Can a Submissive Wife Be Independent? 

This year, while teaching apologetics to the juniors and seniors in our high school one of our students asked a very thoughtful question. We were discussing what the Bible had to say about the roles of men and women, particularly in marriage and in the church. As we were exploring the topic, one student raised her hand and asked, “Can a submissive wife be independent?” 

These are the kinds of questions teachers live for. Several factors made it a really good question. First, it was asked respectfully, at least as far as I could tell. This wasn’t a gotcha question. There was a genuine curiosity: what does the Bible say about this issue? 

Second, the question revealed a lot about the underlying worldview of the person asking the question. As a teenager growing up in 21st-century America, this student had seen independence, especially for women, held up as one of the ultimate virtues. A question like this wouldn’t have made sense in many places and times throughout history, as many cultures throughout history have been communally focused. But to an American teenager, it was an obvious question the second you heard it. 

Third, I liked the question because it needed an answer that went deeper than just a simple “yes” or “no.” The obvious answer would seem to be “no,” but I think it’s worth exploring why this question was asked in the first place and what might need to be reconsidered in the way we see the world. It was a good question because answering it gave me the opportunity to dig a little deeper. And as I have dug deeper, and continued to think about the question, I think there were two misunderstandings that lurking behind the question.

 

We’ve Misunderstood Submission

When Satan slithered up to Eve, the first lie he put in her head was that she didn’t need to listen to God. Throughout Genesis 1, we repeatedly read that God declared things good. Then in Genesis 2 he told Adam not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the garden, presumably because that would not be good. Then in Genesis 3 the snake tells Eve that God is holding out, that she won’t really die, and that she should decide for herself. The next few words are chilling, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good…” (Genesis 3:6) In other words, Eve was now the one deciding what is good and what is bad. 

This ancient lie of the devil is a lie that he continues to use over and over again today. The old coaching principle is that if something you are doing is effective against the other team, you should keep doing it until they figure out how to stop it. Well, Satan has been using the same lie for millennia and it still works, so he still keeps using it. Basically, Satan keeps telling us, “You should be god.” And by that he doesn’t mean we should be speaking worlds into existence or be able to count all the grains of sand on the seashore. He means you should be the one to decide what’s right and wrong. If anyone (even God) tells you what to do, you don’t have to listen to them. This thinking, if we’re honest, is deeply ingrained in all of us. We come preloaded with the idea that we should get to decide what is right and wrong, in short that we should be gods. 

In order to pull this off, though, Satan must try to make submission look like something awful. Specifically, he wants submission to look like weakness and inferiority. “People who submit are weak,” we are made to think. “People who submit are inferior.” If he can get us to buy into that line of reasoning, then when the Bible calls on wives to submit to their husbands, what they hear is “You must be weak and inferior when compared to your husband.” But that’s not what submission means. In fact, that can’t be what submission means, because Jesus submitted to the will of His Father (John 6:38; 15:10; 1 Corinthians 11:3). Jesus was described as humble (Philippians 2:8) and meek (2 Corinthians 10:1). If Jesus was meek and humble, and if he submitted to the will of His Father without being weak or inferior, then wives can submit to their husbands without being weak or inferior. In fact, the Bible wants women to be strong, which leads me to the second problem underlying this question… 

 

We’ve Misunderstood Strength

When my student asked if a submissive wife could also be independent, I realized almost immediately that she had used the wrong word. What she wanted to know was if a submissive woman could be strong. There is some overlap between strength and independence, but they’re not the same. Strength allows you to be independent, after all weak people know that they need others because they can’t do things themselves. But strong people don’t need to be independent. Strong people can demonstrate strength even through submission. 

In the mind of this student, and probably many like her, strength and independence had been merged together. Once that happened, independence had come to stand for both. The ultimate woman was strong and didn’t need anyone or anything else to complete her. Of course, all of this is being fed to us on a steady drip of a thousand movie plotlines, songs, news articles, social media interactions, and more. Our culture is both overtly and subtly promoting the idea that for a woman to truly be strong, she doesn’t need a man. But the Bible doesn’t glorify weak women. In fact, it does quite the opposite.

Mother’s Day is coming up, and that means that thousands of sermons will once again be preached on Proverbs 31 – the virtuous woman. Often I fear we hear the word “virtuous” and quickly slip in our thinking to ideas like kind, compassionate, gentle, or friendly. While there is certainly nothing wrong with any of those adjectives, and while all of them do describe a virtuous woman, if we’re not careful we can think “weak.” But the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 is anything but weak. And while she might be kind, compassionate, gentle, and friendly, that’s not really the focus of this biblical passage. 

The Proverbs 31 woman is a force to be reckoned with. She rises super early, makes sure there is food for everyone, goes out and buys a field (yes, you read that right), she plants a vineyard, makes clothes enough for her family and to have some to sell, her speech is kind and wise, she watches over the household, she sets her husband up for important roles, and above all, she fears God. I had one lady tell me half-jokingly that the Proverbs 31 woman is a bit unrealistic, since after all it’s a mom writing to her son about what she wanted her future daughter-in-law to look like. Notice Proverbs 31:25, though, especially in light of our discussion: “Strength and honor are her clothing…” God is very clear, the ideal woman is not weak, she is strong and honorable. 

 

When my wife and I were dating, my wife’s work supervisor at her state college sat her down because she was concerned. She was very happy for my now-wife, then-girlfriend, that she had found religion and that it was really working for her. But she was concerned. She didn’t want my wife to lose herself in religion, especially knowing that she was dating a guy who wanted to be a Baptist pastor. “I don’t want you to lose yourself,” she said. “I don’t see you as the little girl sitting quietly in the corner.” 

It’s almost surreal today to think that was ever a concern that someone had. I watch my wife care for our home and manage three kids and a baby, all six and under, and plan out meals and keep us on task with getting house projects done and run an LLC with employees under her and participate regularly in church ministry and host people at our house and the list could go on. I think about that conversation sometimes and laugh because “wallflower” is the last thing people who know my wife would think about her. But that’s the lie that Satan is selling, and that’s the lie my wife’s work supervisor had bought into. Sadly, that’s the lie that quite a few Christian women believe today.

So can a submissive wife be independent? No, because while those ideas are not quite opposites, they are contradictory. Women who submit to their husbands can’t then be independent of them. But to be fair, men shouldn’t be independent of their wives, either. Marriage is a partnership, and having a partner is impossible if your goal is to be independent. But a submissive wife can be strong, and she should be. A submissive wife can be capable, and she should be. This mother’s day, let’s celebrate the godly women in our lives. Not because they are wallflowers, and not because they are independent, but because they reflect well the mixture of humble submission and godly strength we see in our Savior.  

 

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. You can check out Bible studies he has written as hearanddo.org. 

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Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash