![\"peacock\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/292\/2015\/01\/peacock.jpg\")
<\/a>If you want international media attention, here\u2019s one way to get it: simply quote the Bible on headship and submission in marriage.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s what Gavin Peacock<\/a> just did. Peacock is a pastor in Calgary, Alberta, and a former star soccer player in the UK. (I speak with CBMW at Peacock\u2019s church, Calvary Grace, next week\u2013here are the details<\/a>.) Following a long career\u2013which included multiple goals for Chelsea against Manchester United (!)\u2013Peacock became a widely-loved soccer commentator for the BBC.<\/p>\n Not long after, he gave it all up. He left Britain and moved to wintry (and beautiful) Canada. Peacock is now a pastor.\u00a0All of which is just fine with the British media. CBMW covered Peacock\u2019s life in a long-form profile<\/a> last year, and writer Aaron Hanbury found that Peacock was warmly thought of in his native land.<\/p>\n But on January 6th, Peacock Tweeted<\/a> about biblical gender roles. He wrote three in particular that set off a firestorm:<\/p>\n \u201cGod\u2019s divine design for marriage in male headship and female submission is complementary not competitive.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWives: one of the primary ways you are to respect your husband is by gladly submitting to and encouraging his leadership.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHusbands: one of your primary duties in loving your wife is to feed her with the Word of God daily.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s hard to sum up how fierce some of the response Gavin received was. Here\u2019s the Daily Mail<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0The Independent<\/em><\/a>, The Mirror<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Telegraph<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>weighing in. The blog at\u00a0The Telegraph\u00a0<\/em>said this, for example: \u201che\u2019s decided to share some rather strange views relating to matrimony on social media\u2026it would be preferable if he could cut out the sexism.\u201d Nigel Adderley, a former colleague of Peacock\u2019s, said this: \u201cI used to really enjoy working with Gavin Peacock on the radio but won\u2019t be implementing his views on marriage at home.\u201d<\/p>\n If you did not read Gavin\u2019s\u00a0Tweets, you might have thought he had advocated that fathers abuse their children. Instead, he was essentially quoting and explicating Ephesians 5:22-33. In his gracious and convictional way, he explained this doctrine in a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n A husband is called to be a Christlike leader to his wife. He must provide for and protect her spiritually and physically. This is called headship in the Bible. It reflects Christ\u2019s sacrificial love for his Bride, the Church. He took the initiative to die for her. What man who hears the sound of a window smashing downstairs in the middle of the night would send his wife to investigate? Is it not written on a man\u2019s soul to protect and provide for her? And yet such are the distortions of masculinity and femininity in our time that we send our women to fight on the frontline in war, all in the name of equality.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And see this word of personal testimony from his pastoral ministry:<\/p>\n In my church I serve in leadership as a pastor alongside humble men who love and lead their wives, and who love God and our people too much not to teach them his Word for manhood and womanhood. We have seen marriages blossom as men have stepped up to the challenge to lovingly lead their wives, and women have gladly respected and submitted to that leadership. Women are flourishing as strong, intelligent wives who joyfully affirm their husband\u2019s leadership. Single men and women are obeying God\u2019s pattern for sex and sexuality and growing as people of integrity. And in our marriage through 25 years my wife Amanda and I have tried to embrace this biblical pattern because it brings God glory and it does us good.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read the whole thing.<\/a>\u00a0It\u2019s an excellent piece\u2013not a word out of place. It received many good comments on social media, including a good number from Christian women who love the Bible\u2019s teaching.<\/p>\n **************<\/p>\n As the President of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood<\/a>, the organization founded by John Piper and Wayne Grudem to promote and defend biblical complementarianism, let me offer some\u00a0reflections on this fracas.<\/p>\n First, it\u2019s clear that the biblical worldview is now\u00a0d\u00e9class\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>in sectors of the West.<\/strong> It is sad to see this, because biblical complementarianism is the recipe for marital health and familial flourishing. There is no better system on earth for strengthening marriages and blessing children than God\u2019s design. The sinful human heart naturally inverts God\u2019s wisdom. It calls what is evil good, and what is good evil.<\/p>\n Second, Christians should not take their marching orders from the culture.<\/strong> Our secular age considers complementarity in both physiology and practice to be a threat. In reality, complementarity is a simple biological fact and a core biblical teaching. This is not a fourth-order doctrine (as if we can rank any teaching of Scripture). In the Bible, God makes the cosmos in Genesis 1, and then he makes man and woman, husband and wife, in Genesis 2.<\/p>\n He gives this relationship structure and form. Adam is the head of his wife; his wife is his helper. Eve is created from Adam. Her body depends on his for existence. This is a signal from the very start of Scripture: the position of marital headship given to men is one of responsibility and sacrifice, not ease and self-indulgence. Complementarity does not undermine women. More than any other idea or belief system in the known universe, it blesses them, offers them protection, and beckons them to God-given fulfillment.<\/p>\n Third, complementarity is not a problem for believers.<\/strong> It is, to be sure, a doctrine that the natural man despises. But it is not a problem for us to solve.<\/p>\n We should explicate biblical teaching. We should make clear where certain doctrines have been twisted or undermined. We should help our unsaved friends understand the difference between the Bible\u2019s wisdom and the culture\u2019s stereotypes. But we must not make complementarianism a doctrinal infelicity or an intractable dilemma. It is not, just as\u00a0culturally unliked doctrines such as\u00a0the exclusivity of Christ, the reality of predestination and election, or the reality of hell\u00a0are not, either.<\/p>\n We may feel pressure to hedge on complementarianism. We might want\u00a0to\u00a0drown our affirmation of complementarity in a sea of qualifications.These are\u00a0human instincts. We all are tempted\u00a0to hide the light, at least the light that the world does not want shone\u00a0upon its sin and unbelief. We are under great pressure today to conform our doctrine to the culture\u2019s expectations. Some young evangelicals react to this pressure by seeking to be cool, to be accepted, to be\u00a0au courant<\/em>. If we can just convince those around us that we\u2019re not backwater Christians, then our unsaved friends will really, truly like us. They\u2019ll come to faith.<\/p>\n This always seems like a good move, but it\u2019s perpetually\u00a0a woeful one. That\u2019s\u00a0not just because there\u2019s often a hint of desperation in our efforts. It\u2019s also because, as I make clear in my forthcoming book\u00a0The Colson Way\u00a0<\/em>(Thomas Nelson, July 2015)<\/a>, we do not pick and choose our doctrine or our ethics. The gospel opens our eyes to the beauty of God\u2019s law (Psalm 119). We see the whole of God\u2019s counsel as impossibly good. In Jesus, we discover the good life, but it is not an unfettered plunge into hedonism. It is the life lived unto God, anchored in his justifying decree, propelled by his transforming grace, and shaped by the whole counsel of his Word.<\/p>\n None of God\u2019s teaching is out of sync. None of it can be hid. None of it can be downplayed. All of God\u2019s Word is good. If it is not, then it must not be from God.<\/p>\n