“…The head of every man is Christ!”

OK, this one should determine how successfully the feminist movement has penetrated and distorted our thinking.  Although on the wane here in the US, its influence seems to hang around like a bad smell in a … well, you pick the place.  Having said that, I’m not bashing feminists themselves.  Many have very valid concerns.  It is their foundation and ultimate conclusions that I have a hard time with.  Many have been severely hurt growing up.  Many in the church have, too, which is worse, much worse.  Accepting wrong ideas and/or promoting faulty arguments only weaken their situation, not help it.  Perversion is taking something good of God’s good creation and twisting it into something bad or harmful.  To best understand this process, we must first understand what God’s good creation was in the first place.

Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians primarily to deal with a “worldly” church (3:3) that had issues, many issues.  In chapter 5 he starts dealing with them one at a time.  By the time he gets to chapter 11 — no bankruptcy pun intended! — he addresses many areas of public worship.  The goal is found in 14:40: “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.”  Without a proper framework at the beginning, orderliness will not be achieved.  So Paul frames out the picture of orderly worship by focusing on three key relationships: God (the Father) and Christ, Christ and man, and man and woman.  The similarity of them is found in the word head: God is the head of Christ, Christ the head of man, and man the head of woman.  This last description makes some feminists go ballistic.  I’m convinced that for many this is due to ignorance of Paul’s meaning here.  For others it is due to hardness of heart.

When Paul uses head here, he means “responsible for.”  Consider the heads: God, Christ and man.  The Father is responsible for Christ, Christ responsible for man, and man responsible for woman (in marriage/family).  What about those who are not heads in this equation?  Their job is to be “responsible to.”  In order, they would be Christ, man and woman.  Christ is responsible to the Father, man is responsible to Christ, and woman responsible to man (her husband).  Remember, Paul is simply talking about order, not access to God, salvation, equality, or anything else.

In this rendering, the Father is responsible to no one.  Man is parallel to both the Father and Son because of responsibility for: God for Christ, Christ for man, and man for woman.  He is parallel to Christ because of responsibility to: Christ to God and man to Christ.  In this order, woman has the simpler job of being only responsible to.  This has nothing to do with being made in God’s image.  Man and woman both are.  It has nothing to do with equality.  In fact, in the immediate context Paul discounts that notion entirely (vs. 11-12) because both are “in the Lord.”  In the Lord there is 100% equality, just as there is between the Father and Son.  But in practice Christ does the will of the Father (John 8:29) — responsibility to.  Equal in every respect, but differing in responsibilities to and for.  Ditto for man and woman.

Where many feminists go wrong is misunderstanding the model that Christ provides for men and women.  Let’s ask some questions of Christ as head of man.  Is he the boss?  Yes.  Does he give commands?  Of course.  But does he boss people around?  No.  Is he abusive?  No again.  Does he retaliate? Not at all.  And what did he do when man messed up this beautiful world he created?  He came and died to redeem it!  Through that noblest of all sacrifices he offers love, peace, forgiveness, comfort, grace, power, mercy, honor, encouragement, restoration and innumerable manifold blessings.  Now, what person would not want to have a head like that?!  No one in his/her right mind would refuse that head.  But with many people, not just feminists, it is rebellion against any head that drives them.  Autonomy is their goal, and that push for autonomy will land them straight in hell, the only reward for those who want to live their lives without God.  He will rightfully turn their desire into their just dessert.  Their unholy drive causes them to reject the goodness of Christ’s headship and attempt to topple his orderly structure.  And they justify their actions based on the faulty notion that men shouldn’t lead at home.  Sure, abusive men are a definite and legitimate concern.  But overturning the structure won’t help; correcting the players will.

Dysfunctional homes led by Christian men show their ignorance of and distance from their head. Husbands and dads, can you say with Paul, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (11:1)?