Cow News

Rebellious farmers just outside the "no go zone" created by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown continue to defy the government. These Japanese dissidents are not trying to overthrow the state; they're not planning terrorist attacks; they're not even unhygienically squatting on public land to protest wealth inequality. Instead, their great act of defiance is to feed their cattle.

69-year-old Yukio Yamamoto is one of ten farmers from Namie, which is within the “no go zone,” who is defying government orders to euthanize his 36 black-haired wagyu cows. The cows — once prized for their high-quality beef; each was once worth $10,000 — ingested radioactive caesium and Yamamoto was supposed to kill them by lethal injection...

“I left like everyone else after 11 March, “I couldn’t stop worrying about my cows, so I started coming back in every other day to feed them...Straight after the disaster, my cows had nothing to eat or drink … many of them starved to death right where they were tethered.I had to decide whether to leave the ones still alive or keep them healthy, even though we were separated.”

Unable to afford to feed them on his own and obviously without any assistance from the Japanese government, Yamamoto is feeding the cattle with donated food made available by the generosity of the worldwide community. He knows that his cattle will never be able to yield the high quality beef for which they are known, but he still wants to believe that they could be put to some other productive use. Tellingly, however, it is not the prospect of future commercial gain that keeps Yamamoto from abandoning his cows.

“Eventually the feed will run out, and the government has said it will kill every last cow. But that is something I can’t allow to happen. “I could never kill these cows. They are like members of my family.”

Perhaps I am missing something here. Sure, the cows will never be able to produce the meat for which they were bred. Of course, it would be dangerous if that meat ever did make it to market. Admittedly, the exposure to radiation may at some point in their future produce illness which would warrant a humane euthanasia. But why is it such an issue to allow this man to tend to his cattle until that time? The financial burden is his (and those of the broader community who volunteer their assistance). I suppose it comes down to contrasting worldviews: are these cattle irreparably damaged commodities or are they another subset of victims of the Fukushima disaster?

The Wisdom of John Howard Yoder

The following are merely three of what could have been numerous insightful quotes from John Howard Yoder's essay "War as a Moral Problem in the Early Church: The Historian's Hermeneutical Assumptions," in The Pacifist Impulse in Historical Perspective:

God, the all-wise and all-powerful, is in charge of the world. We are not in charge of the course of events, responsible (as in most settings we are not able) to prevent atrocities or vindicate justice. WE need not defend ourselves; God has always protected his own, and will protect us in the future if that is his will. If it is not his will, our mobilizing for our own defense may be against his providential purpose. He may want to chastise us for our sins. Or He may want to use our suffering to 'sanctify his name,' that is, through martyrdom, the opposite of chastisement. If evil has its way, it is under God's permission and will not last. When he does triumph it will not be our doing and will not depend on our providing His troops. This is the explicit instruction of Rom. 12:19, leaving vengeance to God. This vision undercuts without needing to say so the consequentialism that is indispensable to the case for war in the name of social 'responsibility.'

Were Christians before Constantine pacifist? Certainly not, if we give the term an ahistorically modern definition. They did not advocate arms reduction negotiations nor an alternate world order that would do away with the occasion for war. The pax Romana in fact claimed already to be that. They were not consulted by Caesar about how to run the empire, since neither he nor they knew about 'the consent of the governed.' Thus, they neither asked Caesar to implement the non-violent Christian ethic from his throne nor measured the Christian ethic consequentially by whether it could be suited to run an empire. They did not refuse to serve when subject to universal conscription, since there was none. They accepted non-lethal work in the service of the peacetime military bureaucracy. Their clash with the military establishment was no rooted only in abhorrence of killing. Nor was it limited only to their abhorrence of idolatry. It was rooted in a fundamentally anti-tyrannical and anti-provincial vision of who God is and of God's saving purposes in the world.

Augustine's argument [for just war] is negative legalism, not a clear imperative. War cannot be forbidden, he argues, because John the Baptist did not forbid it, Jesus did not scold the centurion, Peter did not tell Cornelius to resign, God may have providentially subjected you to an ungodly king, Christian emperors have conquered pagan nations, and the world is miserable anyway. There is Augustine never a joyful Gospel confidence that bloodshed pleases or praises God...Augustine's mood was a 'mournful' pastoral adjustment to a world of which we cannot in any case ask that God's will be done. What has changed is not one ruling on what God's will is, but the entire setting in which doing God's will can be thought about. The Neoplatonic grid, according to which God's will cannot really be done, and the sociology of the imperial Church, according to which 'Christian' means everybody, have defined a whole different world.

