Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself…”

Ephesians 5:25-33a

One of my all-time favorite movies is John Ford’s “The Quiet Man”. If you haven’t seen it, the movie tells the story of a retired boxer Sean Thornton, played by John Wayne, who quits boxing after killing a man in the ring and moves to Ireland to start a new life. While there, he falls in love with and marries Kate, played by Maureen O’Hara, who is a fiery redhead with a strong sense of independence. They have a long argument that baffles Sean - Mary Kate’s brother refuses to give them the dowry that belongs to her because he doesn’t want them to get married.

There'll be no locks or bolts between us, Mary Kate... except those in your own mercenary little heart!

On their wedding night, after Sean has refused to retrieve her dowry, Mary Kate runs into their bedroom and locks the door. But her husband kicks it down: “There’ll be no locks or bolts between us Mary Kate, except those in your own mercenary little heart.” He then kisses her and throws her on the bed (which promptly collapses) before exiting to sleep by himself on the kitchen floor.

Unlike “Trooper” Thornton, today’s husbands are all too accepting of the barriers thrown up between themselves and their wives. The church has failed its women, the culture is set against women, and the third culprit in the pandemic of divorce upon the church is husbands, whose passive ways have allowed the disease to fester and overcome their wives through lack of leadership. This failure to lead is seen largely in meekly allowing the permissive church to fail in its role, in standing by while an aggressive culture poisons the family, and neglecting patriarchal responsibility, all of which then generates disarmed women who imagine they are strong to flounder along on their own.

It’s one thing to let her lead on demanding a refund on those shoes. It’s another to hide behind her to avoid conflict yourself.

1) Failure to lead at church. This isn’t about female clergy, though it could be argued that the rise of female clergy has flowed from the failure of men to lead. No, instead, it is the failure of men to lead and stand against the errors of the church in its failures. New clergy are warned to keep the “blue-haired old ladies” happy…and so they should! But, when the ladies, or men, place the women in the church at risk with the errors I mentioned before, it is the responsibility of the men of the church to step in and correct the errors, despite the guaranteed flak they will receive for that correction. Instead, the men say something to the effect, “happy wife, happy life”, as if that justifies problematic teaching and its impact upon those very wives. Also, as a rule it is one or more husbands who set the church ministries upon those very courses that set women up for marital failure in the first place - senior pastors, discipleship ministers, and Sunday School directors. It is husbands who are the cause of the church’s errors at worst or passively allow those errors to start and grow at best.

The “most powerful hero in the MCU” is also the least interesting and least believable character - her only weakness is not knowing how awesome she really is. No husband, no children, and no interest in either. Yet this is what the culture tries to claim is an ideal feminine character, and men throw money at it.

2) Failure to lead against the culture. Many husbands are quite happy to let their wives fall under (or continue to suffer under) the lies of the culture. Recognizing the greater stress and responsibility that children bring, husbands are quite willing to delay procreation and have “responsibility-free sex” for many years. Instead of telling their wives about and encouraging them in their superpower of child-bearing, husbands often prefer to ignore it and hope it doesn’t trouble them for a good, long time. They send their wives, who married them at least in part for provision and protection, out into the culture to work and make money so they can have a more financially robust and residentially comfortable life. It isn’t so much that husbands are telling wives that having children is a problem, but they act as if it is so, and that pregnancy is something to be avoided, while laboring in the workforce is desired. Husbands propagate the problem by insisting their wives go back to work as soon as possible, and the wife is often happy to do so and leave the daily burden of child-rearing to surrogates in government schools and day cares. When wives get their identity, meaning, and positive feedback from work, and are not getting any at home from husbands, the culture’s poison seeps deeper and deeper.

The feminine ideal of the church. Is Mary, the Mother of God, a boss babe? A badass? Sure, but not in the way those terms are intended.

3) Failure to lead in their patriarchal responsibilities. As Paul writes in the fifth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, husbands have a sacrificial duty to thier wives. Much is said about in church culture about husbands loving their wives romantically, and that’s important, but that’s also clearly not what the passage is about. It is about sacrificial love, a love that gives of self, to the detriment of self, for the improvement of the other.

The passage says that Christ died for His church, not because she was a spotless bride prepared for Him, but in order to make her so. The sacrificial love of Jesus is one that is not only sacrificial in regard to himself but also completely undeserved for his bride. In order for her to become the bride she is supposed to be, he must sacrifice for her first. The love of a husband for his wife isn’t one of mutual compromise - it is gracious self-denial. We often confuse this with romantic love because many men are not particularly romantic, and thus expressions of romance are considered a form of self-denial. That may be so, but it is far from the fulfillment of the command for husbands to love and lead their wives as Christ, the head of the church, leads and loves his bride.

Instead, we do what we like and do what’s easy. We go to work and make money, and the better we do at work, the more money we make. Provision! Well, she is also going to work every day and sending the kids off to government schools, but I’m providing! And all that money from work goes to putting us in a safer, nicer neighborhood with safer, nicer government schools and daycares. Protection! And, since I work so hard and make so much money, I’ve earned the right to have my “me” time and my hobbies that not only don’t involve her, they will never involve her because I know she doesn’t like golf or hunting or video games. If she complains about the time I spend on those, I remind her of how well I’m Protecting and Providing. I don’t even have to worry about a complaint about spending too much money on those things because she has her own job and her own money to do what she wants. I’m even fostering her independence! What a husband and father I am!

“So I says, ‘you can relax here with the kids while I hit the links with the boys!’”

But deep down, we know that’s wrong. We know that the husband and father is responsible for his family - not just in putting food on the table and a safe house over their heads (which are, I admit, probably far too little valued these days), but in sacrificial leadership as the head of the household to draw his wife and children into growth and fullness. It is his responsibility to ensure family systems are structured in order to bolster faith. It is his responsibility to find ways for his children to contribute to their church. It is his responsibility to proactively choose and encourage character-developing activities and education for the children. It is his responsibility to actively pursue, build up, and support his wife in her feminine aspects of motherhood, homemaker, and nurturer. It is his responsibility to keep the temptations and lies of a God-hating culture out of the home. And if that means you don’t get to buy the things you want, don’t get to spend extra time at work and get that promotion you think you deserve, and don’t get to spend “your” time on yourself, then those are small prices to pay for knowing that you are a man who does what a man is supposed to do in the eyes of God and in every culture that has been in existence until the last five minutes of human history. Those are small prices to pay as we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for an intact family, for healthy children who grow into healthy adults, and for a legacy of familial piety and character that stands out like a star shining in the darkness of the cultural void around us, a “crooked and perverse generation.” (Philippians 2:12-19)

Men, it’s on us. Let’s get to work.