Book Review: Loveology's Part 5 "War, Peace & Why Marriage Is Really About Jesus"

I used to be a feminist.

That one line makes a lot of people unhappy.

First, we have the "I used to be": as in "you're no longer...?", as in "you've given up on us women!"

Second, we have the "a feminist": as in "you hated men?", as in "you still hate men, don't you."

Well here it is: I used to think that any domestic responsibility, within or without the context of marriage, was a nod to the Medieval Ways of Yore and I wanted nothing less than to be barefoot in the kitchen. I thought that was feminism, and I owned it. I was going to be a career woman and I was going to be independent and I was going to prove Them wrong (still not sure who Them was). For clarification, that wasn't feminism: that wasn't anything.

And then one day I didn't want that, and it had a lot to do with love: John was out at work, and I wanted to make him some food, on account of the fact that I loved him and he would be hungry... and I couldn't. I couldn't cook. I tried to make a stir fry and I both burned and under-cooked the rice (at the same time) and called him in tears realizing that my avoidance of all things personally deemed Non-Feminist simply restricted the way that I could love him.

Which, you know, is okay. It really is. I'm not the world's best cook right now, 4 years later, and to be quite frank, cooking is not part of my household responsibilities. It's John's: he easily prepares 99.99% of the food we eat around here (he's melting butter for popcorn as I type this), because despite my best efforts, I cannot turn a box of macaroni & cheese into an edible meal. (Although I did rock it during 30 meals / 30 days! And I can bake a mean loaf of bread!)

As you may know, John and I now own and operate two companies, and I do have career pursuits, and I do answer client emails until midnight.... and I do bake bread and keep the house tidy. We share both domestic and work responsibilities equally.

But I do it - and he does it - because that's the decision that we have made as a team, not because they fit inside of or outside of the box of "gender roles". It's not a feminism or an anti-feminism approach: it's submission to each other, to help each other achieve the goals we have for our lives.

So now you know my little back story: what does that have to do with Loveology's "War, Peace and Why Marriage Is Really About Jesus"?

Everything, because in my experience of marriage and exploration of "gender roles" and submission, I think this chapter only scratches the surface of truth, and I'm disappointed in the results.

Comer opens like this:

"There's a growing movement in the church to say that the gender roles are a result of the fall. From my vantage point, nothing could be further from the truth. Gender roles are a part of the original Edenic, good creation. But the gender wars? Those are a result of the fall. Absolutely."

John Mark Comer uses War, Peace... to discuss what he calls "the gender roles" in an incredibly elusive way, problematic from the first sentence because he doesn't actually describe what he means by "the gender roles" at all. He defends something from the offset, and as readers we don't really know what that something is; it's left to the imagination and to assumption and that's nay good, friend.

But I won't nit-pick for long, and for the sake of simplicity I'm going to assume that when Comer says "the gender roles", he is discussing the notion that women should stand posited as nurturers and men should stand posited as providers - classically, this means women in the home and men out of it. He talks a lot about Paul's letter to wives and husbands calling them to submit and love respectively, and debunks the idea that a submissive woman is a weak woman and that a man demonstrating good leadership is one that abuses power (or allows himself to be passive).

And to clarify, when I (and Comer) discuss "submission" and "leadership", we are essentially discussing the act of putting your spouse before yourself. The terminology can be scary for those who've been hurt, but let's work with it.

Comer calls us to live like Jesus, and that means submitting to one another in a way that glorifies Jesus: he delights in the fact that men and women both have equal opportunities to be emulate the work of Jesus (Jesus submits, and he leads/loves), and Comer outlines the specific ways we can pull that off as men and as women.

He highlights the struggle of power vs. passivity between men and women (the "gender wars"), clarifies what submission really means, what love really means, and how to end this "war" between men and women.

And for those things, the chapter is worth a good read.

But what he doesn't do is have a quick cultural chat about what exactly we're supposed to do with our days in practical application, and that's where I find myself wanting more. Now, I'm not looking for a "men should work, women should not" blueprint, but I can't help but wonder if that's where he's going? Again, it's a point left up to the reader's imagination or assumption, and Comer does not reconcile whether a wife can be effectively submissive to her husband while still bringing home a paycheque. Because I lean this way, I would assume of course, yes. But I know many who would come to a different conclusion from reading the same chapter.

Here's where things get even more sticky for me. On page 187 he says,

"The church should be a place of freedom. A place where men are free to be men, and women to be women. With no guilt. No shame. And no pressure. Whether the sexes are free from the culture's overpowering, hyper controlling, oppressive view of what a man or woman should or shouldn't be like. The church should be a safe place to be who God made you to be".

It's impossible to deny that Comer is right: The church should be a safe place where we can express our freedom - of course it should. But again, I still don't know what he means by "freedom", those roles he's addressing, or even which "culture" is oppressing us, and I want to explore it. What is it to be a man? What is it to be a woman? And please, tell us how to live that out within the church context - it's easy to say we should do it, but I feel we aren't given enough tools to really lay out how.

All that said, I want to clarify: marriage doesn't work effectively when women try to overpower their husbands, or when men assume a passive or oppressive role. It doesn't work. I've tried it: I'm your classic Type A personality and I've had Mama Knows Best moments that have sent us in the wrong direction and thrown us for a good ol' loop. Mama doesn't know best; God does, and God put John as the head of our family and I have to trust him in leading us, making decisions, and giving that final word when it's needed. I'm blessed to have a husband that does so in a position of gentleness, kindness and self control and has never, ever taken advantage of the fact that I will submit to him. I think this is biblical and I think it's a good example of living out Jesus as often as we can. (Disclaimer, we sometimes screw it up.) In many ways, I'm with Comer on everything he has to say.

But where I can't get on board with him is in the blurred lines of what exactly 'gender roles' mean to him, and as a result I can't get my hands wrapped around the whole chapter. It doesn't make a difference to me where he stands, I just want to know.