Crux Marital Moments

In every marriage there comes a time when both partners want something very badly that the other does not, or the other wants something else that is mutually exclusive. These are watershed moments in a marriage. The arguments used at that time, and the way the situation is handled, is crucial to the health of the marriage. And how to learn to handle these sitations well is certainly a challenge.

I have a Christian friend who left a PhD unfinished to accompany his wife who wanted to move out of state to set up her medical practice. He’s now working in a job considerably lower than his training and his talents. Then she dropped him like a hot potato.

Dr. Wayne Grudem, one of the most active complementarian theologians, was apparently happy working in Deerfield, Illinois, but due to a job opportunity his wife had in the Southwest, he interviewed there as well and landed a seminary job in Phoenix. What if there hadn’t been a theologian job in that area? Would he have taken a lesser job in the new location, say teaching in a private Christian elementary school? Using complementarian terms, would he love his wife at that moment or would she submit and stay put?

How do modern couples negotiate moments like these today? The job change that would mean the most money to the family? Then the husband would in most families usually win the argument. Take turns getting one’s way? But not all marital moments of note are crux moments and some are heavier duty crux moments than others. So who controls the order that the crux moments come up? And what if one spouse is always the better arguer and always seems to have the better arguments?

I’m sure that a few very mature Christian men get the complementarian view to love their wives sacrificially while their wives lovingly submit, and it all comes out fairly equally, or at least where both spouses can live with whatever happens. But I believe that most people don’t get it and probably never will, because of the key words that are used in their argument: love is a wishy-washy word in English (not as exact as it is in Greek which has multiple words) and “submit” is a fighting term. The complementarian view, even when stated perfectly, sounds to the modern ear like it heavily favors the man.

Of course, the view is not usually stated perfectly. How many times have you heard a Christian woman told, “If you’d just submit to your husband, that problem would go away?” I’m sure it’s a whole lot more times than you’ve heard a Christian man told, “if you’d just love your wife, that problem would go away.” Using better words, like “equal leadership” and “mutual submission” would go a long way to lessening this heavily unbalanced approach to marriage counselling and communication. I suppose this is why George Barna, as I’ve quoted him in another blog entry, when he looks at the embarrassingly high divorce rate among Evangelicals believes that traditional churches are doing something very wrong when they try to minister to couples.

I was raised deeply complementarian and that training severely damaged my marriage. When we finally got to three or four of these crux marital moments, I handled them badly. I’m a pretty Bible and theology-saturated guy, wanting the Lord’s will for my life. But I remember feeling, after all those other times I did what you wanted when I would have preferred doing something else, are you not submitting when I want this so badly? I simply had the wrong tools, the wrong words, to deal with these situations and curb my natural selfishness or strengthen my natural love.

I’m not giving theological reasons in this blog entry why I think complementarianism is wrong. That’s for another day. But I think you can see why I believe that for way too many people it simply doesn’t work.

How did your crux moments come out?