The Huge Complementarian Arsenal of Weaponry

Some argue that the complementarian view does not promote domestic violence, that it is the individual who misuses the doctrine who is choosing domestic violence. They point out that egalitarians can be just as abusive as complementarians. On the surface, this is true. A man can claim to be egalitarian and still abuse his wife. However, because he is not using God and scripture to justify and enforce his authority, the abuse he uses is more likely to lack a wall of support that is as thick and imprisoning as the Great Wall of China. Without the “God says wife submit” argument, it is much easier for women to recognize the behavior as abuse, rather than as God-given authority to husbands and as a non-negotiable commandment to wives to submit to their husbands.

Having said that, I want to point out that wives who do not have Ephesians 5 rammed down their throats, still have a difficult time recognizing domestic abuse and dealing with it. In other words, domestic abuse is difficult enough for women to get a handle on, without adding teaching that demands the absolute subjection of wives to their husbands.

Christian doctrine, itself, makes recognizing abuse and dealing with it wisely very difficult to achieve. Even without the husband authority and wife submit no matter what doctrines, the love unconditionally and forgive and forget and turn the other cheek doctrines all work to prevent a Christian woman from confronting the domestic abuse early enough to both save her marriage and make it a loving one that symbolizes Christ and the Church. (The no-matter-what part is denied, of course. But who gets blamed for abuse? The wife, who they claim failed to submit. So even though they SAY the doctrine is NOT no-matter-what, in reality, it is exactly that.)

Those who teach marriage, for example, tell wives to be loyal to their husbands and not talk to others about their husband’s failures. This rule aids husbands in their quest to control their wives and does nothing to help a woman figure out how to deal with her marriage difficulties. Wives who stay silent, are more likely to try to perfect their own behavior, are less likely to recognize their husband’s behavior as abuse, and are more likely to stay in their abusive marriage longer, harming themselves and their children. This rule also harms husbands by allowing the abusive behavior and beliefs to become more and more entrenched in the minds of the husbands as well as in the minds of everyone in the family.

Christian wives whose husbands are abusive, constantly turn the other cheek and forgive and forget, but it does not make their marriages better. Instead, it makes them progressively worse. Abusive men see Christian behaviors as weaknesses, and tend to “go for the kill” or to “kick a person when she is down.” Thus, the Christian behavior of the abused wife tends to make her husband MORE abusive.

On top of that, Christians add the authority/submission doctrine. It is so pervasive, that some women who read my novel, “Behind the Hedge,” had a difficult time comprehending that the husband’s behavior in the beginning was abusive. The doctrine is so entrenched, that abuse is often seen as the husband’s right because he is the “authority.”

When a husband demands that his wife submit because God commanded it, no matter how idiotic and hurtful his demands, it is so difficult for wives to think through the mass of confusing messages, to be able to differentiate whether his demand is contrary to scripture, to know who to believe, that many wives have to literally throw out the submission doctrine in order to make sense of what is happening in their marriages. Even then, a church-house full of finger-pointing people makes it very difficult for a woman to deal wisely with the reality of her own broken marriage.

For those who do acknowledge the abuse and act redemptively to deal with it, they frequently face rejection from their whole church, while their abuser is accepted with open and welcoming arms. This drives many of them away from their churches and away from their primary support. This fact, makes wives think long and hard before taking steps to hold the abuser accountable.

So although egalitarian husbands can also abuse, they lack a huge arsenal of weaponry that complementarian husbands have at their disposal: their own beliefs, church doctrine, church pressure, church discipline of the wives, their twisting of scripture, the wife’s own belief that she is required to submit, along with her guilt if she fails to submit, or even the self-blame if she submits but her husband is still not happy.

It is my contention that the church would have much less domestic abuse and domestic violence among her people if she taught egalitarian, submit to one another and husbands love your wives as a living sacrifice, doctrine.


Waneta Dawn is the author of "Behind the Hedge, A novel,"a story about a woman who grapples with her husband's demands that she submit--no matter what. Please visit www.wanetadawn.com

Authors: Fireproof intended for ALL Marriages, Not Just Abusive Ones

Now that I dissected the Fireproof movie, I wanted to see what the authors intended, so I listened to their commentary. I came away from my first listen-through amazed that God used the Kendrick brothers to say so much that they never intended to say. LOL! Isn’t God great! What a sense of humor He must have!

Alex and Stephen Kendrick prayed about this movie, and wrote what they felt God was directing them to say. Yet what they thought they were saying and what they actually said are not necessarily one and the same. The Kendrick bothers wanted Caleb and Catherine Holt to represent any and all marriages. They wanted the relationship to be so bad in the beginning so that those in the worst marriages could identify, and so good at the end so that every couple between the two extremes could identify with Caleb and Catherine’s marriage. However, in doing this, they made the movie about couples who are dealing with abuse, something Alex and Stephen Kendrick never intended.

