Wifely Submission

What follows is a comment I made on Samantha's blog I thought it bears repeating here.

Women are called to submit to their own husbands, which suggests to me that submission is something to be tailored to the specific man that you are married to, not to all men everywhere. Likewise, men are to dwell with their own wives "with understanding" meaning that his understanding is not limited to generic understanding of all women, but to his particular wife.

It goes without saying, that our ultimate submission is to God and His moral law. No husbands have the right to command a wife to sin against God. It is in the "indifferent" things where a wife's submission to her husband is to be manifested. And it is in "indifferent" things that a husband's understanding of his wife is also manifested.

People come in various flavors and shapes. We tailor the way we teach, to a certain extent, to our particular child, because what works for one doesn't work for another. One woman may be able to endure watching a movie that another wife finds too violent and nightmare causing. Some people have a weak and uninformed conscience about a particular practice, and it would be sinful to force them to participate in it until their conscience is rightly informed. IOW, there are no bright hard lines drawn for us when it comes to indifferent things.

Of course, it requires the acquisition of maturity and wisdom on our part in order to learn where and how to draw the lines for ourselves and those we are lawfully relating to in marriage and family. The unimaginative, the lazy, the immature, and the selfish will draw the lines in rigid ways and require everyone to conform to them in order to manifest *their* notions of what constitutes holy living. Mature Christian living is confined by God's Law, but fluid in its application, showing mercy, wisdom and sincere love of God and man. This is a high ideal to strive for. It would be nice if all of us could actually achieve it (self included).