Record Live Podcast

Headship
[00:00:00]
Hi there everyone. I'm Jared. And I'm Sunita. We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church faith and living well. We believe as followers of Jesus faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we'd put into practice. Let's go live.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Hello. Today we will present the second part of our conversation with doctors Darius and Adita Yitz about headship. This conversation focuses more on the family. So without further ado, here we go.
If we change tack a little bit,, we've reflected on the headship in the church. But I guess, , you could have good Christian people who read their Bibles and say, the man is the head of the house and [00:01:00] they maybe have a decent relationship at home with their wife. They treat them respectfully, and they try and live to the best of their ability.
Are there problems beyond just the theological with this interpretation of headship in the home? The home? What happens when? What happens when, , or what's the logistical outcome of that, holding that belief? Are there any dangers with the belief itself? Aita?
Edyta Jankiewicz: Yes. So male headship understood traditionally means that there's an ontological difference between men and women in like who they are is different.
Men are born to lead, women are born to follow. That's the underlying belief, the presupposition of male headship. And unfortunately [00:02:00] that can sometimes lead to an abuse of power in marriages and. , We believe that marriage is where, , maybe people say that they actually have a complementarian relationship where the male is the, the leader and the woman is the follower.
If they have a good relationship. Really the only way for them to have a good relationship is that they actually have give and take, that they actually have an egalitarian marriage. It might be complementarian in name meaning you, you know what I mean by complementarian? , The genders compliment each other and they have different roles.
And, , so
Darius Jankiewicz: it's actually a misnomer because. We compliment our gifts in our marriage. You know, Aita has gifted in some areas I'm gifted in other areas, we compliment each other, but we believe in equality in marriage that we have equal say and equal value before God.
Edyta Jankiewicz: , We had a friend years ago who, , [00:03:00] was convinced that we had a complementarian marriage.
And it was because
Darius Jankiewicz: I had complimentarian in the meaning of hierarchy. Yeah, hierarchy, hierarchy. The boss and she follows
Edyta Jankiewicz: and he based it on the fact that we had had, , more traditional roles earlier on in our marriage. 'cause I was a stay at home mom and I studied a bit later than Darius did. And we had this back and forth conversation with him and, he just couldn't get his head around it.
And then finally he said, but what happens if you get to a position where you just can't agree on something? Who has the final word? And we just looked at each other and said, we just keep talking about it until we can figure it out. We've never, in 36 years, had a situation where, , one of us had to have the final word, or Darius had to have the final word.
And unfortunately in marriages, uh, that embrace this [00:04:00] male headship, if male headship is understood biblically, that the head is like Jesus, who gave himself up. Then I'm all for male headship. Yeah, no problem. , If a husband is going to give up himself, give up his desires, give up his, , authority, even
Darius Jankiewicz: for the sake of, for the
Edyta Jankiewicz: sake of his family, then I think, you know, you'd have women signing up for that.
, Because there, there is, in our culture, often the opposite problem of men actually not stepping up to their responsibilities. And so. It's very much comes down to what do we understand as the head. And unfortunately in, in marriages where there is this understanding that, , men were created to rule, women were created to follow the man's word is the last word.
Unfortunately, in those marriages, the, , rates of [00:05:00] domestic abuse and violence are much higher. And it's documented , in literature, , even here in Sydney where we are based, , in some of the churches here in Sydney, , that's been in the news, there have been books written about this, , in, in another denomination,
Darius Jankiewicz: you see.
, I'm a pastor, I'm a church pastor, and in my ministry I have met people , families where wife was abused by the father. Invariably, Ephesians five is quoted to me. Invariably, or was I, I don't deal with those things anymore, but people say, I'm the head and she's not listening to me and that's why this happened.
She must listen to me. And I'm thinking like, man, what is, what is the pic? You are the, you are the image of Christ to your wife. You are the ambassador of Christ. You are supposed to represent Jesus and his words and his action to your wife. , And this is the problem when we bring our understanding, secular, gentile understanding of the word head into the [00:06:00] scriptural understanding of the head.