Happy Birthday, J. W.

On this day, 183 years ago, John William McGarvey was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The son of an Irish immigrant, McGarvey would find himself at Bethany College studying at the feet of Alexander Campbell and baptized by W. K. Pendelton. This impressive pedigree would be the beginnings of an auspicious career as a preacher, author, educator, and controversialist. In addition to a tremendous body of extant literature, McGarvey would make his greatest impact on the movement through his long, at times tumultuous, relationship with the school that would eventually become Lexington Theological Seminary. Thus, while he spent much of his life outside his home state, it was in Kentucky where his influence was most keenly felt.

In honor of his birthday this month, and the incalculable impact he had on religion in his home state and on the Stone-Campbell Movement at large, I will be examining his Sermons Delivered in Louisville, Kentucky, preached in the summer of 1893 before the Broadway Church where McGarvey was temporarily employed. McGarvey compiled and published his collection of sermons only with great reluctance, and in part because he recognized "that some preachers whom we have known, and on whose lips we have hung almost entranced, have left behind them, when they departed this life, nothing but the faint remembrance of sermons which we should have been glad to read again and again, and which were worthy of being transmitted to many generations." He was humbly skeptical of any suggestion that he might be such a preacher, but history has proved that he is and has benefited greatly from his decision to add a compilation of his sermons to his impressive list of publications.

I will attempt to look at these sermons with a critical eye to their late nineteenth century setting, to uncover what McGarvey intends to be his themes and focus and how they arose in their historical milieu. In truth, however, the focus will be on drawing out these themes in order to understand and adapt them to the ongoing needs of contemporary Christian thought and practice. In this I seem to have McGarvey's approbation: "[My sermons] should...serve as a homiletical aid to such young preachers as can study them without imitating them." Whatever the rhetoric--then or now--it is critical to remember that the preaching of early Disciples was not about cold, scientific repetition. Their works were and continue to be living testaments to a vital faith which always merits study and often emulation.

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The following is a list of entries for this series to be updated as they are posted:

On Scripture
On the Enormity of Sin
On Trust in God
On Repentance
On Baptism
On Providence

Addendum on Sin
Addendum on Providence

A Cheery Subject for Leap Day

Today is Leap Day, the day when once every four years nothing particularly special happens around the world. I suppose it is too difficult to create a commercial industry around a holiday that occurs so irregularly, otherwise the stores would be lined with their Leap Day themed decor rather than already displaying giant, stuffed, egg-laying rabbits to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Meanwhile, as often as it happens, Leap Day is also the feast day of St. John Cassian. In honor of that, here are some thoughts from Cassian's Institutes, Book IX ("Of the Spirit of Dejection"), that are resonating with me at the moment:

Sometimes [dejection] is found to result from the fault of previous anger, or to spring from the desire of some gain which has not been realized, when a man has found that he has failed in his hope of securing those things which he had planned...The pains of [dejection] are not always caused in us by other people’s faults, but rather by our own, as we have stored up in ourselves the causes of offence, and the seeds of faults, which, as soon as a shower of temptation waters our soul, at once burst forth into shoots and fruits.

For no one is ever driven to sin by being provoked through another’s fault, unless he has the fuel of evil stored up in his own heart. Nor should we imagine that a man has been deceived suddenly when he has looked on a woman and fallen into the abyss of shameful lust: but rather that, owing to the opportunity of looking on her, the symptoms of disease which were hidden and concealed in his inmost soul have been brought to the surface...

We must then do our best to endeavour to amend our faults and correct our manners. And if we succeed in correcting them we shall certainly be at peace, I will not say with men, but even with beasts and the brute creation, according to what is said in the book of the blessed Job: “For the beasts of the field will be at peace with thee;” for we shall not fear offences coming from without, nor will any occasion of falling trouble us from outside, if the roots of such are not admitted and implanted within in our own selves: for “they have great peace who love thy law, O God; and they have no occasion of falling.”

