Opinion
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 Gage Skidmore, CC

May 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Former child actor Kirk Cameron is facing fierce criticism for defending a Biblical understanding of the relationship between husband and wife. 

Cameron, who speaks to church groups about improving marriages, told the Christian Post that when husbands and wives focus on their own responsibilities and not what their spouses ought to be doing, marriages improve. 

Husbands should “love their wives and not…tell their wives that they need to submit to them,” Cameron said.  But he provoked the ire of feminists by adding, “Wives are to honor and respect and follow their husband’s lead, not to tell their husband how he ought to be a better husband.  When each person gets their part right, regardless of how their spouse is treating them, there is hope for real change in their marriage.” 

Cameron immediately faced backlash on Twitter and from the media.  Many perceived his comments as sexist and demeaning to women.

But it seems to me that Cameron is just urging people to be the best husband or wife they can be and upholding the Christian understanding of marriage.  Yes, the Christian understanding of marriage instructs wives to “submit” to their husbands, but it also instructs men to “love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church” (Ephesians 5:25), in the process of heading their households.

The most frequently ignored part of this passage in Ephesians is the command to men to love their wives the way Christ loved His Church.  If you believe the teachings of Christianity, this means men have to be willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, for the sake of their wives. 

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it with the laver of water and the word of life, that He might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy, and without blemish,” Ephesians continues.  “So also men ought to love their wives, as their own bodies.  For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the Church…”

Last year, Monsignor Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington destroyed the notion that the Biblical concept of spousal relationships is anti-woman.  “Jesus sets aside the worldly notion of authority, wherein those in authority wield their power by ‘lording it over’ others using fear and the trappings of power,” Msgr. Pope wrote on his popular blog.  “In the Christian setting there is authority (there has to be), but it exists for service.”

Msgr. Pope likened a husband’s authority over his family to the authority of a classroom teacher or police officer.  Their authority is for the service and protection of others, Msgr. Pope wrote, not to make them powerful.

And let’s not forget that Cameron has a point: husbands generally do lead their families, usually by supporting them financially and providing a masculine balance to their wives’ femininity. 

“Having authority in a Christian setting does not make one ‘better’ than another, for authority is always exercised among equals. Our greatest dignity is to be a child of God, and none of us is more so just because we hold a position of authority,” Msgr. Pope wrote.

Is Cameron being sexist?  Hardly.  It seems to me that’s he’s just articulating some uncontroversial truths about marriage: men and women have different roles in the Sacrament, husbands should cherish and adore their wives, and marriages can be strengthened by individuals working on improving themselves rather than imposing their will on their spouse.