Balancing On The Roof: The Purpose Of Roles In Marriage
This is part of a series on marriage. Find the first post on the origin and beauty of marriage here.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
-Colossians 3:16-19, ESV
Last time, I described how both the equal value of men and women and the distinction between their roles are part of the way we were made in God’s image and are very good. It is very good for the husband to be the head of his wife, lovingly and sacrificially leading her for her ultimate good. It is also very good for the wife to be the helper, submitting to that leadership for his ultimate good. As they do this together, they serve God and advance His Kingdom. In the Fall and ever since then, our rebellion against God has included rebelling against these roles. For husbands, this can take the form of oppressive domination rather than loving and selfless leadership, but it often takes the form of passivity and abdication. For wives, it can be usurping the husband’s headship, but it can also be knowingly following him into sin or enabling his sin. Jesus Christ came to reverse the curse of the Fall—and if we are in Him we will do the same. This includes abandoning the rebellion against God-ordained gender roles and embracing the roles that God created as very good. But what does that look like? Much has been written on this subject, and as a single man I must admit I feel very unqualified to address it. All I can do is point to the Word of God to describe these roles. But before talking about the roles themselves, we need to lay a foundation for them. Only when we establish the underlying purpose of these roles can we identify which roles are inherent in Scripture (and therefore universal) and which are the result of traditions (and therefore cultural).
A Shaky Fiddler
In the beginning of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, protagonist Tevye compares life in his Jewish village to a fiddler on a roof trying to play his simple tune without breaking his neck. He says that balance is maintained by tradition: “Because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do”. The song “Tradition” then goes on to explain the roles of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters from these traditions. Fathers work tirelessly to lead and provide for their families, teaching their sons to do the same. Mothers manage their homes and raise their families to enable the fathers to do this, teaching their daughters to do the same. While there are certainly exceptions to this, you could have queried most civilizations throughout history and received a similar answer up until the Enlightenment challenged many such traditions. Part of this was the feminist movement challenging traditional gender roles. This has progressed so far that we often forget how recently the “traditional” view of gender was common. Feminism began with the goal of (rightly) correcting the marginalization and abuse of women that was all-too-common in many societies. But having long since achieved the originally-sought gender equality before the law, feminism now sees all gender distinctions as ugly and oppressive, leading to direct attacks against all distinctions between men and women. Several generations of feminism have permeated our culture so thoroughly that we have completely abandoned any semblance of gender roles, and thus lost any sense of gender identity. Without a biblical foundation for gender identity, we are left with a collection of stereotypical traits such that our culture has no choice but to acquiesce to the delusion that men can become women and vice versa. Instead, I have previously explained how our Scriptural foundation gives us the true definition of gender and thus prohibits us from to condoning or supporting the transgender delusion in any way. Sadly, many Christians and churches have weakened this foundation by buying into the feminist distortion. Having thrown off all restraint of “traditional gender roles”, we don’t even realize that we are as shaky as a fiddler on a roof.
How do we regain our balance? First, we need to recognize that perhaps the roles we threw off as antiquated and burdensome shackles were actually tethers for our protection and good. In Nietzsche’s “Parable of the Madman”, he likens a loss of a theistic ethical foundation as unchaining the earth from its sun, causing it to drift away from all suns.[1] Gravity may be seen as a shackle, but to escape earth’s gravity is a dangerous proposition. Any spacecraft that reaches escape velocity had better be on the right trajectory or it will float off into the vastness of space, never to return. Similarly, to throw off restraint leads to chaos, which is exactly what has happened since we as a culture threw off abandoned gender roles. Men and women don’t know who they are or what they are meant to do, and that lack of identity and purpose necessarily leads to hopelessness, misery, and depression. We need to fire the engine in the opposite direction to retrograde back into the safety of orbit and then set a correct course.
Regaining Our Balance: The Cultural Mandate
But the course we set can’t simply be a return to meaningless traditions. Tevye at one point asks how a seemingly meaningless tradition started, answering “I’ll tell you: I don’t know. But it’s a tradition”. This is the way many treat gender roles, even calling them “traditional”. But last time, we observed how our identity and roles as male and female originated in the Garden of Eden. Therefore these roles at their core are not mere traditions (though many traditions have been developed around them). Instead, they were created by God for a purpose. Roles are meaningless if they do not serve a greater purpose. This is often forgotten in any discussion of roles, so we need to determine our underlying purpose in order to discern whether certain roles are required or merely traditions. As we saw last time, this purpose originated in the Garden with the Cultural Mandate. Our purpose is to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over it.
