How are godly women to win their disobedient husband? By being in subjection to them without a word while they (their husbands) behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear (1 Peter 3:2). This “coupled with fear” stood out to me recently so I went to the commentaries to figure out what this meant.
Pulpit Commentary: “The close connection with the word ‘chaste, and the parallel passage, Ephesians 5:33 (‘the wife see that she reverence her husband’), make it probable that the fear here inculcated is reverence for the husband – an anxious avoidance of anything that might even seem to interfere with his conjugal rights and authority.”
Most husbands can only dream of having a wife who feared them in this way! Unfortunately, the majority of wives today have no desire to fulfill their husband’s “conjugal rights” or allow him to be the “authority” in their homes. What are conjugal or marriage rights? Conjugal rights would include not depriving their husbands of sexual intimacy since this is a strong need that the majority of men have and their wives are commanded to fulfill it according to the Word. It also includes treating their husbands with respect and reverence. Wives are to be their husband’s help meet and take good care of their children and home as well. Godly wives will want to do these things for their husbands and do their best to obey their husbands in everything!
Included in this list of conjugal rights of a husband as a godly wife, would be to build her home up instead of tearing it down with her own hands. Part of building her home up would be pursuing peace within her home. Most husbands don’t want to fight with their wives. They also want well-disciplined children who are pleasurable to be around.
“Coupled with fear; with reverence of their husbands, giving them due honour, and showing all proper respect; or with the fear of God, which being before their eyes, and upon their hearts, engages them to such an agreeable conversation.” (Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible)
Ultimately women, we will one day answer to God for how we treat our husbands for when we reverence and fear our husbands, we are showing reverence and fear towards God. Knowing this, we won’t argue with our husbands because when we are arguing, we are showing disrespect and are usurping our husband’s God-given authority over us. We need to be agreeing with them a lot more than we are disagreeing. If we disagree, we state our opinion once and then let it go. Hammering them over the head with our opinions all of the time is not showing them the respect they deserve.
“Fear—reverential, towards your husbands. Scrupulously pure, as opposed to the noisy, ambitious character of worldly women.” (Jamieson-Fausset)
Women of the world today are incredibly noisy. They want to be known, their voices heard, and their wants fulfilled. They march for godless principles, watch ungodly shows, and speak filth. This is opposite of what the Lord wants from us. We are to be known for having meek and quiet spirits. We rest in the Lord’s will and are at peace, not fighting for what we want but living out godly values instead. We trust the Lord to handle things so our faith becomes strong and we pray continually.
— Lori Alexander, The Transformed Wife, Wives Are Commanded to Fear Their Husbands, April 25, 2017
How utterly despicable, if you want to be a godly women you must set yourself up to used and abused and do it with a smile. This kind of bs is what I expect out of saudi arabia but not 21st century America.
Yes, Lori, let’s go the whole hog, like in Saudi, let’s stone women for minor infringements of the gender-separation rule whilst their male relatives can do prostitutes, drink and drugs without reprisal. Let’s have a chinese culture which bound women’s feet with awful pain, which exposed baby girls as society – and husbands – wanted only sons. Ah, those were the days, the golden age where wimmen knew their place, popped out a baby a year and knew they were property, not human beings with equal rights.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Lori. I tried the whole “the husband is the head of the household” thing and the result was horrific. The more agreeable I tried to be, the worse I was treated. I quit university to be a stay-at-home mom and didn’t work for almost 20 years because that was what he wanted. My ex-husband could fly into an absolute rage because I asked him if he wanted A or B for dinner. The meeker I behaved, the more abusive he became because all he saw was contemptible weakness. By the end, I was responsible for absolutely everything except earning a paycheck. This included managing all our finances, maintenance on 2 vehicles and all the yard work for almost 13 acres, on top of caring for 2 boys and a 10-room home, which I admittedly struggled to do. And he never let me forget that it was HIS money, not ours, and certainly not one thin dime was mine.