...And so we must see that dejection is only useful to us in one case, when we yield to it either in penitence for sin, or through being inflamed with the desire of perfection, or the contemplation of future blessedness. And of this the blessed Apostle says: “The sorrow which is according to God worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

On This Day in Cow History

By chance, while browsing for all important cow news, I recently came across an article entitled "Slick Trick Frees $1,000 Cow from Her Silo Prison," which appeared in the St. Petersburg Times on this day in 1949. The touching, amusing story (carried in several other papers nationally) reads thus:

Yukon, Okla -- It took a slick trick--but Grady the cow was freed from her silo prison yesterday. The white-faced Hereford--whose ins and outs of the 40-foot high silo had North America guessing--was liberated with cup grease and the old heave-ho.

At 8:09 a. m., (c.s.t.) the first of hundreds of suggestions to get the bovine damsel in distress was used. The scheme was devised by Ralph Partridge, farm editor of The Denver Post, who flew here to Grady's assistance after word was flashed over the nation.

It all started when Bill Mach's $1,000 cow bolted into the silo through a 17 x 25 1/2 in door. It was unbelievable to see the 1400-pound cow quietly munching grass in the circular, concrete silo. The nation learned of Grady's feat and Mach's problem.

Hundreds of solutions from 45 states and Canada poured in. Partridge arrived here with what he called his "secret cow freeing device." It turned out to be the grease, plenty of muscle and the axiom: "If a cow can get through a door into a silo, it can get out of the same door."

With 40 witnesses braving the chilled, Oklahoma sunrise, the experiment began. Grady was generously rubbed down with grease and put on a greased platform. Her forefeet were put through the opening. The veterinarian, Dr. L. J. Crump, then jabbed Grady with a hypodermic syringe loaded with nembutal. There was a winch truck standing by with a long cable to pull the cow through. But it wasn't needed. There was a heave-ho on her rump with strong hands and then she rebelled. With one quick jerk, she jumped through the door and lumbered into the barn yard.

The citizens cheered!

The knockout drops, which the vet thought might relax Grady, weren't needed. Apparently they had no effect.

After Grady was freed, Dr. Crump gave her a thorough examination. Grady would be all right in 10 days and back to her normal milk production. He prescribed plenty of rest and food. She also got a generous bubble bath.

Bill Mach said he was glad it was all over. He couldn't understand why so many people were interested in his pure bred cow. "Why, we got calls and telegrams and letters. They suggested getting Grady out by using a derrick, and by cutting a hole in the silo, and even by fattening her up and killing her. But I couldn't do that. She was too valuable."

What's in store for Grady? "Well, I believe she's earned peace and quiet the rest of her life," Mach said. "She's had more excitement than most cows."

I'd like to believe that Grady did live out the rest of her life in peace and quiet. Of course, I'd like to believe that she died in her sleep of old age and is buried in the family cemetery plot, but I'm just sentimental like that. The article evokes that kind of sentimentality, nostalgia of a time when there was a sense of national community, a sense of common brotherhood, a sense of simple wonder at something other than the tawdry, sensationalized melodrama that dominates our modern press. Such a time is, undoubtedly, more a wishful construct of our collective memory, but nevertheless stories like this reenforce that ideal. There's nothing wrong with that. Whether Grady's plight and rescue represent a simpler, better time or not, it gives us a simpler, better ideal to cling to and to strive for when the incessant, hateful, pornographic present gets to be too much for us.

Disciple of Peace: A Qaulified Endorsement

Craig M. Watts' Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State is not an academic text. Watts, a pastor and a doctor of ministry, is not a historian. It is important to keep these facts in mind when approaching the book. It is filled with great, accurate information, but it suffers from myriad deficiencies when evaluated against the standards of scholarly history. Particularly disturbing would be the unqualified use of Stone-Campbell history books written during the dark days of Restoration historiography when authors were more hagiographer than historian. This is mirrored by the almost completely absence of citations from relevant periodical literature. The limited and superficial engagement with antecedent and contemporary thinkers outside of a very narrow sphere is also suspect. Moreover, Watts breaks essentially no new ground and offers no new avenues for research. All this needs to be specified because the below recommendation of the book is based on what it is, a brief and interesting primer to the pacifist thought of one of the premiere thinkers of the early Restoration Movement. For a more in-depth, critical engagement of Campbell's thought on this or any other point, you would need to look elsewhere (and then be disappointed by the dearth of quality material on the subject).

