When Complementarian Becomes Competitive
I need to address something that breaks my heart every time I encounter it: the way "complementarian" teaching has created a competitive dynamic between men and women instead of the beautiful partnership God intended.
The complementarians—those who teach that men and women have different roles with men in authority—use the word "preeminence" a lot. They say it means the husband is the preeminent one, the first one. But here's what I've discovered: even though Jesus truly is the King of Kings, even though He really is the most preeminent person who has ever graced our planet, He demonstrated something completely different.
He was the least controlling.
The Astonishing Paradox
Think about this: the One who has all power chose not to use it for control. "I did not come to be served," He said, "but to serve, and to give My life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28, NASB).
It's a very different Kingdom. It does change everything. It kind of mixes everything up, because He wasn't looking for that power structure.
But somehow, we've taken Jesus' example of servant leadership and twisted it into a justification for male dominance. We've taken His revolutionary approach to relationships and forced it back into the very hierarchical systems He came to transform.
The Flow That's Been Cut Off
Here's what I've come to understand about power in God's Kingdom: it flows in circles, not down pyramids. It's like electricity—it doesn't just pop out of nowhere. There's this constant flow where everything originates back with the Lord.
He's actually the creator and the source of all things, including power. But Kingdom power isn't meant to push itself up to the pinnacle. Kingdom power is meant to come under and push others up.
It becomes this reciprocal flow. We often talk about the perichoresis—that's the love relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a beautiful dance of mutual honor and deference.
But here's the tragedy: I think the complementarians, those who teach this hierarchical structure in the home—"he's the head, she's the body"—have cut off the flow of the Lord in the home and in the church.
The Bride Made Secondary
Think about it: if you're honestly believing that the wife is to diminish her power in order to lift her husband up, but it doesn't flow back into this circular thing, you've actually cut off God's intended flow.
And then we extrapolate this onto how Christ operates with the church. If the woman is to be secondary and she represents the bride, and Paul talks about Christ being the head of the church, His bride, then certainly the church is supposed to play a secondary, weaker role. She's supposed to sit back and wait for her groom to do everything.
But let me ask a question: How is that working out for us?
The Anemic Result
It's producing anemic, weak, and hypocritical Christianity. I see this constantly, especially in attacks on ministries like Bethel, which I have high regard for. They're constantly under attack from the complementarian tribe of the Christian church—those who are strong on Reformed theology and the sovereignty of God.
They're always after Bethel because they seem terrified that Bethel is going to give a little bit too much glory to people. They say, "What is man's chief end? To glorify God and delight in Him forever." And the main thing becomes "all glory to God, all glory to God, all glory to God."
What they're missing is that you can't give glory to God without sharing in that glory, because it is His glory to glorify us.
The Glory We're Afraid to Receive
And how do we give Him something we don't have? In John 17:22, Jesus said, "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one" (NASB).
We're supposed to share in that glory. But we keep saying, "No, thank you. We're not worthy."
There's a resistance to blessing, a resistance to glory, because somehow we think we're going to make too much of humans. But guess what? There's also a resistance to the unity of men and women.
Anytime you have that level of resistance, you know there's demonic activity involved. Why wouldn't the enemy want us to know that we're glorious? Because Jesus made us glorious. Why wouldn't he want us to know that? Because it's going to give us power.
The Shame-Based Craving
Religious people almost crave being told how worthless they are. I think it's shame-based, rooted in their sense of shame. It's almost like they don't feel significant unless you're telling them how awful they are.
But I wonder if maybe it takes us off the hook—like we're not responsible then? If the truth is that we really are to carry Christ's glory on the earth, that we really are to finish what He started, that we really are to be the bride without spot or wrinkle worthy of her groom, then if we're not doing that, it's not God's fault.
It's ours.
The Prodigal's False Humility
It's like the prodigal coming back saying, "I'm not worthy to be a son. Just let me be a slave."
And what did the father do to that? He ignored the son's self-deprecating speech and just started kissing him all over, because he would not let him avoid the responsibility of glory.
The father restored everything—put the ring on his finger, the robe on his back. But it was the older brother, the one who'd been doing everything right and following the rules, who had no idea who he really was. The father said to him, "Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours" (Luke 15:31, NASB).
Why do I have to give it to you? It's already yours.
Begging Instead of Reigning
A lot of times we pray and try to connect with the Lord like servants begging the Master: "Lord, please help me. Please fix this. Please do that."