According to their comments, they tried to put their own viewpoint into the movie. Their criticism of Catherine, for example, stood out to me. One of the brothers commented that a wife who loves as she should would assume the best about her husband until it was proven otherwise.

I find his criticism unwarranted. After all, Catherine HAD been believing the best of her husband for six years, until it became clear that he was ruled by selfishness. We get a peek into their lives AFTER Catherine has finally admitted to herself that Caleb does NOT have her best interests at heart. Caleb had ALREADY shown her over and over again for a number of YEARS that she could not assume the best about him.

The brothers repeatedly kept referring to Catherine’s “bitterness.” On the one hand they kept talking as if her “bitterness” and mistrust were out of line, but on the other, when they commented how Caleb, like many husbands, thought he could make up for years of trampling on his wife with one dinner and a few kind gestures, they point out that it takes much more than that to rebuild trust. On the one hand, they seemed to say wives should forgive and then be so stupid as to hide their heads in the sand and pretend all is well even though it isn’t, and on the other they said husbands have to consistently continue with loving behaviors for a long period of time—possibly even two to three years—before they can expect their wives will trust them again. What the authors refer to as “bitterness,” is actually mistrust that is based on reality over time.

Several statements in their comments, when put together with the Evangelical view of marriage do not add up.

First, they point out that Caleb and Catherine were going in 2 different directions and did not have joint goals. The problem with this is that when evangelicals hear that, the blame would immediately be placed on Catherine, who was not getting behind her husband to support him and submit to him.

But wait! Do they really think the Holt family goal should have been saving for a boat, like Caleb wanted? According to Christian doctrine, Catherine should have hardened her heart about the hospital equipment her parents needed, and joined her husband in his selfish pursuit of a leisure-time boat. The Kendrick brothers don’t go so far as to say that. But that is the conclusion a Christian wife—especially an abused Christian wife—would draw from their statement, since they do not point out that Caleb's goal is taking him in the wrong direction. If they omitted specifying this because they thought scriptural principles make it obvious, they underestimated the effect of their statement on both abused wives and on their counselors, who tend to elevate the "wife submit" doctrine above most other scripture, except those acts that are CLEARLY sinful, (Piper's words) like killing, stealing, and adultery.

The end result for abused Christian wives who hear the Kendrick brothers saying a couple should be going in the same direction, would be a wife who drops her own desire to help others, so that she can "do the right thing" and support her husband in his goals. Her husband would end up free from confrontation about his selfishness. Because he would feel entitled to get whatever his heart desires, sermons on self-sacrifice would go over his head. In his mind, his income-producing job and his contribution of 2/3 of his income to support his family IS self-sacrifice and so much servitude that no more should ever be required of him.

It is usually the wives who listen to and do what pastors recommend in self-sacrifice to make their marriages work. If Catherine did as the Kendrick brothers recommend, Caleb would have had everything going his way so much that he never would have come to the place of having to choose between divorce or trying the love dare, nor would he have had any reason to accept Christ as Lord and Savior.

More on the Kendrick brothers commentary in the next post.


Waneta Dawn is the author of "Behind the Hedge, A novel,"a story about a woman who grapples with her husband's demands that she submit--no matter what. Please visit www.wanetadawn.com

Itching Ears, Part 16 (Husband as Ruler is a Gentile Edict)

II Timothy 4:3-4 NIV “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

Many Christians think their wife submit teaching is Christian doctrine that was set up by God, Himself. But there is biblical evidence that emphasis on the wife submit teaching, as many Christian churches teach it today, is a Gentile doctrine that is practiced by those who have itching ears. Look at King Ahasuerus and the seven princes of Persia and Media, who were neither Christian nor Jewish. These men thought it was acceptable for them to treat women as things to be used however they wished, including Ahasuerus’s plan to display his wife, Vashti, to a crowd of drunken men. Because the men were afraid all the women of the kingdom would stop obeying their husbands when they heard Vashti did not come at the king’s order, Vashti was banished from being queen, and a royal edict was sent out saying “that every man should bear rule in his own house.” This same edict is practiced in much of the church today. Again, note that it is a GENTILE edict, not a godly one. The result is often domestic violence, which these churches cannot combat without toppling their husband-rule doctrine, which they are loathe to do.

King Ahasuerus and his princes had itching ears according to Esther 1:21. “And the saying (of Memucan) pleased the king and the princes; and the king did according to the word of Memucan.” These men loved what they heard—that every man should bear rule in his own house, and wives who do not obey will be punished.