For what it is, Disciple of Peace is a delightful read. While lacking in any overarching organizational pattern, each chapter makes for a concise, targeted treatment of some aspect of Campbell's pacifism. These range from the more predictable (and shallower) overviews of the relationship between pacifism and Campbell's postmillennial eschatology to the more interesting and insightful examination of the apparent hypocrisy involved in opposing war and promoting capital punishment. The truth which makes all of this possible is the trenchant observation--which ought to be obvious, but all to often is not--that "pacifism is not an ethical oddity unconnected with the main themes of Alexander Campbell's thought." The assumption that any feature of Christian ethics can somehow be isolated either from the ethical system as a whole or the heart of Christian theology is ultimately naive. This holds true nowhere more strongly than the ethic of peace. How a Christian thinks about peace and violence must be influenced by and influence how a Christian thinks about the nature of God, His purpose in creation, His method of salvation, and the telos of the material world. It is fitting, therefore, that Watts' work does more than simply establish that Campbell was a pacifist. Instead, Watts draws lines of connection between this pacifism and Campbell's understanding of the state, the Bible, the eschaton, and the other pertinent ethical issues of his time (e.g. slavery).

Even making allowances for the non-academic nature of the work, the great weakness of Watts' work is its historical naïveté, particularly as it manifests in relation to the way the Bible functions in Campbell's thought. Watts is unapologetically a member of the Stone-Campbell tradition and is writing for a press based out of a Stone-Campbell church. This bias bleeds fairly obviously into his reconstruction of history. When addressing the influences on Campbell's pacifism, Watts notes a wide range of social, historical, and hermeneutical forces which came to bear on Campbell's thought: church unity movements, dispensationalism, Seeder Presbyterianism, and ongoing American and British peace movements. Yet, again and again, Watts returns to the naive conclusion that all of these influences are ancillary. It is the Bible, plain and simple, that motivated Campbell to believe what he did. This conclusion makes for a nice historical sermon on the merits of pacifism, but it does not stand up to even lay scrutiny as history. The same assertion could be made of any Christian advocate of any ethical position on war. The most hawkish clergyman in the States would display a primarily Scriptural motivation for his ethical stance. It borders on the tautological to say that any religious thinker would ground any religious thought primarily in the religious text of his religion. Watts seems to be endorsing the Restorationist fallacy that there is a Bible--objective and unencumbered by our socio-historical baggage--to which Campbell can finally and authoritatively appeal. Watts would have done better to simply explain how Campbell used Scripture to justify his pacifism rather than contending, indefensibly, that the Bible independently motivated Campbell toward pacifism. (And this, coming from someone who clearly believes that the Bible endorses clearly and without qualification a pacifist ethic for Christians.)

Disciple of Peace is wanting in one other notable way. Watts, as already noted, spends very little time analyzing the connections between Campbell and those of his contemporaries who engaged the same subject, with a few token exceptions. Some of this oversight can certainly be attributed to the limits of space and scope. A comprehensive examination of pacifist thought during Campbell's life would have radically lengthened Watts' project and distorted its scope. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in which the books lacks substance because it lacks critical comparisons between Campbell and his contemporaries, especially his contemporaries in the Restoration Movement. When Watts does bring in outside thinkers, it is primarily from other religious streams of thought. He seems willfully ignorant that there were other prominent proponents of pacifism within the movement who Campbell might have interacted with intellectually. Barton Stone springs immediately to mind as a comparably prominent thinker swimming in the same intellectual stream as Campbell. This is to say nothing of "lesser" figures like Tolbert Fanning, Raccoon John Smith, J. W. McGarvey, Benjamin Franklin, and Moses Lard who, among others, are rattled off in an introductory list of pacifist Restorationists and then quickly forgotten. In introducing Campbell's pacifism to the reader, Watts declares, "Pacifism takes a variety of forms...[Different forms] can differ in rationale, limitations and goals, among other things. Pacifism is not a single position." Given that he recognizes this fact, Watts would have done his readers a great service if he could have included a short chapter introducing how Campbell's pacifism fit into the broader Restoration vision of peace ethics.

