Twitter is a bad place to debate 2000 years of theology. Twitter is a bad place to debate pretty much anything, actually, but it's an especially a bad place to debate theology. The harsh character limit and throwaway nature of posts means it's basically encouraged to just say whatever is on your mind at that very moment, which tends to be very stupid and emotionally charged. This does not bode well when you're trying to talk about about the implications of the existence of an omnipotent deity, His will, and what He defines as partnership in marriage.

Such was the case when Twitter user @Utterly_Jean made the following Tweet, the overhead of which is going to add an entire second to loading this page:

I feel really bad for young Christian women who are trying to date Christian men but encounter controlling guys who only care about the Bible as a way of coercing women to submit.

— Monica ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 (@Utterly_Jean) October 7, 2024

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Monica's statement got a lot of, as one would guess, stupid and emotionally charged throaway responses. I will not reproduce them here because I'd feel obligated to archive them all, and it seems like the lot of them have deleted their posts and privated their accounts, but a lot of them were essentially some form of "Actually, the Bible says men are masters and women are called to submit like slaves to them". While I didn't comb through the accounts of everyone who expressed this sentiment with pinpoint accuracy, I was surprised at how many people were at least claiming to be Christian.

This saddened me greatly, because it presented Christian marriage in the absolute worst possible light; a relationship of a dominating, authoritarian man that exists purely to subjigate a woman who is submissive not out of love or respect, but out of fear of the man's power. In this system, the man basically reaps all of the benefits while the woman only serves to be a dispenser for whatever the man wants; food, sex, children, etc. irrespective of the woman's desires. I feel physically ill just thinking about a relationship like this. I don't want my brothers and sisters in Christ to think this is how it should work.

At the same time, it occurs to me that a lot of these people may not actually know what it means to be married. Maybe they were raised in a household where the master-slave marriage was the norm, or maybe popular culture depictions of Christian marriage as controlling have subconsciously warped their minds into thinking this is how it works. Maybe one fence-sitting atheist saw the tweetstorm that unfurled and thought that this view of marriage was the general consensus for Christians. In any case, I want to refute this idea on biblical grounds.

Firstly, it's important to dispel the notion that I think underpins this entire argument; that men are the "better" sex and women are therefore somehow inferior. While women may be physically weaker than man, their differences should not be seen as strong versus weak, but rather that both sexes have different but equally important roles. Men are called to be leaders of their households, as Christ is the leader of the church. ("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." -Ephesians 5:23, ESV) Women are called to follow men and "submit to their husbands as to the Lord" (Ephesians 5:22). Note the usage of "submit" here. This does not mean that the man is to overpower the woman and treat her as his servant, but rather that the women is to yield to his authority, as followers of Christ are, in the same way, called to yield to the authority of church leaders (Hebrews 13:17) and, most importantly, God himself (James 4:7). Essentially, the man is the leader, but the woman is his supporter. These roles work together to create harmony in marriage; one cannot exist without the other, or one cannot be strong while the other is weak.

Again, I emphasize, note how none of this specifically implies superiority or inferiority; indeed, man and women are created in God's image ("So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." -Genesis 1:27, ESV) and Paul reaffirms the equality of man and women in God's eyes ("There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." -Galatians 3:28 ESV).

With all of this in mind, you can clearly observe the equality of men and women, despite their different roles in marriage. Men and women are meant to complement each other, which is why marriage is described as a man and a woman becoming one flesh (Genesis 2:24).

The "master-slave" marriage is therefore unbiblical because it creates an asymmetrical situation where man and woman are not equal partners united in purpose and spirit, but rather a slave subservient to a master. The women's unique talents, personality, and intelligence are judged as obstacles to the desires and wants of the man. This leads to unhappiness in the marriage; the woman is undervalued, only "used" for whatever the man wants, and the man sees his wife as a roadblock to what he personally desires, instead of a partner to cherish, love, and respect, as the Lord cherishes and loves us. Unhappiness leads to arguments, cheating, divorce, and a general breakdown of marriage's representation of God's love for the church and us. Worse, children are caught in the crossfire; children of divorced parents have been proven in multiple scientific studies to struggle more in life with addiction, anxiety, and depression, which leads to a harder time forming meaningful relationships...and so on and so forth. It creates a vicious generational cycle that cannot be easily broken.

I'd like to close this out with what I feel is most important. If you are one of the people who replied to the original tweet with some form of the original master-slave sentiment, I encourage you, if you are Christian, to take this post not as an attack on you personally, but a request to reorient your beliefs to better serve the one who died for you. Many of you either deleted your tweets or locked your accounts, so on some level it seems like you understand that your reactions to Monica's tweet were based in anger and unbiblical beliefs.

If you are a non-Christian--well, I'm shocked you clicked on this article at all--but if you are, and you believe that the master-slave marriage is based in biblical belief to some degree; I encourage you to really dig into what the Bible really says on marriage. Get a Bible and maybe start asking your annoying Christian friends who are constantly inviting you to church questions about it. There is so much more to marriage than mutual transactions and sex.

And lastly, to everyone; stop getting your opinions on the opposite sex from social media. There are demonic forces in this world working to sabotage you, and part of that is convincing you that the gender that's meant to serve as your partner and other half--50% of the entire planet--is conspiring against you. Evil is smart, and evil knows how to use a computer. Do not let them win.