The first part of this purpose is to be fruitful, which generally means to labor in such a way that our labor has the desired effect. A wide variety of things could be considered fruit, starting with the physical fruit of our labor, including the food, clothing, and materials we need to survive. It also includes the spiritual fruit of growing in righteousness and holiness as well as helping others do the same. In this way, the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) can be considered a spiritual Cultural Mandate. We are called to be fruitful by making (multiplying) disciples, thereby filling the earth and subduing it under the rule of Christ. When discussing giving, I pointed out that only what we invest in building the Kingdom of God will produce eternal fruit, so we should prioritize cultivating that fruit. Part of the curse is that our hard work would be partially unfruitful, producing “thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:18), so there are many things we can expend our effort on that do not serve the Cultural Mandate and are therefore fruitless. But there are enumerable ways we can labor to cultivate both physical and spiritual fruit that advance the Cultural Mandate.
Another part of our purpose per the Cultural Mandate is to multiply and fill the earth. It may be tempting to skip past the obvious, but this is mainly about physical procreation. We must stress this because our culture (and even the church) has greatly devalued children, often prioritizing self and career over this “inconvenience” and “burden”. The Cultural Mandate reminds us that a major purpose for marriage in particular but also for mankind in general is to have children. Without children we cannot subdue the earth as the Cultural Mandate commands. We often underestimate this amazing gift of multiplication that God has given us. Demons cannot multiply, so every godly child is of great advantage to us—and the demons know it. This is why they work so hard to dissuade and distract people from having children. This certainly includes the abominations of abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism, which are not only sinful—as I discuss here—but also actively work against the blessing and duty of multiplication in the Cultural Mandate. But this also includes much more subtle erosion of the family. We are delaying and deprioritizing marriage and parenthood, cheapening marriage through divorce, and enabling fathers to be absent. We also wrongly view parenthood (especially motherhood) as a denigrating burden imposed by the oppressive patriarchy, outsourcing child rearing to daycares and public schools. All of this directly opposes the Cultural Mandate and is therefore rebellion against God. I am not saying that sending children to daycare and public school is necessarily sinful, but abdicating to them the responsibility of raising and teaching our children is.
Therefore, we must abandon our culture’s perverted view of children and parenthood, replacing it with a right view from Scripture. Children are a blessing from God (e.g. Psalm 127:4-5) and the repetition of various forms of “be fruitful and multiply” throughout Scripture shows that having children is not optional. Certainly there are some who are either called by God to not have children or prevented by God from having them—after all, I am writing this as a childless man—but that is the exception not the rule. As I have stated before, the biggest impact that most Christians will have for the Kingdom is through their children. Clearly, the command in the Cultural Mandate to multiply and fill the earth physically is a very important purpose of marriage.
But what about overpopulation? This is another demonic lie spread for the purpose of opposing the Cultural Mandate. Geopolitical expert Peter Zeihan has observed that rapid industrialization (and its resulting urbanization) caused by globalization after World War II has led to such a sharp decline in birthrate over several decades that many countries no longer have sustainable populations.[2] He sees a shrinking number of younger people to care for and support a growing number of older people (i.e. the inverse of the Cultural Mandate) throughout the world as a major factor in the downfall of globalization and its resulting unrest that we are seeing unfold before us. This has led people like Elon Musk to sound the alarm about our problem of underpopulation rather than overpopulation. Furthermore, a higher population isn’t merely more mouths to feed but also more people to work the ground to provide that food and more minds to figure out how to make the land more productive to feed everyone.[3] If anything, we need to double down on the physical multiplication aspect of the Cultural Mandate.
But as I alluded to earlier, the Cultural Mandate’s command to multiply is spiritual as well. We are called to make disciples of all nations. Paul had numerous spiritual children like Timothy, and one can argue that few saints in history—at least from our perspective—have been as fruitful for the Kingdom as Paul. Nevertheless, we need to remember that multiplying physically and spiritually are not mutually exclusive. The Cultural Mandate is not only about bringing children into the world but also about making them disciples. Just after the command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Deuteronomy 6:4), God commands parents to constantly teach God’s Law to their children (Deuteronomy 6:7). While churches can and should help parents disciple their children, God holds parents responsible for discipling their children. An hour of Sunday School, a children’s sermon, and a weekly youth group are woefully inadequate to teach kids everything they need to know pertaining to life and godliness, especially when we consider how many hours the media and education system will spend indoctrinating them into the exact opposite.
