‘Wives, submit’

Like so many educated youngsters in Indian metros, I grew up questioning my religion. I questioned the Pope, I questioned the Bible, I quest...

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Like so many educated youngsters in Indian metros, I grew up questioning my religion. I questioned the Pope, I questioned the Bible, I questioned the sermon Father gave every Sunday. But there’s no one I questioned more than St Paul.

I wanted to tell B.P. Singhal this as I watched him on TV the other day raving and ranting against Christians and Muslims, and demanding reform in what he called these “aggressive religions”.

I wanted to tell him that one of my childhood grouses against St Paul had taken care of itself in my little world — not because some bigoted outsider demanded it, nor because some progressive priest willed it. For me, it happened because of my elder sister.

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How sis and I would protest each time we attended a Roman Catholic wedding as children! One of the readings was always from Chapter 5 of St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church… Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it… every husband must love his wife as himself, and every wife must respect her husband.”

Why isn’t it the other way round, we would fume? I see now what I was too impatient to understand then: that religious scriptures should be read in the context in which they were written, with the time and the social conditioning of the preacher in mind.

After all, St Paul also wrote: “Slaves, obey your human masters… Masters, stop using threats at your slaves.” (Ephesians; Chapter 6.) So can it be argued that Paul was encouraging slavery? I know the answer to that one.

St Paul lived 2,000 years ago in a male-dominated society (not that ours today is not) where a wife’s worth to her husband was often a factor of the number of male heirs she had begotten. In such an age, to specify that a man must be kind to his wife was a mark of liberalism.

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But sis and I questioned the relevance of this teaching in the social milieu we were brought up in. She translated her protest into action when she got married a few years back. Bracing herself for battle, she hesitantly told the priest that she would not like this chapter from St Paul read out at her wedding. “No problem,” he readily replied, “a lot of young people in the cities these days share your view.”

Huh? No arguments?

Sometimes, all you need for religious reform is a practical clergy. And a young woman with a point of view.