From Complementarian to Kingdom
For twenty years, I lived the complementarian dream. I served in a large marriage ministry, teaching other women how to submit to their husbands and find fulfillment in their "God-given role." I genuinely believed that male authority and female submission were biblical mandates that, if followed faithfully, would create flourishing marriages.
I poured my heart into that ministry, hoping that by teaching submission and by modeling it in my own marriage, I could help transform other couples' relationships. If the system worked, surely my own difficult marriage would eventually reflect the joy and partnership I was teaching others to pursue.
But after twenty years, that marriage ended. And I found myself face-to-face with some uncomfortable questions about everything I'd been taught and taught others.
The Cracks in the Foundation
Looking back, I can see that my faith in the complementarian system was already beginning to fracture before my marriage ended. Despite my best efforts to submit, despite years of marriage conferences and counseling, despite genuinely trying to follow what I believed was God's design—the promised transformation never came.
Instead, I often found myself walking on eggshells, afraid to upset the "powerful one" in our relationship. My children and I lived with constant tension, never knowing what might trigger anger or disapproval. This wasn't the beautiful picture of marriage I'd been promised when I embraced male headship.
But I kept believing the problem was my implementation, not the system itself. Maybe I wasn't submitting enough. Maybe I wasn't trusting God's design enough. Maybe I needed to try harder.
It wasn't until years later, when God began opening my eyes to different interpretations of Scripture, that I realized the system itself might be flawed.
The Class That Changed Everything
After my divorce and remarriage to Gregory, I enrolled in a class called "God's Release of Women" through Christian Leadership University. I'll be honest—I didn't take the class because I was questioning women's roles. I took it because I was hungry to learn more about hearing God's voice, and the instructor, Mark Virkler, had revolutionized my understanding of how God speaks.
But God had other plans. Right before I started the class, He gave me a dream about something called "cancerous caulked E"—a dream that prepared me to understand that the church had been poisoned with traditions and doctrines from worldly systems that had woven themselves into our understanding of Scripture.
In the class, I was reading Joanne Krupp's book Woman, God's Plan, Not Man's Tradition, when everything clicked. I suddenly saw that in passages like 1 Corinthians 11, Paul wasn't teaching male authority—he was correcting false teachers who promoted these ideas.
The Earth-Shaking Revelation
When I realized we'd been taking Paul's refutations of wrong teaching and treating them as Paul's instructions, my world turned upside down. We weren't just misunderstanding a few verses—we were doing the exact opposite of what Paul intended.
For centuries, the church had been building systems on foundations that were never meant to support them. We thought we were being faithful to Scripture when we were actually contradicting its core message.
The emotional impact was overwhelming. I literally threw the book across the room and had it out with God in a way that wasn't pretty but was completely honest. How could He allow millennia of women to be subjugated based on misunderstandings of His word?
The Courage to Question
What followed was one of the most challenging seasons of my spiritual life. Everything I'd taught others was now in question. Every interpretation I'd built my life on needed to be reexamined.
This is terrifying territory for anyone who's spent years in ministry. What if I'd been wrong? What if I'd led other people astray? What if the foundation I'd built my life on was sand rather than rock?
But I discovered something important: questioning our interpretations isn't the same as questioning Scripture itself. In fact, the more I studied the Bible with fresh eyes—setting aside the traditional interpretations I'd inherited—the more beautiful and consistent it became.
What I Found When I Dug Deeper
As I began to study passages about women with new eyes, I made discoveries that both thrilled and troubled me:
Paul's Revolutionary Approach: When I noticed that Paul consistently placed instructions about wives submitting alongside instructions about slaves submitting—often in the same breath—I realized something profound. Paul wasn't endorsing these power structures for all time; he was showing believers how to operate within broken systems while releasing Kingdom transformation into them.
The Pattern of Progressive Revelation: Just as we now understand that Paul wasn't endorsing slavery for all time, I began to see that he wasn't endorsing male domination either. He was planting seeds of Kingdom reality that would eventually undermine both systems.
The Context of Mutual Submission: I discovered that Ephesians 5:22 doesn't even contain the word "submit" in the original Greek—it borrows it from verse 21, where Paul commands everyone to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (NIV).
The Bigger Picture: When I stopped proof-texting individual verses and started looking at the overall trajectory of Scripture, I saw a clear movement toward equality, mutual honor, and freedom—not hierarchy and control.
The Cost of Honesty
I won't lie—this journey has been costly. Questioning deeply held beliefs always is. Some people who respected my teaching when I promoted complementarian views now question my faithfulness to Scripture. Some have accused me of compromising biblical truth to accommodate modern culture.
But I've discovered something liberating: honest wrestling with Scripture doesn't weaken faith—it strengthens it. When we're willing to examine our assumptions and let God's word speak for itself, we often find that His truth is more beautiful and more radical than our traditions have allowed us to see.
Why This Matters Beyond Marriage
The more I studied, the more I realized this issue extends far beyond how husbands and wives relate to each other. The dominance-based hierarchy that we've imported into the church affects every relationship:
Pastoral Authority: When leaders believe they have inherent authority over others rather than responsibility to serve, spiritual abuse becomes almost inevitable.
Spiritual Gifts: When we prevent people from fully exercising their gifts based on gender or other arbitrary qualifications, the entire body of Christ suffers.
Witness to the World: Our insistence on hierarchies that the world increasingly recognizes as harmful undermines our testimony of Christ's revolutionary love.
Understanding of God: When we present God's design for relationships as hierarchical rule and submission, we distort people's understanding of God's true nature.
From Complementarian to Kingdom
The journey from complementarian theology to Kingdom understanding isn't just about changing our view of gender roles. It's about discovering an entirely different paradigm for human relationships—one based on mutual honor, mutual submission, and mutual empowerment rather than dominance and control.
In God's Kingdom:
Power flows in all directions, not just downward
Authority means responsibility to serve, not right to control
Leadership equals lifting others up, not being in charge
Submission means mutual support, not inferior status
Success means bringing everyone up together
This isn't about women finally getting their turn to be in charge. It's about everyone discovering the freedom and flourishing that comes when we operate by Kingdom principles rather than worldly power structures.
An Invitation to Honesty
If you're reading this and feeling uncomfortable because it challenges beliefs you've held for years, I understand. I've been where you are. The invitation isn't to abandon Scripture but to read it with fresh eyes, setting aside inherited interpretations that may be filtering out God's actual message.
What I've discovered is that God's truth can handle our honest questions. In fact, He welcomes them. When we're willing to wrestle with Him like Jacob did, we often walk away with blessings we never expected.
The question isn't whether you have enough faith to believe traditional interpretations. The question is whether you have enough courage to let God's word speak for itself.
And I promise you—what He has to say is more beautiful than you've imagined.
Blessings,
Susan 😊