Submit in everything. That is, of course, in everything that is in harmony with the mind of God, for NO LOYALTY can stand between the individual soul and God."