Bradley Way
Mrs. Burnett
AP English
26 February 2015
The Awakening is obviously about women's rights and, more than that, women's role in society. Any reader could see throughout the novel the struggle faced by Edna in finding herself and where women stand in society. At that time, it was obvious that men believed themselves superior and it has been that way throughout the ages in most societies. America is making a very big step forward in equal rights, especially over the past century. The U.S. is not alone in this pursuit, however, there are still countries out there who still believe in the superiority of men. This battle is a long one, but as you can see across the world, one willing to be fought.
As you have seen in my past posts, I enjoy bringing my faith into the matter. So, the question for today is this: is God sexist? For any question relating to the Christian God, which the Bible would say is the only god, we must search the Christian scripture, the Bible.
Over the past few decades, give or take, the Bible and those who believe have been accused of being sexist and against the well-being of women in general. The scripture used for these arguments are always verse throughout the epistles that say, "A wife must submit to her husband." However, you will never hear someone making this claim against Christians say the rest of these certain passages. So, let us dive into the Word and see what is really going on here.
Start with 1 Corinthians 7:1-6 — a passage on marriage. Paul writes that since we as human beings have such a desire to reproduce and enjoy the act of reproducing, we should be married so that we are not driven to temptation throughout our lives. As he writes, Paul says in verse 4, "For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. LIKEWISE the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does." I added the emphasis myself because it is very important to see the equality here.
Now still even after hearing that, one may ask, "Well, that is still screwed up, shouldn't I be in control of my own body?" It's important to note what the act of sex really is doing. In Genesis chapter 2, we see God's creation of man, woman, and marriage. To summarize, God creates Adam and sees that he shouldn't be alone, it isn't a good lifestyle, so He creates Eve. In doing so, God creates marriage as well. Genesis 2:24 reads, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." The act of becoming "one flesh" is, in fact, sex. With the way God created marriage, He intended that sex be between a man and wife only. Throghout history, this practice has obviously been ignored. However, God desired this because if sex is shared between a man and his wife only (know past partners), then that would be something they would both share between them and no one else. They would have something of each other's that would connect them for the length of their marriage. Therefore, through this shared love and experience, a wife would be forever connected to her husband and a husband would be connected to his wife. In other words, they would have that bit of "control" over each other not in the sense of using them for whatever they selfishly want, but in the sense that they are in mutual control of each other through their bond.
Other passges used in this argument are such like Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, and 1 Peter 3:1-7. For the sake of keeping this blog as short as possible, let's just use the Ephesians passage. The first few verses say this, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." The first question I would assume to hear is, "what's this 'husband is the head of his wife' deal?" When it comes to relationships (husband and wife as well as Jesus' relationship with the church), being the head of someone does in fact mean being the leader. However, the job of a leader, biblically speaking, is to never do selfish acts, abusing that role. Let's look at the example of Christ as the head of the church. Jesus' primary reason for coming to earth was to save those who would believe in Him, the church. He suffered and died for the church, and is considered the head of the church. This means in the same way, a husband must be self-sacrificing towards his wife, putting her before himself always, never in a self-pleasuring manner, but always doing what is in his wife and family's best interest.
Even continuing on in the passage in Ephesians, verses 25-33 goes on to explain the role of a husband in what could be said, an intimidating fashion. Stating that we should always be looking at our wives as God's greatest creation, treating her as we would ourselves ("For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it..."), and loving her like Christ loves the church.
When we dig deeper into the Bible, I believe a Christian could sympathize with Edna in The Awakening. She wanted equality and she wanted a someone who loved the idea of just her, not the idea of what that society described as marriage. Jesus is not sexist, quite far from it. There is so much more evidence for this in the scripture, however I know Mrs. Burnett has others to grade so I will end on this: having a perfect relationship with a spouse is impossible, but if we embrace the inspired words of Paul, we come closer and closer to the perfect image of marriage God has before the fall.
