Troublesome Topic: The Starting Point and Ending Point Regarding a Woman’s Authority

Dear sister in Christ, you are free to choose self-actualization, self-expression and the realization of your personal dreams and aspirations. You can choose to grant yourself the authority to make things happen in your home and in your life. You can choose to act in ways that will minimize insecurity. But there is a consequence, a price that will be paid, because everything comes at a price. In exchange for you choosing authority, the lines of authority established by God long ago will be disrupted, which in turn, has its own set of consequences.

God had to choose between emphasizing clear lines of authority, or the self-actualization, self-expression and the realization of personal dreams by His subjects (both men and women). He chose to emphasize the lines of authority.

Why are lines of authority, and respect for authority, so important to God? This is one of the ways He teaches us that He is the supreme authority, and we must submit to Him. If we do not submit, there will be serious consequences. We need to be constantly reminded to follow His will, not our own, choose His standards, not the world’s, and do what He desires, not what we desire. God cares a great deal about respect for authority because we need such respect if we want to grow closer to Him.

However, my use of the phrase “lines of authority” may cause people to think that I believe that women cannot have their own personal relationship with God apart from their husbands. That is not what I believe. Rather the phrase “lines of authority” best describes what I see in Scripture, as long as we understand that God works with us as individuals and He communicates with women individually just like He does with men. No one needs to go through someone else to talk to God or to hear from God.

My phrase “lines of authority” is not about one’s relationship with God, but about who the ultimate decision-maker will be in a given situation. Sometimes the decision-maker will be God; sometimes it will be Dad, sometimes it will be Mom; sometimes it will even be big brother or big sister as they learn to make good choices and practice being an example. But, other than God, each one needs to remember that he or she never holds authority apart from also being in submission to someone higher. Authority does not belong to that person, it belongs to God who has shared it with that person for a specific task or setting.

I said that God chose lines of authority over self-actualization because  I believe God does not place a priority on helping you reach your personal dreams and aspirations; His first priority is that you learn to do His will and thus glorify Him. While he allows you to pursue your personal goals, His will and His glory come first in His mind and should come first in our minds.

A man must first seek to fulfill all his God-appointed responsibilities before seeking to satisfy his self-appointed goals. Among his God-appointed responsibilities are: being a man of integrity and treating his wife and children with the kind of self-sacrificial love that Jesus showed the church Ephesians 5:25.

Likewise, a wife must first seek to fulfill all her God-appointed responsibilities before seeking to satisfy her self-appointed goals. Among her God-appointed responsibilities are: showing proper respect to the authority figures over her, especially her husband, and caring for her husband and children in a way that glorifies God.

A woman may think that there are no consequences for taking authority which was given not given to her. To her the options look equal. Or she may see only positive consequences such as diminished insecurity, making things happen that she knows need to happen, or filling the gap left by her husband’s passivity.

However, there are indeed some negative consequences that come when a woman seeks to take authority that was not given to her. What are they?

1. It feeds other things that pertain to self. All of the things I mentioned above that a woman is free to choose have to do with self – self-actualization, self-expression, the realization of personal dreams, and taking authority for oneself, have to do with self. If you prioritize self rather than prioritizing God in one area of your life, it will foment similar prioritizing choices in other parts of your life. This hurts your ability to get as close to God as you would otherwise.

2. By your own choices you will keep joy, fulfillment and a sense of security out of your reach. By seeking self-satisfaction, you will not be as satisfied as you could be by seeking to satisfy God first and yourself third or fourth. This is true for the man as well.

3. If the one who was designed to be a supportive rescuer changes roles and decides to be the leader and protector, the consequence will be that when she needs to be rescued or protected, there will be no one to protect and rescue her because she is now in the role of protector. If anyone, a man or a woman, steps outside of God’s stated design and purpose, that person can no longer assume that God will protect them or provide for them. They can do no other than to rely on God’s mercy and grace to do for them what would have been assured if they had stayed within His plan.

4. You will force others around you to pay a high price for your choices. Whenever we choose to step outside of the lines of authority that God has established, it brings a cascade of consequences, but the most obvious ones are consequences that others must pay. Consequences 1-3 are personal for the woman, but not very visible to others. This consequence is much more visible, but it usually effects others even more than it affects the woman. In America, we have the disintegration of many families in part because we have chosen as a society to set aside the God-established lines of authority and we are doing things our own way instead. Because of that collective choice, and because we are ignoring God in many other ways, our culture is seeing rampant divorce, children being raised with so many authority figures in their lives they don’t know whom to obey so some consider themselves their own authority. There are also many children that suffer many emotional wounds which they carry into adulthood, making them less capable of raising their own children in a healthy manner.

So, dear sister in Christ, you are free to reject the clear set of teachings in Scripture about lines of authority. You can explain them away as nothing more than the cultural norms of a bygone era. But every choice and every action has a price tag to be paid. Consider carefully the price tag of this choice. By setting aside God’s clear system of authority structures, you are putting your own desires ahead of others who may suffer in more obvious ways than you will. A vacuum in leadership does not change the need for an authority structure that is clear (see WHAT IF THERE REALLY IS A VACUUM OF AUTHORITY?). If you learn to put aside self as God desires, it will enable you to reject selfish tendencies in other ways and then you will grow spiritually in ways that were impossible before. That principle holds true for all of us.

Now that you have read this, I encourage you to read through other lessons under this topic to see the basis for my conclusions, to get a fuller perspective on this issue, or to take a closer look at some difficult passages of Scripture that address this topic.

The next lesson is: A Summary of the Biblical Roles of Men and Women