Can Feminism and Godly Submission Co-exist?

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What’s up beautiful people. It’s a new month and I hope April has been treating you well. Today I want to share some of my views on this topic. What you will read here are completely my views based on my understanding of things I have read or seen so please don’t just absorb everything without sifting and discerning my words. With that being said let's get started!

What exactly is Feminism? 

According to Google, Feminism is the advocacy of women’s right on the basis of the equality of the sexes. I think this definition best expresses what I personally term feminism to be. I firmly believe people should be treated, honored and respected equally regardless of their sex, origin, status, race or ethnicity. Now, I understand that the world has distorted what I believe feminism stands for or to better put some people have painted feminism to be female superiority or anything people imagine when they hear the word. I on the other hand understood exactly what feminism was but I just couldn’t wrap my head around how I could be a feminist and be a submissive wife.

Let me clarify some things before I continue. My conflict with being a submissive wife is not from experience because I have none, it's instead from my intepretation of what I assumed godly submission was based of how the society I grew up in portrayed it to me. Although I am blessed to have parents who are godly and whose marriage was and still is a great example of how Christ loves his bride (the church) that being said, I also got to see so many marriages that in no way portrayed what a godly marriage should look like. 

I grew up in a society that encouraged toxic masculinity, men could literally do whatever they wanted and got away with it simply because they were men. I grew up hearing distorted views like men don’t cry, men will always be men, a woman’s place is in the kitchen, as a woman no matter how much degree you get you will only end up in your husband’s house, etc. However, even though I watched my parents endeavor to be like Christ in their marriage, in my defense to making sure no man ever treated me like I was less of a human because of my gender I was completely against the word SUBMISSION. Like whenever I heard that word my defense mechanism would become strong. SHIELDS UP! 

     I heavily despised the word, what it stood for and was in no way shape or form going to let anyone talk me into believing it could actually mean something worth listening to. You see, I believe as christians one of the main theme in our journey with Jesus is constantly dying to our self and rising with Christ and that in itself is SUBMISSION. The fact that you and I came to terms that we are desperately in need of a savior is SUBMISSION. 

Ephesians 5:22-25 (NIV) 

22 Wives submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 

 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her  

Before you and I can do anything Christ has called us to do we must be in complete submission to the Lord. We realize that for a wife to know how to submit to her husband she must have been submitting to the Lord, as a wife we submit to our own husband as we do to the Lord. Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church. For a husband to know how to love his wife like Christ does he must learn from the one who commanded him to do so and in learning his posture will be in complete submission. So as wives you are technically submitting to a man who is submitting to the Lord, I don’t know anything that beats that.

From my experience in submitting to the Lord I honestly don’t think the act itself is easy but we have the one who laid down all of his rights for you and I to have free access to him today, so with him living in the inside of us SUBMISSION IS POSSIBLE. Submission is in fact God's commandment to us.

So back to my opening question, Can Feminism and Godly Submission Co-exist? My answer is yes, I do believe male and female were created equally in God’s image, equal in being but different in roles. And I believe for us to perfectly portray the marriages or relationships that God intends, we all need to walk in our roles, and for that to happen we need to submit to God so he can guide us in stewarding those roles. 

Till next time fam. Peace.