The Influence of Teachings on Your Soul
Love ceases to be love when free will is taken out of the equation.
Think for a moment about the home you live in. Or the church you are a part of. And how your soul reacts to what you’ve been taught about God, and what it means to honor Him. And what it means to “honor” your spouse. How do you define submission and where does it fit in the story?
Oppression and Fear Versus True Submission
Generally in our client population, those questions, especially the last, land at “oppression and fear.” However, love is never about oppression and fear!! While our English language uses “fear” in Scripture to also mean “reverence and awe” to talk about God, that is not the fear I’m talking about here. I mean the fear that silences God’s voice in us, not the reverence and awe that might make His voice loud in and through us.
Submission vs. Servitude
Submission that is demanded ceases to be submission and has instead become servitude. Love that is demanded ceases to be love. At that point, it simply becomes obedience. Obligation. No longer a free choice of the free will. The demand destroys the essence of what it was meant to be. And the soul shrivels up. It’s the same idea as being submitted to God. God doesn’t demand it, but let’s it be a matter of choice. The choice is what makes it meaningful.
Submission Requires Freedom, Not Obedience
Submission does not equal obedience, and obedience does not equal submission. There is a fine line of free will that makes the difference. Is the weight of responsibility put on the act of submission, or is it put on the invitation (or demand) that must be responded to? The healthiest scenario would be equal weight that looks like mutual submission. The one making the request leaves the one responding with the same room that God leaves us when he invites us to be in a relationship with him. Room to choose out of our own free will.
The Misalignment of Love, Cherishing, and Demanded Submission
If a man claims to be the authority of the home and expects submission to be a normal part of that home, submission starts with him. The Biblical context is always mutual submission. If his platform is pointing a finger at his wife to be the “submitter,” he is totally missing the point. Her submission isn’t what God holds him accountable for. His behavior is. When his behavior usurps God’s authority (including the authority to define and control the life of another person), God will take issue with that. What a sobering thought!
How do the concepts of love and cherishing fit in with submission that is demanded? In other words, he decides what is best for her and who should she be and expects (often acting entitled to do so) her to go along with it even if it conflicts with her own soul. The message is he has more authority than herself to know what she needs and who to be, and that honoring him means giving up what she knows about herself. Along the way, she ends up less and less known, not more loved or cherished.
If a man believes it is his “authority” to determine his wife’s place in the world, he has misappropriated it. God fashioned her with purpose and personhood, and he did not give men the job to define it or power-over it for his own purposes. He also is not given the responsibility to define God’s voice in her life. She will account to God on her own. Conversely, he was charged with cultivating the landscape of their life in such a way that she could flourish as God designed, called, and purposed her to be.
Preserving the Holy Spirit’s Work in You
Dying to self should not include killing, disabling, or silencing the Holy Spirit in you, or the ways He has called, purposed, and designed you to leave His mark on the world. You cannot be a Light to the world when the bulb is smashed, or reflect God to the world when the mirror is shattered. You cannot speak Hope to the world when your voice is silenced or misused. That is NOT what God intended in relationships.
Next Steps
Learning to tell the difference between godly submission and demanded obedience is core to what we walk through in Identity Recovery Groups — because you can’t rebuild a healthy relationship with God, or anyone else, from a place where your own voice has been silenced.
