Submission: Isn't the Belief That Wives Should Obey Their Husbands Kind of Muslimy?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron, as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim. On this episode of Bible Bash, we will be answering the question, isn't the belief that wives should obey their husbands kind of Muslim -y?

Now, as I've taught 1 Peter 3 over the years, and tried to emphasize the details that are actually in the passage,

God, through Peter, is commanding wives to be subject to their own husbands, and this language of being subject is a little bit stronger than we think of when we typically think of the language of submission.

And the example given of what it looks like for a wife to be subject to her husband is the example of Sarah obeying

Abraham and calling him Lord. When I've tried to emphasize the fact that God is commanding wives to be like Sarah and to obey their husbands, many people have this instinctual kind of recoiling at this thought, and they conclude that the idea of a wife obeying her husband, as Sarah obeyed

Abraham, calling him Lord, a wife doing that feels kind of like something a

Muslim would say. So when you think about what the Bible is saying at that point, a wife obeying her husband, that feels more compatible with what you might find in Islam than it does in Christianity.

That's the reaction that many people have. And so instead of actually dealing or interacting with what the text is actually saying at that point, they essentially say, hey, that sounds

Muslim, and then ignore. Now, one of the things that we want to do is try to give some sort of response to this kind of objection.

But then one of the things to realize is that it's really, really hard to take this kind of objection seriously considering, well, 2020.

Now, I do have a confession to make. I am one of these backwards and embarrassing kind of individuals who functionally is on the wrong side of history.

And one of the things that I've always recoiled at is I've always recoiled at the thought of a man forcing a woman to cover her face.

And one of the things to think through as far as this point is concerned is that the vast majority of Christians had this basic, you know, ick kind of reaction to the idea of men forcing women to veil their faces.

They thought that that was dehumanizing. They thought that that was degrading. And I remember, I mean, it's been so long ago now, three years ago, but I remember that most

Christians seemed to agree with me at that very point, three years ago, that that was dehumanizing for Muslims to make women veil their faces and that that was a rejection of the image of God and that that was, you know, an inappropriate symbol of submission and everything else.

But then one of the things to realize is I'm like one of these individuals who just didn't get the memo. You know, I'm just kind of stuck in this backwards kind of paradigm that I just,

I'm still there with it. You know, I still think that that's kind of chauvinistic, and I still think that that's kind of degrading, and I still think that that's kind of dehumanizing.

But then it seems like the vast majority of Christians today don't share that basic moral impulse anymore, and they've basically gone full

Muslim, and they're more than happy to force women to cover their faces in order to get groceries and go out in public and work a job.

It seems like now not only has that transitioned from being degrading and dehumanizing, but now it's a triumphant act of bravery and an act of love for neighbor to cover your face.

And so one of the things that this ought to make us do is it ought to make us a little bit skeptical of these comparisons between ourselves and Muslims, particularly when the vast majority of Christians, they've literally changed their stance on this issue in the past couple years.

And I've literally yet to find one example of a Christian who has basically given

Muslims an apology for their moral indignation and outrage at forcing women to veil their faces when they go out in public.

I have yet to see the kind of Christian who's come along and told

Muslims that, hey, we were wrong, and that we shouldn't have been so scandalized by that. And there are some morally sufficient situations that could come along where we would also join you in forcing women to cover their faces.

And so one of the things to realize, though, is that that's literally never going to happen. And one of the things that that should inform you about is that it might be that our instincts at this point are less governed by objectively what is right or wrong or objectively what is dehumanizing and more governed by what society tells us to think in any given moment.

It might be that when we're looking at issues like this, you know, a wife obeying her husband, does that dehumanize her or a wife being forced to cover her face?

Well, it seems like we're gaining our moral intuition by what's popular more than we are about anything objective that's actually happening in the moment, as is evidenced by the fact that I'm one of these extreme, you know, crazy kind of individuals now who are on the wrong side of history and who still seem to think that it's dehumanizing for a woman to be forced to cover her face and to cover up the image of God as represented by her face.

So I don't know. So that's something to consider. But then, you know, if you think about the issue in a more broad way, one of the things to realize is that Islam is essentially the paradigm for a false religion.

So Abraham had a son according to the flesh. God made certain promises to Abraham. He basically tells Abraham that he's going to make them father of many nations and that, you know, he promised him a land, he promised him blessings, he's going to bless those who bless him, he's going to curse those who curse him.

His offspring would be as numerous as the sand of the sea or the stars in the sky. And Abraham, instead of trusting

God to fulfill his promises in his own way, what Abraham did is he took matters into his own hands.