Many Christian husbands are following both the actions and the edict of King Ahasuerus, a Gentile king, who was definitely NOT a follower of Christ. They are heaping to themselves pastors who will teach that “head” means leader, authority, ruler, priest, or guide, instead of what the Bible says it means. And they are demanding that husbands rule their own wives and that wives submit to (meaning obey) their husbands, even claiming that it is the wife’s noncompliance, rather than the husband’s sin, that causes domestic violence.



Waneta Dawn is the author of "Behind the Hedge, A novel,"a story about a woman who grapples with her husband's demands that she submit--no matter what. Please visit www.wanetadawn.com

Book Signing Day, Part 2

After the signing, I shopped at a small Mom and Pop establishment, and thought I’d offer the proprietor my novel, "Behind the Hedge," as a gift because she had been so good to me over the years, and because I had heard from several sources that there was un-dealt-with domestic violence in her denomination, too. The store owner said she had read about my novel in the newspaper and was not interested. She wanted to live by the Bible. She wasn’t interested in the teaching of people, and the way she said it, I gathered that she meant something along the lines of “the teaching of rebellious women.” I replied that I, too, thought living by the Bible was important, and that I thought with her work putting her in contact with many people, she would be in a key position to know about domestic abuse, so that she could help those who needed help.

She repeated that all anyone had to do was read and obey the Bible, and Jesus said divorce is not acceptable. I pointed out that the problem is that people seem to think the Bible focus is on ‘wives submit’ and they usually do not put nearly as much emphasis on ‘husbands love self-sacrificially’ (my paraphrase for loving as Christ loved the church). She said she hears both sides in sermons at their church.

I agreed that we hear both sides, but that the ‘woman submit’ side is emphasized, and that most of the time marital problems are blamed on the woman. She did not think this was so and replied that God had commanded Eve that her husband was to rule over her. I said, that was not a command, it was a prophecy because of sin; we would not want to promote sin.

She still thought if the woman submits, her husband would not abuse her, and that if a woman submits out of love her behavior would bring her husband to Christ. I told her that abused women are more submissive than most women, and that it is very rare for abusive men to come to Christ because of the submission of their wives. Usually the abusive man becomes even more abusive in response to his wife’s submission. Even with non-physical abuse, the woman is on super alert trying to make sure all is as her husband wants, so that he has no reason to get angry, (I acted out a woman looking this way and that, trying so desperately to make sure all danger was alleviated) and then he pounces from a completely different direction. She ends up getting panic attacks because of his threatening, fear-generating behavior and her constant effort to be so perfect.

I pointed out that the church gets the cart before the horse and tells women that their submission will bring forth love from their husbands, but that the Bible says the husband’s loving self-sacrifice comes first. We don’t love Christ first, and then He dies to sacrifice for us. It’s the other way around, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.”

She simply did not want to be persuaded and kept bringing up reason after reason as to why a man’s abusive behavior was his wife’s fault. She said if a woman makes sure a man loves the Lord and has her parents blessing in her choice before she marries him, he would not abuse her. I answered that abuse does happen, because the man goes out of his way to deceive her and her family into thinking he is a nice man and a wonderful Christian before they marry.

I went on to say that even if a woman made a mistake and her life was a mess because she married a non-Christian and didn’t have her parent’s blessing, that did not mean she had to stay in a marriage where she would either end up dead or insane, and where the children were in danger, too.

At some point in the conversation I pointed out that contrary to her statement that wives were not always the ones blamed, her arguments were always blaming the wife. I tried to end the conversation as peacefully as I could, saying how difficult it is for me to trust men because of this tendency to deceive, and asking if she had a loving considerate husband. She did, and I commented that she is so blessed. I don’t know why I added that it bothered me that even husbands that appear to be nice often make decisions that are at their wife’s expense.

On the way home I felt like I was in shock. How could an offer to give a gift end up with such a blame-the-abused-wife conversation? As I recalled the details, I wished I had remembered to tell her that the man my parents and siblings wanted me to date became a Christian when he was in jail. They told me he had such a wonderful testimony. I wanted nothing to do with him, since I had dated a man like that once and did not want to deal with that again. The man I dated ended up beating his wife, and the man my family wanted me to date ended up becoming an alcoholic and abusing his wife. Last I heard, the first couple is divorced and the second is separated. So contrary to the woman’s belief, marrying a man who loved the Lord and who had my parents blessing, had no guarantee of marital bliss, nor of the absence of abuse.

But this conversation, plus the ones referred to in part one, gave me a very good glimpse into the huge amount of work that is yet to be done. Indeed, blaming the wife for her husband’s abusive behavior—even if one has to blame her for marrying him—is alive and well. Even churches who claim to oppose domestic violence, often secretly blame the victims of abuse and isolate them by refusing to be close and supportive friends, and by avoiding the topic of domestic violence as much as possible.


Waneta Dawn is the author of "Behind the Hedge, A novel" Please visit www.wanetadawn.com