Submit and love

After Ephesians 5:21-33 

Submit to one another,

he says, the key

to our relationships.

Submit in reverence

mutual, he says, because

that’s how the One did it,

that’s the model, people,

submitting in love.

What the critics miss

is that love, as in love

your wives, is

a stronger command

than submission.

This love, this submission,

is a picture of something

far greater than itself,

fare more important,

something vital,

not matter how disguised

it becomes by rhetoric

and accusations and

anger and malpractice

and missing 

the whole point.

 

Photograph by Adam Winger via Unsplash. Used with permission.

That word

After Ephesians 5:21-33 

There’s that word:

submission. Horrors!

If there’s one word

contrary to the spirit

of the age, it’s that one.

And worse,

and even worse, 

is the idea of wives

submitting to husbands.

Paul was obviously

displaying his bias here,

an idiot, you say,

for his misogyny, shoving

women into second class. 

Therefore, everything

he said is wrong. Or, 

at the other political

extreme, let’s use 

the verse as a club

to remind wives

of the pecking order. And

so left and right scream

and rant and rave

at each other, doing

exactly the opposite

of what Paul commands:

submit to one another.

 

Photograph by Casey Horner via Unsplash. Used with permission.