For the Christian, there is never a point of no return. God can restore the lost years eaten by locusts (Joel 2:25). That being said, things won’t magically turn around without concerted effort. Husbands, it starts with you. You are not your wife’s helper. God has not made you to help realize your wife’s vision for the home. God has made you to help her, help you, realize God’s vision for your home.

Last week our men’s group spent some time discussing complementarianism — specifically why, as a movement, it largely failed.

Complementarianism, as Dale Partridge explains. . .

“. . . is a theological view that holds men and women to have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and civil government. This perspective argues that while men and women are equal in value and dignity, they have distinct roles, with men typically serving as leaders in the home and church and women typically fulfilling supportive and nurturing roles.”

Popularized by men like John Piper and Wayne Grudem, the complementarian system initially seemed to be a solution to the inroads of feminism into the church. It was backed by many reformed celebrities, seemed to accurately reflect the biblical reality of marriage, and even came with a website.

But although it was a needed correction, and said many good and true things, it soon became clear it wasn’t nearly enough of a correction. True, it shifted the compass needle, but as anyone who’s been lost in the woods for three weeks will tell you, walk 355 degrees North long enough and you’ll eventually just be going West. The longer a movement goes on, the more likely any initial miscalculations will reveal themselves.

Thirty-five years into the complimentarian movement, we can confidently say things have gone bad. Why did they go bad? I think for several reasons, but the big two were: 1) A sheepishness towards Scripture’s assumed and unapologetic patriarchy, manifested in the many ways men were no longer “allowed” to call women to the same standard of repentance as men. 2) A loss in translation between “Young, Restless, and Reformed” posturing and the actual execution of repentance at a local church level.

In other words, there was enough of a correction for Christians to take their kids out of public school and start homeschooling. There was enough of a correction for Christians to affirm certain biblical norms, i.e., husbands as breadwinners, moms as homemakers, children as blessings, etc.

But that’s — well, that’s kind of where the whole thing just ran out of steam.

Under the auspices of complimentarianism, husbands would eventually servant-leader themselves into irrelevance, leaving wives to momma bear the heck out of their households. Husbands, unwilling to take on the risks and responsibilities of leadership, accepted their role as token “principals” and curriculum wallets. Wives, left to navigate through the void, sought validation of their lonely enterprise through trad-wife online influencers.

Turns out it wasn’t enough to pay homage to the form of obedience. It wasn’t enough to just play the part. We needed to love the substance underneath.

Creation Order Redux

Men and women DO compliment each other, but in more than just an uneasy ceasefire. We find positive and proactive direction in Genesis 2:15-22:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

When God made Adam, he also gave him a job description, which was to move Eden from a state of sublime profusion to a state of sublime definition. “That’s a piranha,” Adam starts, “That’s an anaconda, and there’s a turkey vulture.”

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