Last year we had been discussing marriage at Kaio. In the course of the last few weeks, the issues of husband/wife submission, husbands’ headship and wives’ respect, have been brought to the forefront.
I have seen one family leave Kaio Church completely in the past year and heard of others questioning me and my stance on my simple theory of marital entropy and dissatisfaction:
Men are the innate leaders of their marriages; women become the consummate leaders when their men do not recognize their own innate leadership; in the end, when a man is challenged by his woman he becomes dissatisfied and begins looking for other fulfillment (other women, hobbies, expensive toys, pets, bands, drinking too much light beer, and late-night Taco Bell runs, to name a few in an illustrative list in order of severity).
When a family unit looks at their relationship and sees the pastor taking a strong stance for husband headship and wives’ respect, they must realize that nobody got it completely right. Even Jesus was not married, and so while Hebrews 4 says it right, he did not specifically experience marriage to a wife.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I read in the Bible the fact that Jesus was not married; however, I also read that he created all people, which includes women, which includes all wives. Therefore Jesus knows quite a bit about wives. The farmer knows his tractor pretty well, but he cannot complain that the non-farming engineer who designed it doesn’t know how it works.
What I am building to is this: men hate Biblical marriage engineering more than women. This is contrary to what most Biblical critics would surmise. Perhaps because I talk with more men than women, I see the primary holders of objection to “wives respect your husbands” are men, not women. This may seem untrue and a rash stereotype to pin guilt on men; however, consider that large churches in general seem to gather more female than male leaders. American women also have a tendency to think that they are more spiritually minded than men.
My theory is that it is the men who are outside the home hunting deer, souping up their cars, playing guitars, competing in dodge ball, looking for other women in clubs and online, and their wives are stuck at work and at home picking up the slack because they believe they care so much for their children. The women I know who work outside their homes do not usually work because they want to help their husbands afford more hobbies; they want to have their own spending money and, in the case of mothers, enough money to pay for daycare. But the men I see working who have women who remain at home often work harder to make sure their wives can afford to spend money on themselves.
These are some risky observations, however, I am no stranger to controversy. Let’s discuss.
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SCANTIAC? I was born in CA, raised in IA, & have since lived in SC and TN. The letters of those states, mixed up, are the source of my blog's name. I am married to Jennifer (1995) and we have four children. WHAT I DO I am a designer and developer for T8DESIGN of Cedar Falls. I am also the founding pastor of 
