Marital Authority in the Home
In Search of Holy, Happy Despots (But Not Despotism)
If you ask some men to do something, they will reply, “Let me check with the boss.” To which some people chuckle, and others cringe. But in order to understand role relationships in marriage rightly, we need to do more than either follow feminism or poke it in the eye. We need to let the Bible define our roles.
1 Corinthians clearly says that the man is the head of the woman. He is the boss. But he is not a boss-man. While husbands are vested with authority over the home, Paul says, so are wives:
I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. 1 Tim. 5:14
The word there for “manage their households,” like many other words about authority in our day, is softened from the original. It combines two words: “house” and where we get our English word “despot.”1
So then, God gives authority over the home to the man. But the best way to ruin your business or household is to micromanage. So God expects the man to delegate authority of the home to his wife. The husband is the commanding officer; she is the XO.
Thus she has REAL authority. When mom says, no more science experiments with clothing; bring your laundry to the washroom, it shall be so. When mom says, put your shoes here and not here, it shall be so. When mom says, the dishes get rinsed and put in the dishwasher, and not left out, by God, it shall be so.
On the one hand, men are not servant leaders, but serve by leading. Yet one way a husband leads effectively is by setting the right example for the kids in following mom’s delegated authority. If the kids are not listening to mom, the core of the problem may not lie with them but go higher. They may have learned their disregard of mom from the head.
So how do we two square these two authorities, between the man and the woman? You know the answer if you’ve ever learned to waltz. It’s like a dance. The man leads, through many complicated steps, but along the way the woman is featured often, and there’s a lot of learning how not to step on each other’s toes. Laughter, patience and forgiveness are required.
Taken from Douglas Wilson, “How to Exasperate Your Wife”