Now, our son is infected with the same shit (he’s 27 and lives with me). Often when we argue he will say that I don’t deserve the miserly piece of a pension I receive by federal law because I “did nothing to earn it”. And he has the gall to say that even though he had been unemployed for the last 6 years and living with me on that same money. He’s even hinted that because he chose to live with his dad when I finally left, he deserves that pension money more than me because his dad physically abused him after that whereas with me the violence was only threatened, albeit on at least a weekly basis. It’s almost impossible to not feel like I’m right back in that abusive marriage during those arguments. At times I’ve wanted to kick him out, but what kind of mother would make their own child homeless? His father is dead now and there really is no place else for him to go. And after the heat of the argument passes, my son is thoroughly ashamed of his behavior and apologizes profusely. He does know that his behavior is wrong and it has gotten a lot better in the past couple of years. But that is how the cycle of abuse continues; the son learns from his father to disrespect women, even their own mother.
This is result of Lori’s twisted bullshit– a son who struggles with anger issues daily and is ashamed of how he treats the mother he dearly loves, and a women who struggles against panic attacks when her own son gets pissed off about something. Female submission creates hell right here and now for women and men both.
Anotherami–One of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that, as you say, the more agreeable you try to be to a domineering, abusive man (or woman), the worse you are treated.
I think that’s called “enabling”, whether or not it’s intended as such. It might, to some, also qualify as “Stockholm Syndrome.”
The older I get, the more I feel that “Christianity” (and, for that matter, most religions) and “mental health” are mutually exclusive.
Damn, this is some industrial-strength projection.
Lori, if you are reading this (doubtful), you are a victim of spousal abuse. Period. Full stop. No woman should EVER be afraid of her husband (nor should any husband be afraid of his wife for that matter!) and if he is giving you reasons to be afraid of him, then you need to leave. Now. I am sure you have domestic violence shelters in your community. Find one. Call them. They will tell you how to make a plan to get yourself safely out of this situation. No one deserves to live in fear, and a man who uses fear to control his spouse and children is no man at all. Even if the abuse is only emotional or mental now, it will become physical, eventually. It always does. Leave him. He is not worth it.
Oh and while you’re at it, you need to leave behind that god you worship as well. Any god that commands women to fear men and be silent and submissive in the face of abuse is a fake paper god at best; and an evil, bloodthirsty, psychotic demon that is trying to kill you at worst. You’re better of without it.
Signed,
One Who Has Been There And Done That
So to “win” a disobedient husband, shut up, do what he says, and “fear” him. Okeedokee, great advice there. Why just the other day Bob from accounting was like, “my wife turned into a doormat. I sit around every night and bark orders while she brings me beer, and screws me every time I ask. My kids finally shut up, and do the chores. This christianity stuff is awesome, after all I deserve to be the king of my house, I did the hard work of being born with a dick”
“They (women) want to be known, their voices heard, and their wants fulfilled…This is the opposite of what the Lord wants from us”
Oh the horror! Such evil wanton jezabel whores who want to be known! From there it just devolves into arrogantly wanting to have their voice heard. We live in a wicked wicked world where just any women can spout such blasphemy as I want my desires fulfilled. After all our virtuous founding fathers wrote that all MEN have the inalienable right to pursue happiness, women are shucks of luck gosh darn it. It’s a slippery slope, look at the evil in the world be because of it. Women advocating against rape and abuse,if they would just shut up it would cease to exist, like back in the fifties when that didn’t happen and women were happy. Women are just beating themselves left and right, so they can slander their husbands, and defame Christianity. It’s a satanic conspiracy spawned by Pokemon demons
Lori Alexander assumes that Christians are to follow the patriarchal family structure, given in the bible. If the social structures of the ancient world are God given, then why doesn’t Lori Alexander support the reinstitution of slavery?
She hopelessly fails to recognise that social structures (patterned relationships between groups of people) change over time, and that the power imbalances of former days need to be overcome.
Generally speaking, egalitarian marriages seem to be much better than patriarchal ones. When couples love each other, they treat each other with dignity and respect. In the modern context, they treat each other as equals.
Lori’s view of God is patriarchal. Her God is a domineering, all powerful bully to whom we are to show reverential awe, otherwise we will be cast into a Lake of Fire when we die. Hence she accepts the husband’s role is a okay, even if he is a bully too.
She thinks that the wife is to be submissive, even to an abusive husband, because she has a top down view of authority. At the top is an authoritarian god, then below him is the husband, then the wife is below her husband. This is a disastrous recipe for marital abuse.
Lori needs to abandon her Fundamentalism. If she could do that, she has a chance to free herself from the disastrous effects that Conservative Evangelicalism is having on her.