Doug Wilsons’ latest gaffe is as dangerous as the last.
Can I be honest with you reader? I am weary of this, this endless stream of evangelical leaders saying outrageous and dangerous things just to get clicks and stay relevant. The endless attacks on Christian Ideas that stand the test of time, passed down to us from the first centuries to today. They are almost not worth commenting on, so absurd their premise that the ink spilled about them is not worth spilling. Yet, here I am, because I cannot ignore this one. Why? Because I have devoted my life to teaching and training students and fellow employees about the joys and rewards of the very servant leadership I see in the life of Jesus. Because it has been a major part of my own teaching and training, I feel I have to push back. Not only that, because like with the idea that empathy is a “sin” the idea that Servant Leadership is a sin is not just dangerous, it is deadly, it is antithetical to the very teachings and life of Jesus who told us that if we do not follow his example that we had not part with him in this life or the next.
But to understand why these men hate servant leadership we have to understand the historical trend they are a part of. That is, we have to understand American Evangelicalisms and American Fundamentalisms obsession with power and control. Several books have been written on this topic such as “Jesus and John Wayne” and “The Liturgy of Politics” which I highly recommend reading to understand the relationship between authoritarian leadership and American Evangelicalism. They want a warrior Jesus, they love the idea of Jesus putting down all his enemies, which He one day will, but whether they would admit it or not, they despise the Jesus who laid down his life for His sheep, Jesus the conquering King is preferred to the Jesus who suffered and died on a Cross which is, ironically, why He now has the authority to claim the title King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Wilsons comments were made in the context of marriage, that a husband should not be a servant leader in his leadership style with his family, but that he is to “rule” with “authority.” We will dust off my NA28 in a few minutes but first the full quote is this:
There really is a sin that we cover over with the white paint of that alluring phrase servant leadership. Not only is it a sin, but it is a black mold kind of sin- hard to identify, difficult to notice, and really destructive. And if the black mold is deep in your walls, another coat of paint is not the solution anybody should looking for…Let’s star calling it servant Lordship instead. I mentioned the need to build consensus. Can we build consensus on that? No? then it is not the servant part we differ on, but the authority part. But Scripture is unambiguous about the authority part. Wives are to obey their husbands (Tit 2:5). However, we live in a generation that hates the idea that a husband has genuine authority in the home. A potential Elder must rule his own household well (1 Tim 3:4). – Douglas Wilson.
Before going on, allow me to point out that his cherry picked scriptures ignore their greater context. For example; Titus 2:5 reads: “to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled” (ESV). The context here is that Titus is working to put a wayward church back on track, he is giving instructions to the women that will allow them to spread the gospel in their context. Wilson ignores verse 6: “Teach your young men to be self-controlled.” The Greek word Hupotassomenas that is used here means to voluntarily submit too, arrange under or to yield authority in an arranged way. Meaning it is an agreement between the husband and the wife. It is the same word used in Ephesians 5:21 to indicate mutual submission. Within the context of marriage, couples are to voluntarily arrange ourselves under each other. I submit to my wife and she submits to me, voluntarily. If Paul wanted wives to merely obey their husbands and submit to their authority he would have used Hupakoua or peitharcheo. These are the words used when talking about submitting to and obeying God or parents. They lack the voluntary nature of hupotasso, the act of mutual submission.
As for 1st Timothy 3:4, once again, Paul is writing on how to set a church in even worse shape than Crete back on the narrow way. He is not writing a manual on how to do Church and family. Once again though, Wilson is twisting scripture and pulling it out of context. Looking at the Greek we find the word Pristamenon which means to “lead” as one responsible for spiritual and administrative oversight. Manage here does not mean to rule as a Lord, but to manage as a leader. The husbands job is to lead his household well and he is meant to do that in a gentle manner that is reflective of Christ. If he is harsh with his children or cruel to his wife, he is disqualified from leadership. If he demands total submission, instead of mutual, voluntary submission, he is not qualified to be an Elder. Paul could have used words the eskosia or even authentaine (as he does in 1 Tim 2) to describe having authority, but he doesn’t, he uses a word that means “lead.”
So even the passages Wilson has quoted here are not passages that actually support his point of view, in fact, they contradict it which often happens when one reads scripture in the “plain language.” Paul is not telling Christians men to rule their households, but to lead them through mutual submission. In short, he is meant to be an icon of Christ, who, through voluntary submission to God’s will laid down his life for the Church (Eph. 5:22). We know, from some of the horror stories that come out of those who have left Christ Church, Those which are documented on The Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast on Spotify, that these passages are often applied in such a way that men abuse their wives and their children and women feel powerless and small. That is the opposite of the spirit of the passages cited here, but it is also the opposite of how Jesus intended us to live. It becomes the worlds way cloaked in a scripture passage garment that doesn’t actually fit it.
What did Jesus say exactly?