Edyta Jankiewicz: Mm. And I remember Darius actually having a conversation , with, , a man years and years ago in one of our churches who, unfortunately hid his wife and he used this verse, , to say, you know, she should be submitting to me. And Darius said, but you know, if you keep reading, the Bible says, , but for the husband, he's to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
And the response from this gentleman was, I'm not Christ. And so, unfortunately, that's the way that some people read these, , passages. They choose what works for them and they reject what doesn't work for them.
Zanita Fletcher: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. It's interesting to get more of your guys' perspective because I've, . I heard a lot of conversations between women talk about this headship idea and specifically this verse in Ephesians, and I feel like often they're either vehemently against it or they're like, [00:07:00] oh, but it's good to have a leader, like you need someone to make these decisions.
'cause there is often conflict. So yeah, it's really good to just hear how you guys do that in your own lives. But you point out, I think it was in your article, Adida, that our own experiences kind of shape how we read verses like this, like our own, my own experience will shape how I read Ephesians.
Jared's own experiences will shape how he reads it. So how can we become like more objective in our experiences of reading scripture so that our own stories don't, I guess, define what it's actually saying.
Edyta Jankiewicz: Yeah. Yeah. So I think in the article we point out four steps, and the first step is to actually reflect on your experience.
Think about that. Most of us don't think about, you know, where we have come from. What was our family structure like, what was my dad like, what was my mom like? Could that have shaped the way that I exactly actually come to this passage with this, these kinds of glasses [00:08:00] on? So yeah, reflect. Think
Darius Jankiewicz: it's actually like noticing air.
You know, we breathe air with air is all around us, but we, we feel like we don't think about it. we take it for granted and that's how we sometimes approach the scripture. We, we take our glasses, interpretational glasses, we read the scripture, we think we read the scripture, right, but we actually read it.
Read it through our experience.
Edyta Jankiewicz: Yes. And you know, some people talk about a plain reading of scripture. Well, there is no real plain reading because we need to know the context. We need to know the broader, broader context. We need to actually, I think interrogate. Our own thinking about. So that's the first step, I think.
The second step is thinking about the history and what was the historical context of when this was written. So Darius might wanna talk a little bit about slavery.
Darius Jankiewicz: Yes. So, we talk in the article, and I, I wrote a big article on Hermeneutics of Slavery that if you use [00:09:00] Bible alone, really, if you just pulled out all the slavery passages, you can see that Bible.
The New Testament supports slavery as it was practiced within the society, not Jewish nation, but within the society at the time. But really, Paul was speaking to a society of his time, but at the same time he planted, I like to call it viruses that would eventually implode the injustice of slavery. So we need to talk about what was happening in the society at the time.
And , like those passages, when you look at Ephesians five, for some of us, they are restrictive in , in some way. But for a New Testament, people who came out of Judaism or Pagan faith into Christianity, they were revolutionary. There was like freedom that, that the way Jesus treat women, it was astonishing.
It was scandalous that Jesus would actually have women followers. It was scandalous in the society of those days that [00:10:00] Jesus allowed Mary to be, , to sit at his feet, which is the same word that, the same phrase that, , Paul uses that he set at the feet of Gamal. So it's a technical term.
When Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, Jesus was teaching her theology something that was forbidden for women. Within Jewish society. At the time, women were not allowed to study theology. And Jesus is teaching Mary, Mary theology. So you've got this revolutionary teachings in the New Testament.
We often miss because we read New Testament from the , 21st century perspective.
Edyta Jankiewicz: So there's the historical context and the literary context, which is what we've talked about earlier. You know, what else comes before, what come, comes after , the passages that we've pulled out on their own.
Darius Jankiewicz: And then the last thing is, and before you go, just, , very often people quote that passage, men is the head of a woman, and so on. Women submit. But the verse 21 speaks about mutual submission and what is mutual submission. if the bible, , if the next verse speaks about. [00:11:00] Woman actually. Woman does. Do you know that it doesn't say that wife submit to your husband?
That's not, not, not what the New Testament says. It says wife in Greek. In Greek wife to your husbands. So the word submit is borrowed from the previous verse of mutual submission. Be submitted to one another, wife to your husbands. Okay? And then where's the husband submission? It's agape love in verse 25, husbands love your wife.