This is why it is so vitally important for Christian parents to proactively lead their children in learning the Scriptures and growing in Christlikeness. Christian parents need to say with Joshua, “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15) and then actually do it day in and day out. This includes regular family worship, which is so important that the Westminster Divines devoted an entire document to it. The Kingdom is not advanced when godly parents raise children who after being indoctrinated by the world reject the faith. We want to populate earth with people who will one day populate heaven not hell.[4] While the ultimate eternal destiny of any person is sovereignly predestined by God and therefore independent of any effort of ours—including how well or poorly we parent—God calls us to be diligent to sow the seed of the Gospel and cultivate its growth—and He often rewards that effort. The Cultural Mandate commands us to raise children who will not only be capable adults but godly adults laboring to advance the Kingdom, most bringing children of their own into the world and raising them to be godly adults laboring to advance the Kingdom, and so on for enumerable generations.
At this point I know of many parents who could become discouraged because some of their children are not following Christ despite their best efforts as parents. There is no greater joy for parents than seeing their children faithfully walking with Christ (3 John 4), but that also means that the pain when they don’t is immense. I know many godly parents who fit into this category. If that is you, you’re in good company. Eight sons of Abraham are named in Scripture, but only one of them (Isaac) was faithful to God. Of Isaac’s two sons, only Jacob was faithful, while Esau caused his parents much grief by his unfaithfulness (Genesis 26:35). Of the 13 children of Jacob named in Scripture, we can only say for sure that Joseph was faithful throughout his life and Judah was faithful later in life. Nevertheless, all three of these patriarchs were faithful and fruitful. Scripture and church history are filled with similar stories, so they should remind us that God can advance His Kingdom through your descendants even if only one child is faithful. Even if none of your children walk with Christ, God can still make you fruitful for the Kingdom in other ways. And finally, while unfaithful children still have breath, it is not too late for the Holy Spirit to regenerate them. So keep praying for them as Monica prayed for her son Augustine, who after a long life of sin became one of the greatest theologians of the early church.
A Mission for Marriage
The Cultural Mandate and its spiritual restatement in the Great Commission apply to all believers across all time. In that way, they can be likened to a Just Cause, which “describes the world we hope to live in and will commit to help build”.[5] Toward that end, God has gifted each of us differently (Romans 12:6, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11) and placed us in our specific locations and times (Acts 17:26). Furthermore, God not only places us where He wants us with the talents and gifts that He wants us to have but does it in such a way that we can advance the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission together as an integrated and well-functioning body (Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31). This means that while all Christians share the same Just Cause, the way that each individual advances it (i.e. mission) will necessarily differ. That forms the foundation of our “why”. Simon Sinek observed that most people know what they do and how they do it, but do not know why.[6] This was certainly true of Tevye regarding his traditions. Instead, we need to start with articulating our underlying belief and the vision we are trying to advance (our “why”), which will then shape how we go about advancing it, which in turn dictates what we do, which ultimately communicates our “why” to the world.[7]
Then, we need to discern how God is calling us specifically to advance them through our talents, gifts, godly desires, and context. When a man does this, it becomes his mission. For me, that might go something like this:
“I want a world filled with churches that are filled with families who love the Triune God and the Bible and obey them in every aspect of life, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in everything they say and do. Through writing and conversations, I help people understand the Bible and the doctrines it teaches so they can apply it to their lives. Through biblical counseling, I help people use the Bible to address any problem they face. Through leadership, I reflect Christ by serving and caring for those God has entrusted to me. Want to join me?”
Notice how this statement goes beyond the “why” and Just Cause to state how I work to advance them. These statements are broad enough fit nearly any context and season of life while being descriptive enough for others to determine whether their mission aligns with mine. And since this statement needs to be broadly understood, it is also free of buzzwords and jargon. Every man’s mission will be different, but he should be able to articulate it in a similar way in order to invite people to join him on that mission. When people with similar missions form teams, that drives their roles within the team.