Wherever it is lacking, however, Watts compensates in his closing chapter which reveals the true nature of his book. In his conclusion, Watts unashamedly sets out to demonstrate why Campbell is right in his construction of Christian ethics, except where Watts thinks he is wrong. This may sound like a brazen apology for Watts' own pacifism, and it is. Even so, his analysis of the shortcomings of Campbell's thought and his proposed correctives are sufficiently insightful to make the argument worth considering. He makes four crucial points in his conclusion which bear further thought. The first, as a critique of Campbell, is that pacifism must be cruciform; it must center on and take as its archetype the supreme act of Christ on the cross. Watts observes that in all of Campbell's thought on pacifism in the Gospels, the cross is notable absent, giving pride of place to the Sermon on the Mount instead. Watts pinpoints this shortcoming--with some accuracy, I believe--as the fault which makes possible the contrary stances on war and capital punishment. Taking his cue from Campbell, Watts then takes up the theme of church unity and its relation to Christian pacifism. By incorporating this concern into the pacifist ethic, Watts believes that we can heighten our sense of community and sharpen our critique of competing loyalties such as the self and the state. He then continues his adaptation of Campbell's thinking to criticize modern perceptions of pacifism as a strategy rather than a core belief. The perception that a commitment to pacifism can be evaluated in pragmatic terms is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be committed to peace as Christ endorsed it. (Whether or not Campbell can really be said to understand this critique is debatable, given his optimistic belief about the potential of human peace efforts, but as an ongoing criticism Watts' point still stands.) Finally, Watts concludes on the familiar terms of peace and Christian eschatology. This is not merely limited to arguing that peace is the eschatological ideal but that the church is the eschatological community proleptically living out the ideals of the eschaton in the present.

In the final evaluation, Disciple of Peace must be seen as a mixed bag. Certainly its value rises as academic expectations are lowered. In view of this, it may unqualifiedly recommended to the average reader who is interested in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement generally or any Restorationist ready to critically engage questions of war, peace, and the state in view of the great thinkers of the tradition. Certainly, I believe that members of the Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ would all profit from taking the small amount of time necessary to breeze through this work. The number of adherents in these churches I encounter on a regular basis who have no concept of the rich pacifist history of their traditions is astonishing. Beyond its function for these demographics, however, Watts' work has serious shortcomings which hamper its critical value for the well-educated reader.

Complementarianism: Olson's Gordian Knot

The following is part of an ongoing response to Roger E. Olson’s critique of extreme complementarianism. For the origin and nature of these posts, see Complementarianism: A Defense from a Nobody.
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Let us shift now from complementarianism in theory and Olson's critique of it to a subsequent post where Olson attempts to upend complementarianism. He proposes to offer "a true conundrum that exposes the impossibility of consistent complementarianism" and solicits in response possible solutions from "leading evangelical complementarian theorists." Unfortunately, I am not a leading theorist in any respect, and thus my opinion has only marginal weight for Olson--as I am forced to conclude does the opinions of the millions of regular complementarians who go around every day not treating their wives like children or living in abject, debilitating subjugation to their husbands. Nevertheless, I will present Olson's Gordian Knot and, with my meager skills, attempt to untie it from the complementarian position I have outlined previously.

Suppose a married couple comes to you (the complementarian pastor or counselor or whatever) for advice. They are both committed evangelical Christians who sincerely want to “do the right thing.” They are trying to live according to the guidelines of evangelical complementarianism. However, a problem has arisen in their marriage. The wife acquired sound knowledge and understanding of finances including investments before the couple became Christians. The husband is a car mechanic who knows little to nothing about finances or investments. A good, trusted friend has come to the husband and offered him an opportunity to make a lot of money by investing the couple’s savings (money for their childrens’ college educations and for retirement) in a capital venture. The husband wants to do it. The wife, whose knowledge of finances and investments is well known and acknowledged by everyone, is adamantly opposed to it and says she knows, without doubt, that the money will be lost in that particular investment. She sees something in it the husband doesn’t see and she can’t convince him that it is a bad investment. The husband wants to take all their savings and put it into this investment, but he can’t do it without his wife’s signature. The wife won’t sign. However, after long debate, the couple has agreed to leave the matter in your hands. The husband insists this is a test of the wife’s God-ordained subordination to him. The wife insists this is an exception to their otherwise complementarian marriage. You, the complementarian adviser of the couple, realize the wife is right about the investment. The money will be lost if the investment is made. You try to talk the husband out of it but he won’t listen. All he’s there for is to have you decide biblically and theologically what she, the wife, should do. What do you advise?