When you look the scriptural understanding of the word agape, it's it, what did Jesus, he loves us so much that he died on the cross. So agape is actually submission the agape love. So you've got the mutual submission. Husbands, two wives, you know, , Paul is using the normal terminology in those days.
Wives submit to husbands, but then he turn turns it around and he talks about agape love.
Edyta Jankiewicz: , And then , the fourth step is the whole of scripture. What does the whole of scripture tell us about God's desire for [00:12:00] humanity? And I don't believe that scripture as a whole gives evidence that there should be ruling over rather, that ruling over is a consequence of sin,
Darius Jankiewicz: and, and Jesus actually speaks against it.
We talked about a few moments ago that Jesus is not so with you. So Jesus is taking Genesis three and puts it on its head and says, new Testament is a different thing altogether. We're starting over and we're giving example to the rest of the world. What a Christ-like community can be. Yeah.
Edyta Jankiewicz: So no hierarchy, not just between genders, but.
In all of Christian community,
Darius Jankiewicz: they should not be. It came later on. Of course.
Jarrod Stackelroth: I think that's something that really opened my eyes to this Ephesians passage is that that revolutionary nature of it, the fact that Roman husbands, I believe, could kill their wives and children, basically, if they felt so inclined just because they were almost property.
and then Paul [00:13:00] suggests, you know, men laid down your lives for your wives. That is a revolutionary thing in that culture and context. And, and
Darius Jankiewicz: imagine this what we know about the first century. We know that women did not have a voice. Women could not own property. Women could not hold a public office. , Women could not study, could not inherit, could not inherit, and so on.
And this is the situation of a woman in the first century. And here comes Christianity. Now you can evangelize with me. You can be a theology student and you can go and be coworker and bring people to Christ. And we see Priscilla educating Apollos together with her husband. , They're doing it together as a team.
We see Euodia synica from Philippians chapter four, being coworkers of Paul. And when you really carefully read that verse in Greek, when Paul is inviting the church to help these women, and he says, they were standing together with me in, in Greek, you have to see it in a line. We were [00:14:00] working together not as a hierarchy, but together as a team to bring people to Christ.
And you see a completely different picture than what we tend to think today about hardship and in the church and in the home. It's some New Testament was revolutionary. That's what I love about New Testament.
Zanita Fletcher: , We've obviously been having this conversation for a long time, , within the church, and many of the comments, , on the weekend were kind of saying, we've taken this to vote, we've taken this to gc, and we've decided time and time again. , I yet there's still all these various different beliefs and all these different arguments that are still happening.
Why are we still having this conversation? Like obviously the points that you guys have raised are very compelling, very convincing, and it seems like a lot of people are in agreeance with you, but there's also a lot of people that aren't. Do you have any kind of idea like why we are still kind of in this stuck spot?
Darius Jankiewicz: I think that we are really influenced by culture. Do you know what I [00:15:00] discovered? I discovered that,, somebody could say that we spoke about God's grace. We decided on God's grace. We put it in 20 faith fundamentals. We don't need to speak about God's grace anymore. And I discover in my ministry that I need to speak about God's grace over and over and over and over again because we forget.
Edyta Jankiewicz: And from different angles.
Darius Jankiewicz: And from different angles because we forget.
Edyta Jankiewicz: Yeah. Because grace is a really difficult concept to actually get your head around because we don't experience much grace in the world. So we need to speak at it about it from different angles and over and over again. And in the same way with this.
Yes, and and I
Darius Jankiewicz: think Zanita, many people mis misread if they comment like this. They actually misread what I'm trying to say. , Because first of all, I didn't speak about women's ordination in the first article. It was not an issue on the agenda. It was issue of male headship, nothing to do with women's ordination.
That's a separate issue that we can discuss and agree or disagree on this. [00:16:00] But while you ask this question. The general conference has never voted against women's ordination
Edyta Jankiewicz: or for male headship or for
Darius Jankiewicz: male headship. We do not have this. The general conference would vote. It's, they would say, it's not a time yet.
Let's do more studies. It's not a time yet. Let's work on it. , In 2015, many people think that general conference voted against women's ordination. It did not. It's actually voted against allowing the divisions to make their own decisions on this issue, but there was no vote against women's ordination.