The most foundational team is the family, so as Scott Hubbard noted, every marriage needs a mission that the husband and wife can unite around. This begins with the man defining his mission. When he pursues marriage, he is inviting a woman to join him on his mission. Having her own unique skills and passions, she will have her own vision of how to advance the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission in her own context, so a crucial part of their relationship is alignment between their missions. When they marry, those missions unite into a single mission. Certainly, many (if not most) marriages in our day did not begin this way, so that mission identification and alignment needs to happen within the marriage, but it still needs to happen. Regardless of when it happens, the husband both owns that unified mission and leads the family in using their unique skills to advance it.[8] So the husband is the Chief Vision Officer—the term Sinek argues should replace Chief Executive Officer—for the family.[9] Sinek noted that this role requires a different, complementary skill set to that of the Chief Operations Officer, with the former focusing outside of the organization and the latter focusing inside the organization.[10] Therefore, the wife can be considered the Chief Operations Officer for the family.
Another similar example I use frequently is the relationship between a military officer and senior noncommissioned officer. Ultimately, the officer has the authority and responsibility to guide the unit in their mission, but the senior noncommissioned officer is the one who actually directs the members of the unit in order to accomplish the mission. The noncommissioned officer also has much more experience than the officer and therefore serves as an important adviser and confidant. Officers have the authority to ignore and overrule their senior noncommissioned officers, but they often do so at their own peril. The two of them form a team with complementary roles and skills to advance the same mission. There are many other such examples. Many great companies were not started by a single person but a pair consisting of a visionary and a detail person: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple, Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft, Herb Kelleher and Rollin King at Southwest Airlines, and Jim Sinegal and Jeffrey Brotman at Costco (to name a few).[11] In all of these cases, a pair of leaders with complementary skillsets use their differing focus and roles to advance the same mission. A godly marriage will be similar.
Roles Will Differ
Spousal roles are determined by the marriage mission. In the future, we will discuss these roles, but we must always remember that they are in the context of the mission. Roles define how we do what we do and must come from why we do what we do. This must mean that there is not an exhaustive universal set of roles applicable to every husband and every wife. Instead, there are a few standard roles that are either universal or nearly universal and then a wide variety of ways to apply them to a specific marriage.[12] I say “nearly universal” because there are some situations in which these roles are impractical. Due to the Fall, serious diseases, disabilities, and injuries can either temporarily or permanently prevent spouses from fulfilling these roles. Seasons of life may also make these roles impractical. For example, my sister desired to fulfill the role of stay-at-home wife and mother but had to be the primary breadwinner while my brother-in-law was in seminary. This temporary reversal of roles ultimately served their long-term mission. The important point is that these situations are the exception and not the rule. Therefore, unless dictated by debilitating circumstances or short-term objectives that serve the long-term mission, we must consider these nearly universal roles to be universal for all intents and purposes.[13]
In conclusion, every person—and every marriage—needs a mission. This mission begins with the Cultural Mandate and Great Commission, which we then apply to our specific context. Roles within marriage then come from this mission, as husband and wife apply their unique skills to advance their common mission. As Christian couples across the nation do this, we will stop the acceleration of our societal spacecraft on a trajectory to nowhere and steadily correct our course to align with God’s very good design for marriage and gender that will bring Him glory and us joy. Only then can we regain our balance and avoid falling off the roof.
NOTES
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.
[2] Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower, New York, NY: Twelve: 2016.
[3] Jonathan D. Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11, Powder Springs, GA: Creation Ministries International: 2015: 265.
[4] Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 2005: 126.
[5] Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2019: 33.
[6] Simon Sinek, Start With Why, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2011, 39.
[7] Simon Sinek, Start With Why, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2011, 66-68.
[8] George W. Knight, III, “The Family and the Church: How Should Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Work Out in Practice?”, in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 417.
[9] Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2019: 64-66.
[10] Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2019: 66-68.
[11]All of these examples are found in Simon Sinek, Start With Why, New York, NY: Portfolio: 2011.
[12] George W. Knight, III, “The Family and the Church: How Should Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Work Out in Practice?”, in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 417-418.
[13] George W. Knight, III, “The Family and the Church: How Should Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Work Out in Practice?”, in John Piper and Wayne Grudem, ed., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 1991: 420-421.
