When it comes to Christian marriage beliefs, the terms “complementarian” and “egalitarian” are problematic. They’re unclear, and they’ve become politicized.

Let’s be clear—let’s use “Jesus-centric marriage” or “husband-centric marriage.”
In a husband-centric marriage, a wife submits to her husband & follows him. She lets him make the final decisions, even if she disagrees with him or feels that God is telling her something else. She seeks 1st to please her husband, & she allows him to set the tone for the house.
She believes God calls wives to follow a husband’s will, & doing so means doing God’s will.

She believes that loving her husband is how she serves God. As she loves her husband and serves her husband, she shows her obedience to God, since her focus should be her husband.
However, that subordinates God’s will to a husband’s will. If a wife doing a husband’s will automatically=God’s will, then God is surrendering His will to the husband, which He would never do.

We are to pray "Thy will be done", not "husband's will be done."
In a Jesus-centric marriage, though, a wife pursues Jesus first, & loves & serves her husband through that lens. She believes she must listen to the Holy Spirit’s voice, and believes that she and her husband must obey God, not anyone else.
She endeavours to act as Jesus does, believing that loving her husband well means loving mercy, acting justly, and walking humbly before God, not just doing what her husband wants. She pursues her husband’s BEST, not necessarily her husband’s WANTS.
She is GOOD, not necessarily NICE, aiming to please God in all. She believes that her first calling is to listen to God and follow Him, and does not see her husband as her mediator between herself and God.

She knows that as she loves Jesus, she will also love her husband well.
We would do much better, and speak much more clearly, if we dropped the “academic” sounding labels and got to the point.

Should the wife follow the husband first and foremost, or Jesus?

Husband's will or God's will? Husband-centric or Jesus-centric?

The answer matters.

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More from @sheilagregoire

Jul 10
What would happen if we all just stopped?

That question at the end of @bethallisonbarr 's book The Making of Biblical Womanhood is sticking with me today, because I am so absolutely and thoroughly DISGUSTED with the latest Matt Chandler news.
Here's a man who leads a megachurch and a church networking/planting organization, who thinks he can tell us how to live--and his church hired his father, who is a self-confessed child sexual abuser, and didn't tell the congregation.
How much more of this are women supposed to take? How much more evidence of the fact that men high up in the evangelical world JUST. DO. NOT. CARE?
Read 8 tweets
Jul 8
Christian book publishing rant:

I just saw that a big male sporting celebrity's wife, who has a large social media following, has a book coming out.

Can we talk about this? 🧵
A large platform that is based on celebrity can get someone a book contract, even if they have very little life experience; no relevant education; and no independent research and no innovative philanthropic initiatives.
Now, I'm not saying that every celebrity's self-help/inspirational book is bad. But does the world need more?

The world has an abundance of books saying, "you are enough, you are great, God loves you, be thankful."
Read 10 tweets
Jun 26
The megachurch pastors who have been caught and lost their positions--were they really EVER "strong men of God"?

I'm seeing people on social media saying that the devil targets strong men of God. I don't think that's what's going on.
It seems clear that these pastors have had issues for a long, long time. Robert Morris criminally sexually assaulted a child thirty-five years ago. He was NEVER a strong man of God.

He was an extremely charismatic, eloquent speaker.
It's not that the devil targets saintly men in positions of power and corrupts them. It's that many corrupt men end up in Christian positions of power, because our institutions revolve around personality and charisma, not character.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 14
Before approaching a woman about what she's wear, ask yourself:

If men are being made uncomfortable, why is it necessary to transfer that discomfort and shame onto a woman? Why not ask the men to deal with their discomfort?
Several women messaging me have explained, “she’s really well-endowed, and that’s distracting to the men around her.” But a woman cannot do anything about being well-endowed. The issue can never, ever be about how her body is affecting the men around her; that’s on them.
If you feel like you should talk to a woman about her clothing, ask yourself, “am I feeling jealous about her body type? Am I feeling insecure about my own appearance? Am I feeling insecure about what my husband or son may do?”

In those cases, those are YOU issues not HER issues
Read 5 tweets
May 10
Why do people cheat? New research says it has nothing to do with frequency of sex!

a 🧵
This new research about cheating was recently published online, and it is fascinating.

(and has been incorporated into our upcoming book on marriage!)

Here’s what it says:
"Neither the quality nor the frequency at which couples have sex serve as a deterrent for infidelity. ..It is evident that the decision to be unfaithful is solely an individualistic quality in which zero culpability should be directed toward one’s partner"
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Read 13 tweets
May 3
Why do evangelical male authors/pastors so often teach that women need to have more sex to prevent affairs--even when new research shows that's not remotely true?

I have a theory--and it's a controversial one.

A 🧵
Authors and pastors teach this because fundamentally they likely aren’t emotionally healthy themselves, or they live in communities where emotional health is relatively rare, and so they don’t understand it.
They carry a lot of shame, so intimacy, vulnerability, and authenticity–the key ingredients for emotional connection–are too difficult. Thus, sex allows them to feel connected without having to do the work of connection.
Read 8 tweets

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