Christian Pastor: The Reason Most Marriages Go Bad Is That Women “Believe They Are Equal Partners”

According to a bizarre sermon by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, the Senior Pastor of Christ Embassy Ministries (a mostly online church, with a few physical locations), women need to do a better job of listening to their husbands because the only successful marriage is one where women obey their masters.

Husband does not mean the male partner in a marriage, husband means master.

The reason for most problems in Christian marriages is the fact that women refuses God’s definition of marriage and form theirs. They believe they are equal partners.

If most women had their fathers bold enough to talk to them, they will be very successful in their marriage and they will be very happy people. Most women have never been taught by their parents, their fathers particularly and that’s their biggest problem because they don’t know who a man is, they think he is another woman.

…

Your secret is in obedience, your secret is in listening to your husband, your secret is in doing the things that please him. When you don’t do the things that please him, you take the role of a mother or of an older sister.

…

A wise woman will always be an influence to her husband, the foolish one will always annoy the husband, make him mad, make him angry and when you make him angry, you will be the victim. Learn to listen to your husband, practice it, tell yourself that you are going to do it because that is where your beauty is.

Once you stop listening, your beauty evaporates. You wonder why you are dressing and he can’t see it, he doesn’t remember your last hair style. Beauty is in obedience. That’s where the Glory is.

And Oyakhilome would know because he has a successful marriage his wife filed for divorce years ago.

This sort of patriarchal thinking is nothing new in the Christian world. But most pastors at least pretend that husband and wife are equal; they just have different roles in a marriage. Oyakhilome does away with that pretense, telling women they just need to shut up and obey. Anything less makes them ugly.

This is also messed up because the sermon suggests that someone who doesn’t treat his wife as inferior is somehow less of a man.

I had some hope people were at least pushing back against his message, but a scroll through the hundreds of Facebook comments underneath that post along with the nearly 3,000 shares suggests that people are buying his bullshit without criticism.

My condolences to the women who’ll eventually have to put up with shitty husbands who think this is good advice.

(Thanks to Nii for the link)