Great points and questions,
@steve and
@Pacman.
I find it comical seeing women claim they are submitting because they do something their husband asked. But when they don't like what he asked they argue and often end up not doing it.
That's definitely not submission and is more akin to the posture of a spoiled brat, but, at the same time, we are remiss if we fix our gaze only on the woman in the scenario; if, like the spoiled child, she can 'get away with it,' what does that say about the leadership ability of the man (which is
his responsibility in the matter)?
Submission implies that you disagree with or at least dislike what you are being told to do. If you are in agreement that's not submission it's agreement...
The thing about all this is that it's a dance between two human beings, so I would say that being in agreement isn't necessarily
not submission; sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Submission is a
posture for a woman, an approach to her man in which she, in a sense, makes an ongoing commitment to agree with her man in almost all circumstances, even in cases in which she considers it essential to provide some initial challenging input, because both individuals know that, after all has been taken into consideration,
she is going to agree with going forward with the ultimate decisions made by her man -- in such a way that she jointly takes responsibility for all the resulting ramifications of those decisions, and no one outside the marriage can perceive any conflict. The conflict gets addressed in the lead-up to the decision and dies a certain death at the point of decision, and when a woman is truly submissive, she follows her husband's lead.
@steve presented the global biblical definitions of submission:
“
Outline of Biblical Usage:
- to arrange under, to subordinate
- to subject, put in subjection
- to subject one's self, obey
- to submit to one's control
- to yield to one's admonition or advice
- to obey, be subject
This word was a Greek military term meaning "to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader". In non-military use, it was "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden".”
I like how
@steve brought in the fact that the Greek word was a military term that was also applicable in non-military considerations, because that articulates the distinction between submission and surrender. In most effective militaries, to put oneself into that hierarchy of authority is
voluntary submission; in command-control tyrannies, in which the armies are predominantly made up of people being forced to participate, to do so is to surrender from the outset -- and such armies have historically been far less formidable, especially in the long term. We use the term, "knuckling under," to indicate situations in which there isn't much of a choice. This is not submission; it's just "caving in." And what it leads to isn't partnership in any sense of the term but instead just plain slavery.
My perception is that, in that list of usages, in regard to the posture of wives submitting to their husbands, definition #5 is most applicable, because it is a voluntary
yielding to the leadership of one's husband on the part of a wife, whereas often men get hung up on expecting their wives to comply with definition #4, which is really much more applicable to the appropriate posture of a child toward parents. It is also the case, in my humble opinion based on observation and study, that the vast majority of men who are obsessed with insisting that their wives demonstrate the type of submission that defines them as being in control of those wives did not in any real way articulate this expectation before entering into their permanent relationships. Had they done so, they would have saved themselves some heartache --
if this desire to be
in control is essential to them, because they would have either started out their relationship with clear expectations, or they would have discovered themselves wondering where their women went -- in which case one has to reasonable assume that they didn't make such expectations clear
because they were afraid of losing the prospective mate. In such circumstances, it is functionally unfair for the men to go on to grind the ax of, "My wife just won't submit." When I hear that, I also automatically hear, "And you took her on without addressing that, which means you only have yourself to blame, so either transform yourself or shut the f*** up."
What is too often lost is that it is imperative for the man who desires and will deserve submission from his wife to demonstrate the types of
leadership that inspire submission. As men, we are made responsible by God and His Word to protect our women, and that protection extends to
protecting them from having to live life insecurely under the dominance of a man who demonstrates significant leadership deficits. This, too, is, to me, characteristic of far too many men who complain about women not being submissive enough.
Do we?
Or do we submit to a superior argument?
Or sometimes just give up to maintain something that resembles peace?
It wasn’t all that long ago that an admin quit the site in the midst of a strenuous argument and I don’t remember any calls for mutual submission. Calls to disengage, yes, but not to submit.
My answers to your questions are, Yes, Yes and Yes.
Sometimes we submit to a superior argument. More often I would say that this, again, is part of a dance, this time a dance among male equals. Not one of us is (a) a Master of All Trades but instead (b) a Master of One or Some or (c) a Jack of All Trades and Master of None (there are other categories, like Deadbeat, but I'm very reasonably assuming there are none of those among
us). As such, it's not so much a matter of submitting
to but a matter of submitting
with, which comes close to what is being bandied about as 'mutual submission.' I'm certainly not close to fully on board with author Wilber's take on the matter, but what I'm suggesting is that we do have here a framework within which we are building some interdependence based on varying skill sets that grant us potential access to the benefit of economies of scale, which, by the way, is one of the best
functional arguments for plural marriage in modern times.
I would not in any circumstances I can imagine at the moment advise giving up to maintain something that resembles peace. A young woman with whom I'm currently enthralled recently started a discussion by asserting that she feels marginalized most of the time because of a trait she has that she wishes everyone else had and is certain the world would be better off for if everyone felt free to exhibit it: willingness to confront any unresolved conflict combined with a commitment to addressing any necessary component of that conflict until it
is resolved (as I'm sure wouldn't surprise you, I have paraphrased her, but that's the definite gist of it). Why
do people shy away from addressing conflicts and unresolved issues head-on? The short answer is, some variant of
fear, so the uncomfortable label for that is one degree or another of cowardice. To create the illusion of peace isn't, therefore, even a worthwhile objective, but to shrink from standing up for what one believes is a compounding bloody shame. The submission in that case isn't to another
person; it's submission, or better yet surrender, to one's own fears.
