Even in Christian circles, there are some groups that assert a kind of senior patriarchal authority. Among more Calvinistic people there is this so-called reconstructionist constituency, and they seem to completely ride roughshod over the headship of the husband in the new family. That is quite wrong and mistaken. In some cultures in the world, when children marry and enter into another family unit, the parents, if they are not obeyed, become extremely resentful and angry, and that is a great shame. This is sometimes consolidated also in some circles by a certain amount of manipulation. Parents will give their adult children things, or give them their mortgages or whatever, and by doing so they keep them under the patriarchal authority in different ways. Young people must be very careful to be as independent as they can be, without necessarily spurning help, because they do not want to allow undue authority to be exercised from outside the family unit. If you are a young husband, you are the head of the home; you are responsible.
Obviously, one flesh implies first of all sexual union, but also great love and loyalty. They belong to each other in heart and in mind; and they share their abilities and insights. The husband, yes, is responsible before God to take the ultimate decisions, but taking full account of his wife. They are to share their insights and their abilities, and to have great mutual appreciation. If, in business life in the world, there is a board meeting, then hopefully the chairman, the chief executive officer, will not ride roughshod over the board. He will chair that board having the supreme responsibility, but at the same time he is also subject to the board, and he is bound to take account of the different experts, and their views or opinions. It is like that in a marriage. It is outrageous if you get a husband who appears to despise the views and the feelings and the insights of his wife. While he has the ultimate responsibility, he is bound to be a sharing person, and take account of her fully.
Marriage is a very intimate union. These days, even in Bible-believing Christian literature, you have a lot of writers promoting different styles of marriage guidance, marriage counselling, and they do not seem to realise what they are doing; because they ask questions which are so intrusive. They want to get so involved in the life of the couple they are advising and they ask them to write down answers to long lists of quite intimate and detailed questions. That is absolutely wrong, because husband and wife have a confidential sharing between them, which should not be punctured or interfered with – unless there is an absolute emergency – by anyone. If somebody comes to a pastor for help in marriage, we can help with principles, we can give guidance; but there should be no ‘dig-and-delve’, no interference in the relationship. In a way those who counsel married couples are rather like surgeons. They have absolutely no right to cut into the body, unless it is absolutely necessary, unless something is so out of order that it amounts to an extreme state of malfunction and emergency. Otherwise, their task is to advise and give the principles, and the husband and wife, before God, have the responsibility of applying those principles.
Husband and wife are one flesh. Now, that may not mean they share everything. It may be, for instance, that one or the other has a professional duty to maintain confidence to their own business, their own clients, and cannot necessarily share those things with their wives. This happens to pastors. If somebody comes to a pastor and has to divulge something which should be maintained in the strictest of confidence, the pastor cannot tell his wife that thing. He must subscribe as a pastor to the old saying, ‘A pastor is a man who goes to his grave with 1000 secrets.’ Actually, it would be more accurate to say 10,000 secrets. So we are not suggesting that as they are one flesh, they share everything. You have to maintain confidences in your life, even sometimes from your very nearest and dearest.