So we do not have, just like we do not have in Scripture New Testament, a bishop should be a man or bishop must be a man. We do not have a decisive decision by the general conference. There shall be no ordination of women.
Edyta Jankiewicz: But what we do have is women in ministry being affirmed through commissioning and.
, Our church embracing women in ministry. That's right. [00:17:00] And furthermore,
Darius Jankiewicz: this is very interesting issue , that I kind of find baffling in the church. We have women elders. We ordain women elders in our church and who is a pastor? Pastor is just an elder. Pastor is a professional elder, and , he's just doing the same work as elders in the church.
And we do have ordination of women elders, but we fight about women pastors. We already have ordination in our church. , But as I said, this is a separate issue.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Why do you think it's important for the Adventist Church to have a very clear understanding that we do not have a historical stance of headship theology? That we have this different, , as you've sort of described, this restoration of Eden, understanding of interpersonal relationships that we ha have.
I guess demonstrated to us through our women in leadership in the early days of the church, we have, , other things creeping in, as you've described historically, that we've been [00:18:00] influenced by. Why is it important to talk about this topic, to understand this topic, understand this topic, and is individual church members, individual church members, find a way through the arguments to a good biblical understanding of, , what exactly the Bible says about how we should interact as different genders,
Darius Jankiewicz: because it has to do with great controversy.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Darius Jankiewicz: It has to really do with great controversy. As Adita said, Satan wanted to establish hierarchy. I will, I will. She said that eventually the Catholic Church reestablished hierarchy. And what is the great controversy about, about usurping the place of Christ?
And we humans tend to, those who argue formal hardship very often tend to put human person in the place of Christ as the Catholic Church did. And I don't want to, , accuse anybody of anything really, but [00:19:00] that's why it's so important when we actually don't get this right. We'll introduce apostasy into our church and we will work against the work of Christ in the sanctuary in heaven by trying to replace him with pagan structures, non-biblical structures within our church, and thus imperiling his mission on earth.
And that's why this is so important,
Edyta Jankiewicz: and I just wanna add it. That's in the church and in the family. Male headship in the family. , I believe that , the family, the marriage relationship is, , something beautiful that God created and he uses imagery of marriage to talk about the way that he loves us.
If you think all through the Old Testament, , God is described as a lover of the people of Israel, and so. Marriage was intended to be like a symbol, simple symbolism of God's love. And so , if we can [00:20:00] approximate what God's ideal was in our marriages, what we're, what we are doing is giving an example of this is what God's love looks like to our children, but also to the wider community.
, This is what God intended for marriages. This is what God is like. And this is the
Darius Jankiewicz: whole purpose of Ephesians chapter five. It's not just conversation about husbands and wives and headship , and husbands being had, but it's about Jesus and the church. Like in Old Testament, God was the lover of, , his children.
In New Testament, Jesus is portrayed as a. Groom as a bride groom, and, , the church is the bride. And , in the end, in the revelation, we see Jerusalem coming down as a bride prepared for the bridegroom. And we've got this love relationship between Christ and his church that's supposed to be reflected within the earthly family.
And when people, I have a question for our listeners here. If people look at [00:21:00] our marriages, do they actually see Christ's love for the church? Can they extrapolate this husband loves his wife like Jesus loves the church? Wow, that is amazing. You see,, a healthy, well-functioning marriage is a greatest symbol for God's love for his people that, that exist on earth.
And if, and that's why Satan hates marriage. Mm-hmm. That's why Satan tries to destroy marriage as much as he can. That's why we've got this. Conversation, should we be married? Should not we be married? Should we live together? , Or this headship who is, who has the power over the, over each other. It's all destruction of what the image of marriage supposed to be.
And it is the witness to Christ's love of the church. So as a husband, I'm an ambassador of Christ to my wife, she's ambassador of Christ to me. And we are both ambassadors of Christ, our children and community [00:22:00] around us. And that's what Christianity is all about, not about who has more power, who is over whom, who has authority, over whom and so on.
That's the wrong picture of Christianity altogether.
Edyta Jankiewicz: Yeah. If we, if we are having questions or conversations about power, then we are way off track.
