Love and Submission [Part 2]

Love and Submission...
An old man is walking along a country road in the Deep South with his mule and his dog. A pickup truck comes around the corner too fast, knocks the old man, the mule and the dog into the ditch. Some time later, the old man is suing the driver of the truck. The attorney defending the driver is cross-examining the old man.
“Did you, on the day of the alleged accident, tell my client you had never felt better in your life than you did that particular day?” asked the attorney.
The old man replied: “Me, and my mule, and my dog were walking on the road. This gentleman came around the corner in his pickup truck. He knocked me and my mule and my dog into the ditch. He jumped out of the cab carrying a shot gun. He went up to my dog that was bleeding, and he shot it. He went to my mule that had broken its foreleg, and he shot it. He walked over to me with his shot gun and said, ‘Are you all right?’ And I said, ‘You know, I've never felt better in my life!’” The moral of the story is: If you take a text, out of its context, you're left with 'a con.'

It's very important that we understand the context in which Paul is giving this teaching, because if we don't understand the context, we may get Paul all wrong. If you look at Paul in his immediate context, what you will discover to your amazement is that he was a radical, and that he was doing more for the emancipation of women and other oppressed groups at that time than anybody else on earth. But you will never understand it until you see it in context. It's important that we see this, because many people are simply dismissing this aspect of biblical truth concerning marriage.

First note the historical context. First Century Greco-Roman culture was the culture in which Paul was living, to which he was writing. They were particularly interested in maintaining law and order! They said, "The way you do that, is by breaking society down into its most manageable pieces, and maintaining law and order there." The most manageable piece of their society was the household. That’s very different from the nuclear, suburban household which many of us are used to at the present time. This could be a rather large group of people, certainly husband and wife, children and very often slaves and many servants.

They maintained order in that household by giving absolute authority to the husband, the father, and the owner of the slaves. He could rule that household with a rod of iron. For instance, if his wife gave birth, in his opinion, to too many daughters, he could order the infant baby girl to be exposed and die. That wasn't a problem in that culture. If his son became unruly and disobedient, he could be thoroughly beaten and – if necessary in the father's eyes – he could be imprisoned. If a slave escaped from the household and was captured, he could be executed at the command of the head of the household.