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THE PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY

There was an old Candid Camera stunt many years ago, engineered by the late Allen Funt. A woman is going down the street in a rainstorm, enjoying the protection of her umbrella, when a man — a plant on the Candid Camera payroll — walks up. “Care if I join you?” he asks. Actually, he doesn’t really ask; he just kind of moves in. And this is a big, beefy guy, maybe 270 pounds, and just like that, he’s using up approximately three fourths of the umbrella’s rain-free airspace. The poor woman doesn’t even get a chance to cough out a yes or a no; they just proceed down the street, with about half of her getting wet.

A minute later, a second man — equally hefty, and also part of the Allen Funt inner circle — staggers up and said TO THE MAN, “Hey, fella, mind if I share your umbrella?” “Sure!” he said. “No problem! Plenty of room!” Now these two sumo wrestlers are hogging the entire thing, and poor Mrs. Wimp is dragging along behind, drenched to the bone.

But now, the skit isn’t quite over yet. They come to a street corner, and the sopping-wet lady manages to squeak to the men: “Uh, I have to turn left here. My house is over there.” Immediately one man says, rather firmly: “Well, I’m heading right.” “So am I!” his partner in crime chimes in. “I guess the majority rules.” And just like that, these two incredible hulks charge off to the right with her umbrella, leaving our feminine little friend standing on the street corner wondering to herself: “What just happened? Am I on Candid Camera or something?” Hopefully, ten seconds later, Mr. Funt came by with a towel, a limo, a new umbrella, and ten thousand dollars in consolation money. But it was a great skit.

I bring it up today for what I hope is a fairly obvious reason. There are situations in life where a democracy just doesn’t work. (Besides in Florida, some of you are sure to say.) It’s true that the two men managed a sixty-six-and-two-thirds quorum; they could have outvoted that soggy little lady and taken her umbrella to Sea World if they’d put it up to a vote.

And there’s another place where the Word of God wisely recognizes that a voting democracy isn’t always going to function perfectly — and that’s in a marriage. If everything happens by majority rule and there’s exactly one Republican and one Democrat, or one husband and one wife, eventually there’s going to be either a stalemate or a fistfight or a tiebreaker. And how does that work?

Here in Ephesians chapter 5, we’ve come to a difficult passage. But rather than just slide past it and going on to six, we’re trying to find out how and why the Lord wants us to live in certain ways. But first, here’s the thorny verse for Tuesday:

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

We tried to express yesterday the ideal that this word “submit” is a good and noble one — and friend, I understand how it must sound when a male preacher on the radio says that. I understand that. But as we read the rest of this passage, that’s actually what we do find. There are two equal people in a marriage — before the Lord they are absolutely equal in worth, in stature, in ability, in dignity, and all the rest — and yet here is this divine command that one should submit to the other. What do we make of this?

C. S. Lewis had a helpful paragraph on this topic, and again, in all fairness, it should be noted that he was a bachelor theologian for most of his days. But consider the ideas he offers:

“The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent,” he writes. “Of course, as long as the husband and wife are agreed, no question of a head need arise; and we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage. But when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming they have done that and still failed to reach agreement. What do they do next?” And here’s the point we were just making. “They cannot decide by majority vote, for in a council of two there can be no majority. Surely, only one or other of two things can happen: either they must separate and go their own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote. If marriage is permanent, one or other party, must, in the last resort, have the power of deciding the family policy. You cannot have a permanent association without a constitution.”

We’ve already discovered, here in Ephesians and elsewhere, that all the dealings of God’s people need to be orderly and peaceful and Christ-like. Will a husband and wife sometimes disagree? Certainly. That’s not wrong at all. But what is unsettling and bad for the marriage is if disagreements grind themselves into long-term, simmering anger. If she votes for the Bahamas, and he votes for Golf ‘N’ Stuff, a couple may end up going nowhere for their summer vacation. Churches that have discussions and debates in the board meetings need a mechanism whereby quick resolutions and harmony are speedily restored. A Christian ministry like the Voice of Prophecy has to have a constitutional plan so that controversial items are expeditiously brought to the table, voted . . . and then we all accept the verdict, even when it goes against us.

Still, how hard it is to hear these words: Wives, submit to your husbands. It’s even tougher down in verse 24 where Paul writes:

“Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands IN EVERYTHING.”

Let me share with you a couple of very helpful points from the Tyndale New Testament Commentary, and friend, I hope you’ve come to appreciate this resource as much as we have. It’s absolutely stellar. Notice what Dr. Francis Foulkes writes here:

“The New Testament throughout emphasizes the dignity of womanhood,” he writes, “and it is an indisputable fact that the example and teaching of Christ have lifted woman in one country and society after another to a position that she did not occupy before.”

Did we ever learn that lesson after the Afghanistan war and some of the painful stories we heard about Taliban rule? Women were locked in chains, almost, with their head-to-toe burqas; they were prohibited from getting an education, from working, from learning, from growing into their full potential, even from going outdoors. Have Christians sometimes made similar mistakes? Yes, no doubt about it. But the goal of Christianity is, and always needs to be, the empowering of all people to be everything that God wants them to be. Let’s continue with that brief Tyndale essay:

“Whereas in many great religions, not least in Judaism and Islam, woman has a far lower place than man, the New Testament emphasizes that man and woman have a perfect spiritual equality. Moreover, as we see most notably in I Corinthians 7:3-5, Paul also ‘pleads for a true mutuality in the physical sex relation.’”

Let’s pause and make note of this important point. In today’s snickering sitcom, Playboy-Penthouse world, women are seen as men’s bedroom playthings; they exist for their partner’s pleasure. Attractive women are described as “arm candy” for men like Donald Trump. It’s in the Bible, friend, where we’re taught in plain, explicit terms that the bedroom is a place of absolute equality. Women have full, equal rights with their husbands. “Men, your body isn’t just yours,” Paul writes. “It belongs to your wife too.” A man has a duty to please and honor and physically and emotionally satisfy his wife, both in the bedroom, and in his behavior leading up the staircase to the bedroom. Friend, that’s the Christian faith talking! Here’s the conclusion of Dr. Foulkes’ paragraph:

“Nevertheless in the family, for its order and its unity, there must be leadership, and the responsibility of leadership is that of the husband and father, and his authority must be accepted.”

One of the great threads running through our Discover Bible Course is the lordship of Jesus Christ. Any man or woman begins this adventure called Christianity by bowing at the feet of Jesus and saying, “Lord, I submit my will to Yours. You lead, I’ll follow.” Jesus submitted to His Father; the Church submits to Him; and individual members within the Body of Christ do the same. And here in Christian marriages, on a much smaller and humbler scale, we find this same orderly process, this spiritual discipline where one person, one of two equals, both with the dignity of Edenic creation in their eyes and hearts, says to the other one: “You lead. I’ll support and follow.” I like how the Adventist commentary, in tackling these difficult verses at the end of Ephesians 5, observes:

“The wife should see in her relation to her husband a reflection, or illustration, of her relation to Christ.”

And if it still feels like a raw deal for half of you listening today, let’s skip down to verse 25.

“Husbands, love your wives.” And how much should he love you? This much: “Just as Christ loved the church AND GAVE HIMSELF UP FOR HER.”

Friend, you can’t find a better love proposal than that.