Zanita Fletcher: Now Adita and Darius, we like to keep things practical on record live. , And I would love to hear from both of you, especially after just your answer that you've just given us. , This conversation obviously makes people quite heated. If you just look at the 250 something comments, I'm sure you'll be able to spot some that have a bit of, , fire in them.
But as you guys go about these conversations with other people who you disagree with, what do you keep in mind, , so that you do respond. In love and with respect, like how can we have these conversations with people who have different opinions and still treat them as children of children of God?
Edyta Jankiewicz: Oh, thank you. That's a really important question. Good question. , I [00:23:00] think we should approach everything with humility and hold our beliefs lightly. Like hold them with an open hand. Is kind of how I, I think of it. It's like this is what I, this is what I see in the scripture. , But I, I'm not gonna be categorical that this is exactly how it is because.
I come with my own glasses from my own experience. I may not have the whole historical, , understanding of the historical context. I may not understand the Greek or the Hebrew, , and I may not understand the whole of scripture picture and how it impacts this one particular, , verse. So this is how I understand it, but I'm gonna hold that with an open hand, so that I can actually listen and hear to and grow , and grow maybe through what somebody else has to say.
Unfortunately, as human beings, , when our beliefs are questioned, [00:24:00] we see it as an attack and we tend to become defensive. . , I'm trying to, in my own life when, when I'm attacked, , which doesn't happen very often, but if it does, I try to, , respond with That's interesting. Tell me some more about that.
Rather than becoming defensive. And I think if we practice that more in our lives and recognize that the other person is on a journey of their own with God, and each person is on a journey of their own with God. And so if we are able to accept them as a child of God on a journey, and I'm also a child of God on my own journey, and we can come together and , we can have differences of opinion, but if we can still be respectful of each other,, I, I think that's what God calls us to.
Darius Jankiewicz: And it all comes back to knowing the grace of God in your own life. First of all, when you recognize that. Or I recognize I'm a [00:25:00] sinner before God in needs, in need of God's grace every moment of my life. , And that I don't get everything right. , That my opinions may not always be right. That I'm learning from Jesus every day of my life how to be like him.
I can approach my conversations with humility and kindness and graciousness. You know, one of the reasons why I chose, we chose not to be on a Facebook years ago because there was so much ugliness. , So people, so many assumptions about, , about other people. Like as we know what they thinking, we know who they are, we know what they think, we can judge them and so on.
And there's so much ugliness. We chose not to be on that because it poisons our minds, you know? So, , in our interactions with people, I meet people who disagree with me all the time, but I want to be ambassador of Jesus to them. I want to be like Jesus to them., I'm at defeat of Jesus learning from him.
He treats me with kindness and graciousness, and I really [00:26:00] want to treat people like that as well in my life.
Edyta Jankiewicz: And that's not our normal human response.
Darius Jankiewicz: No,
Edyta Jankiewicz: it's not. And so we need to be at the feet of Jesus every day and asking for his grace, , to see other people through his eyes and asking for help in the way that we respond to other people.
Because it's not our, it's not our, , default to be, to be kind and gracious. , We're simple.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah. And I think that's a really good place to leave our conversation today. We have run out of time, but it is good to be at the feet of Jesus, not at the head. , Male headship. You can read Darius and Adidas articles on this in the November 30 and the December six issues of the Adventist record.
I just wanna thank you both for spending some time with us. I want to thank you for the work and the energy we put into writing these articles. I know that you submitted something [00:27:00] and I made you do some very heavy rewriting, so sorry about that.
But thank you so much for meeting those deadlines.
Darius Jankiewicz: Deadlines actually very good for us. Very good. Because, because we wanted to be true to what we teach and be, we teach it with clarity and your questions allows us to clarify several things. So thank you very much, jar.
Jarrod Stackelroth: No, you are welcome. I You're welcome.
I, I'm very glad we got there and with the articles and with this conversation, people can read those articles. We'll put the link in the comments. But until then, on record live, God bless you all, and thanks for joining us today.
Zanita Fletcher: Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
Darius Jankiewicz: Thank you. Bye-bye.
Zanita Fletcher: God bless you all.