The scenario Olson describes is difficult, admittedly, but perhaps not in the way he thinks. It isn't difficult to resolve logically; its difficulty lies in the existential turmoil it evokes. The force of his argument rests primarily in its appeal to the universal human inclination to be covetous of what we own. Anyone who has been married for any period of time has weathered some kind of financial difficulty and, in all likelihood, has butted heads with his or her spouse over the proper course to take. When you pair that shared experience with the ubiquitous presence in sinful humanity of a desire to possess and preserve "treasures on earth," it is understandable why Olson's straw complementarians have shied away from answering.

The resolution, such as it is, comes first through reorienting the ethical priorities. For Olson, the clear focus is on the ethics of financial stewardship (to use a gross euphemism). When presented with the potential objection that the limit of submission is sin, he counters that "[the complementarian] has to define “sin” in such a way as to exclude from it the wife’s knowing participation in financial ruin for their whole family." What looms large in the ethical picture then is the suggestion that the possibility of financial ruin is more critical than the possibility that some tertiary Christian principle (something totally incidental like submission) might be violated.

Instead of focusing on the dire prospect that "money for their childrens’ college educations and for retirement" might not be there--concerns which smack of an affluent Christianity foreign to the apostolic age, or to most Christian ages for that matter--the primary ethical question ought to be whether or not the foundational Christian principle of self-sacrificial love is at play. With this being the new focus, there are a number of actions which would be morally virtuous regardless of the consequences (and thus undermining Olson's utilitarian vision of ethics). For example, it would be morally virtuous for the wife to opt to submit to the husband and allow the money to be invested. If the money should be lost, credit God with using the wife's sacrifice as a tool for teaching the husband humility. If the investment should prove profitable, credit God with using the husband's prudence as a tool for teaching the wife humility. In either case, whatever happens to the money is incidental. The wife's choice to submit is morally virtuous.

Before any objections to this are raised, let me continue by adding that it would also be morally virtuous if the husband opted to forgo the investment out of sacrificial love for his wife. It is a fool (or a polemicist) who believes that true leadership consists of always getting your way. Plato understood leadership to be whatever actions best ensured that all those led were maximizing their potential. Paul had a less calculating but nonetheless compatible vision when he told husbands that they should give themselves up for their wives as Christ gave himself up for the church. If the investment turns out to have been unsound for others, credit God with using the wife's prudence as a tool for teaching the husband humility. If the investment turns out to have been sound for others, credit God with using the husband's sacrifice as a tool for teaching the wife humility. In either case, the husband can only ever act virtuous when he sacrifices his will out of love for his wife.

The ultimate issue at stake here is not how to make sound investments but how to have a sound marriage before God. The key to this does not lie in equal rights or even in a calculated, non-traditional division of labor. It lies in the willingness of the spouses to emulate Jesus Christ, who submits himself eternally to God the Father and who gave himself up ultimately for his bride the church. As the hypothetical couples counselor, I don't care at all what happens to their money. I'm not their stockbroker. My concern is helping them to grow into conformity with the image of Christ, for which submission is essential. Olson frames the question as a conflict between doing what is good and doing what is legal, but in reality it is a clash between doing what is right and doing what is desirable. The focus on the money betrays who our true master is. If it is God rather than Mammon, then the issue comes into sharper focus.

Not, I imagine, for Olson, mind you. It is clear from his proposed dilemma that he sees unsound investment as a sin (a damning judgment on so many in America and the world right now). There is a more unsettling undercurrent to Olson's argument, however, a response to which may sum up my point here. In his opening salvo, Olson poses this question with apparent indignation: "What is permanent, docile, subordination and submission if not a curse?" I would suggest that it is the appropriate human disposition before God. If submission is a curse, than the Son is accursed of the Father. If submission is a curse, then Adam and all of creation were cursed before Even ever arrived on the scene. If submission is a curse, then Paul enjoins all Christians to be cursed by one another and by God. In fact, the permanent, docile, and voluntary (an adjective that Olson always seems to omit) submission before God is the wonderful disposition in which God exalts and beatifies all creation. That wives may be asked to practice this before their husbands ("as to the Lord"), Christians before one another, congregants before elders, children before parents, slaves before masters, and on and on is not the shame of anyone but to their glorious and eternal benefit.