On calling your huband ‘lord’
“I’ve watched my wife counsel a lot of young ladies who are considering marriage, and she always asks the same question, ‘Are you willing to call your husband “Lord”?’ There will be dead silence in the room.” At the podium, a handsome and charismatic young mand in his early forties mimics in mincing tones the single woman’s response to his wife’s evocation of 1 Peter 3:6, which describes Sarah showing submission to her husband Abraham by naming him “lord”: ‘Are you kidding me? I only have one Lord: Jesus Christ!’” He continues, mincing no more: “We’re not talking about Lors as in the Creator, but your earthly head. And one that you have to follow, even when he makes bad judgements. Are you ready to do the most vulnerable thing that a woman ever can do and submit yourself to a man, who you are going to have to follow in his faith, who is incredibly imperfect and is going to make mistakes? Can you do that? Can you call your husband ‘Lord’? If the answer is no, you shouldn’t get married.
~Doug Phillips, founder of Vision Forum, as quoted in Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, by Kathryn Joyce
Am I willing to call my husband ‘lord’?
NO. HECK. NO!
NO.
I cannot get any more emphatic without some kind of graphical representation or enlarging my font. NO.
So according to Doug, here, I shouldn’t get married.
You know what? I’m totally ok with that. I don’t know why he seems to think that not being married, possibly NEVER marrying, is some kind of threat to women.
“Oh no…not…NOT BEING MARRIED!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! WHAT IS MY PURPOSE IN LIFE?!?!?!” /snark
This isn’t a romcom. Marriage-at-all-costs is a BAD BAD BAD idea. BAD. You’re just asking to get screwed — literally AND figuratively — and disappointed. It does NOT “work out all right in the end.”
I’m not saying marriage is bad or that you shouldn’t get married…but I’m sorry, Stevan, you will never, EVER hear me say this to you. EVER.
Unless I’m making fun of you. And even then, I wouldn’t hold your breath.