He went into his maidservant and had offspring through her in hopes that God would – he thought he had to help

God out in delivering his promises, when really God was going to fill his promise through his wife

Sarah in his own timetable. But part of the problem there is that two groups of people were formed through these decisions.

You have essentially the Arabs who were formed through the offspring of Ishmael and you have the

Jews who were going to be formed through the offspring of Isaac. And these two people groups have waged war against each other.

And one of the things to realize is that, you know, the Muslim religion is essentially what you might describe as the paradigm for a false religion.

Often what Satan does is he doesn't just establish false religions which stand diametrically opposed to everything the

Bible says. One of the things that he does is he forms false religions that in many ways mirror the contents of true religion but then deviate from them at a variety of points.

And so one of the things to realize is if you're going to produce a counterfeit, if you think about a counterfeit in terms of money, the idea of a counterfeit is you want to make it as close to the original as possible with only small variations so that it can be deceptive.

If you just hand someone a Monopoly dollar and try to pay for your food at fast food or something like that with a

Monopoly money, no one's going to take that seriously. It has to be pretty close mirror to the truth in order to be subversive or persuasive as far as that's concerned.

And so one of the things to realize is that because Islam is essentially the paradigm for a false religion, there's a variety of ways in which the teaching of Islam is going to mirror the teaching of the

Bible. And part of that is because it comes from the same basic heritage, meaning Islam is the kind of religion that doesn't just in a categorical way reject all the teaching of the scriptures.

In fact, they embrace many of the scriptures as their own scriptures insofar as they don't contradict what the

Quran is going to say as far as that's concerned. And so we share some of the same basic heritage of Revelation, and we're going to come to a lot of the same conclusions.

For example, we both believe in one God. We both believe that homosexuality is wrong. We both believe in capital punishment.

We both believe in male -female roles. There's a variety. You could just go on and on and on and on and on about the similarities between Islam and Christianity.

And what you can't do is in some simplistic way essentially say that everything that Islam teaches is absolutely and fundamentally wrong.

I mean, they recoil at the pornography of the West. They recoil at the feminism of the

West. They recoil at the homosexuality, the sodomy that the West has embraced.

In many ways, they are rebuked to the West. And so I'm not trying to say that everything that they're doing is right.

I'm just trying to say that you can't in some simplistic way say, hey, if they do it, it must be wrong. And obviously, the kind of individual who's going to react to the

Bible's teaching on wives obeying their husbands, that kind of individual is more than happy, for the most part, to force women to wear masks just like Islam is doing.

And so what you have to do is you have to, on a case -by -case basis, deal with what's actually happening and not just take your cues from whatever the culture tells you to take your cues from.

Now, as it relates to the subject of male and female roles, certainly the standard

Muslim is going to distort a biblical perspective of what roles look like, and certainly there are some tendencies within Islam to treat women in a subhuman manner, as pieces of property that can just be tossed aside whenever they become inconvenient.

So certainly there are some tendencies along those lines, but the only way to distinguish between what's actually right and what's actually wrong as it relates to that is there are going to be some parallels between the standard teaching of Islam and the standard teaching of Christianity, and the only way to sort it out is to ask serious and honest questions about what the

Bible says. And so one of the things to realize is that trying to advocate for some teaching in the

Bible, which is encouraging women to follow the example of Sarah obeying

Abraham, calling him Lord, the idea of encouraging women to follow

Sarah's example of obeying their husband, as the Bible tells them to, well, the

Israelites came through Sarah's offspring. So that's not encouraging them to be

Muslim, that's encouraging them to follow the example of Sarah, for whom the promise has come down through the

Jews, ultimately manifesting itself in Christ and His formation of the church. And so one of the things that we have to do is we have to do better as it relates to this argument.

So this is a teachable moment for those who are making this kind of argument, and I would instruct you to do better.

Go to the Scripture, look at what the Scripture is actually saying, and make a case from the Bible as to why this is wrong, and give a better explanation for 1

Peter 3 than that. You can't just simply ignore the force of what 1 Peter 3 is saying by some sort of simplistic appeal to what

Muslims are doing, particularly when you're living in the type of society that's more than happy to act like Muslims as it relates to forcing women to wear masks.

So if you're going to be more than okay with doing that kind of thing, what you're going to actually have to do is define morality as the

Bible defines it, and give us a better explanation for 1 Peter 3. And if you're unwilling to do that, then functionally, why don't you just cut it out of the

Bible and declare a war on it? Just get rid of it.

If you don't like what it says, give us a better explanation for what it says, or just get rid of it. This has been another installment of Iron Sharpening Iron.

As always, if you would like to have your question included in one of these midweek episodes, email us at biblebashedpodcast at gmail .com.

Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Gab. Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.