Bay Hubag,
Since the Bible is the Word of God, then it is as unchanging and as changeless as its writer, and should transcend social milieus and cultures of history.
The command in Ephesians 5: 22 "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord" is not an edict of the woman's unqualified subservience to man. I don't believe it is a command to justify man's domination over the woman.
The preceding verses will show this. In fact, verse 21 says, " Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." The earlier verses also exhort men and women in Ephesus to "understand what the Lord's will is."
I understand "submit to one another" as a command to consider each other's views and opinions, in the light of God's wisdom.
Trouble invariably brews when a wife makes independent decisions without consulting her husband--and from my exchanges with other married couples, this is a common source of marital heartaches.
A man can just be as prone to mistakes in decision-making concerning the family and finances. That is why husband and wife must first submit themselves to God, and to each other in consideration of their respective concerns and feelings, out of reverence for God. And the woman should then give the man the prerogative of declaring and taking responsibility for the decision they both made.
If that decision did not turn out favorably, both can accept the consequences with grace and just seek what God is teaching them through this event. It is hard for any one party to accept the unhappy consequences of a decision for which the other has not been consulted. But trials resulting from a decision jointly made in good faith--for which the husband took the ultimate responsibility before God--can strengthen their solidarity as husband and wife, and draw them even closer to God.
The ideal husband-wife relationship as enunciated in the Bible may have to be rephrased in this world as we know it now where women are increasingly taking on greater responsibilities in income-generation, among other areas traditionally dominated by men. This Biblical paradigm, enunciated by St. Paul in the context of the prevailing patriarchy of his social milieu, may not be totally acceptable today. Despite earnest glosses offered by Biblical apologists (of which a familiar one is the comparison between husband and wife on one hand, and Christ and the church on the other), there is a festering doubt in the minds of many about the wisdom of this injunction. The love part may stand as it is, but the submission part is, I gather, a thorny one for a lot of women.
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