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them and those in high positions act as tyrants towards them, not so with you, whoever wants to be first among you wants to be your servant” (Matt 20:25-26).
The word for servant here is diakonos, from which we get the word Deacon. It means to serve, minister or attend. Jesus was not being coy here, this was not a “gotcha” moment. Jesus is serious, the greatest among the apostles has to be a servant, has to be the lowest possible position in that society. A servant in Christ’s time was usually a slave, someone with no social standing. As Jesus always did, he elevated the lowest of society to a position of prominence. This is also why we often refer to Servant Leadership as a race to the bottom. Jesus is telling the disciples that in order to be the greatest, you have to be the least. Lordship is something the world practices, Servant Lordship is really an oxymoron, if you are acting as a Lord, demanding total submission and fidelity then you are not serving. You are also ignoring the very truth that Christ alone is Lord and is the only one who has the right to claim that title, ironically, it is because of His Servant Leadership, because He took up the towel and dying for our sins. In Other words, one cannot be a Lord in the Kingdom of Heaven until they have gotten to the bottom of the pile, serving the lowest of the low. Jesus wants his Disciples to not be people who demand submission, but who gain trust and respect through service that shows deference and gives dignity to the person being served.
Whenever I think of this topic, I often think of one of my first post-college bosses, a man I will call “Bob.” Bob was the head of the Maintenance department at Sterling College when I started working there the summer after I graduated. He advocated for me and helped me get the job. Bob was unique in that he refused to take a higher rate of pay then the lowest paid employee (that was me) so while he was minimum wage, he fought for a nickel more for me. It did not stop there though, he would not ask you to do something that he, himself was not willing to do. If the plumber had to go down into the crawl spaces below the buildings, Bob would be there too. He embodied servant leadership, made sure that he was out with us, encouraging us, being strict when he had to be, but always fair, always kind. I have always remembered that and tried to embody it in leadership and management roles I have held since leaving Sterling. My current bosses embody this characteristic as well, fostering trust and comradery and helping us all grow as individuals.
If we use a Lordship model, someone is still on the top, be it the husband or the boss or the pastor. This is actually a hindrance to service, it insists on the place of authority, it drives submission and can make service dependent on the submission of others. It says: “I will serve you as long as you submit to my authority.” Lords can be leaders, they can even be servant leaders as the song “Good King Wenceslas” conveys. But what makes the king in the song good isn’t that he is ruling with an iron fist, but that he has gone out to find the poorest of the poor in his kingdom and voluntarily submit to them by serving them at a feast where they were the guest of honor. He is loved because of his love for others, not because he demands love and fidelity from others.
Jesus is constantly talking about the Christian leader (mainly himself) as a shepherd. It is important to note that a Shepherd gets out front and leads the flock to good pastures. His job is to watch out for the sheep and to protect them, giving his very life if necessary. The sheep do not submit to his authority, instead he gently guides them, using his staff to gently pull a sheep back if they are in danger or to protect the sheep from a wild animal. It is a quiet, gentle and meek example and we are meant to follow it. Instead, too many pastors like Wilson, have become cowboys, they get behind the flock and drive it with a whip. This is the difference between leadership and lordship, a leader leads, a lord drives. A servant leaders cares for and protects, a lord primarily looks out for himself. Generally, the only service for a Lord are the servants to serve them. It is hard for a lord to become a servant because it requires them to cede authority and mutually submit. The Christian life is about giving up our right to power, rather than flaunting it. Churches in America would be in a much better place if we just understood this one simple truth. That Christ called us to serve ONE ANOTHER, not just pastors serving congregations or wives submitting to husbands, but everyone voluntarily laying down their life for one another in the name of Christ.
Finally, I have to echo the frustrations put forward by the writers at Blog & Mablog. Where does this end? What is the next thing to be labeled a “sin” that the church has believed in for centuries? I am intentionally ignoring Wilsons comment on feminism here because of the adversarial nature of the comments. When life is framed as a battle of “us vs them” we never actually get anywhere in our dialogue. When we start narrowly defining parameters we become legalists, and while the goal certainly isn’t “libertinism” we cannot become so strict that we become a cult. Every time the goal posts get moved, someone else is hurt and voices get silenced which are important to the spread of the Gospel. This is why, while I often disagree with the tactics of the “social justice movement” and obviously do not think we can make a just society apart from Christ’s righteousness, I recognize it as a necessary correction to the social injustice that has been, at times, including now, promoted by the conservative evangelical church in America. It reminds us that love of neighbor means service of neighbor and like the Lawyer in Luke 20, we do not get to decide who our neighbor is and who we serve.
I close with this reminder from the Prophet Isaiah: “woe to those who say that evil is good and good is evil that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter” (Isa 5:20). Servant Leadership in the home and in the church is a good and beautiful thing, to say otherwise is to throw our lot in with those whom God is condemning through the Prophet. Christ is the suffering servant, let us follow that example, for His glory, now and forever, amen.