And He's sitting there going, "You have My Spirit living on the inside of you. You have the mind of Christ. We are one, literally." That's what headship actually means—that we are one with our groom. We are one with Him.
But if we're sitting here begging the Lord to do things for us as if He's the all-powerful one and we have no power, the enemy has got us to lay down all of our weapons and all of the tools that Christ came to empower us with.
We set them aside and let the enemy run havoc on our world. People don't even know they're beloved. They don't know they're already accepted by the Lord. They don't know that Jesus loved them so much He died for them.
The True Partnership
Here's what I've learned in my marriage with Gregory: when you understand that the head-body metaphor is all about connectedness and unity, everything changes.
We're supposed to get to the place where we understand that our hearts can trust and open to relationship. If you have a healthy marriage, the day you get married, you're not "there" yet. It's going to take time to develop and to open your heart.
The more healthy you both are, the faster that process can go. But the whole idea is that the more you live together and the more you truly yield to one another and create a safe place—when you act in a trustworthy manner, when you act in an honoring manner, when you come under to lift the other up—your heart feels safe enough to open and let that love flow.
You actually start thinking alike. You already know what the other person wants and likes. You don't always have to ask, "What do you want?" If you're out at the store picking between two or three things, you know which one they're going to want. You don't have to always ask.
The Head Came Down
The truth is that the head came down literally and became one of us—God in the flesh. Emmanuel, the Christmas season reminds us. He actually came down to become one of us, to enter into our darkness so that we could enter into His light.
Again, the head-body metaphor is all about connectedness and unity. It's not at all about one being over or more preeminent than the other. That's not the purpose of the word.
Breaking the False Paradigm
In Colossians, kephalē (head) is all about connectedness with Him and the fullness of Him that is in us. We are in Him and it's that flow of the head and the body working together. It's not about He's boss over us or that the man's boss over the woman.
To try to reduce it down to something like that is to do the very thing that Paul warns us not to do. It's actually the opposite of his teachings.
And what scares me is that even in these verses, Paul is talking about "all the joints being connected." So it's about connectedness, not about separateness. It is about that great mystery of Christ being one in us.
The Competitive Christianity We've Created
When we make Christianity about hierarchy instead of unity, we create competition instead of collaboration. We create striving instead of flowing. We create fear instead of love.
I've watched this play out in churches where people are always trying to climb the ladder, always positioning for the next level of leadership, always comparing their spiritual maturity to others. That's not God's Kingdom—that's the kingdom of this world operating inside the church.
In God's Kingdom, there's no ladder to climb because everyone is lifted up together. There's no competition because everyone wins when love flows freely. There's no need to diminish others because there's room for everyone to shine.
The Dance of True Partnership
What I love about the painting I once saw of biblical headship was that it wasn't conveying something static—it wasn't "he has to be under and lift her up forever." It was the idea of a dance.
There's movement and flow and love, and it's reciprocal. But it's his strength that initiates a lot of that beautiful movement. This is where he finds his fulfillment—not in being served, but in serving. Not in being above, but in lifting up.
We can get so twisted in our 21st-century Western intellectual theological ideas that we want to mine out relationship and reduce everything to rules and dos and don'ts. But that misses the whole point.
The Real Enemy of Unity
The enemy doesn't want us to understand that when we flow together in unity—men and women, husbands and wives, the whole body of Christ—we become unstoppable. That's why he's so committed to keeping us divided.
He whispers to men: "You need to maintain control or you'll lose your significance." He whispers to women: "You need to fight for your rights or you'll be oppressed." He whispers to both: "It's us versus them."
But God says: "You are one. Stop fighting each other and start fighting for each other."
The Revolution of Mutual Honor
This is the revolution Jesus brought: not the elimination of strength, but the redirection of it. Not the absence of leadership, but leadership that serves. Not the denial of differences, but the celebration of them within unity.
When men understand that their strength is meant to lift others up, they become more masculine, not less. When women understand that their gifts are meant to be fully expressed, they become more feminine, not less. And when both understand that they're called to mutual submission, they both become more human—more like Jesus.
Time for a New Paradigm
It's time to stop the competitive Christianity that has wounded so many. It's time to stop making people choose between being faithful to Scripture and honoring the full humanity of both men and women.
The truth is, Scripture doesn't ask us to make that choice. The choice is between the world's hierarchical systems and God's Kingdom of mutual love and honor.
I choose God's Kingdom. I choose the dance over the pyramid. I choose partnership over domination. I choose the flow of love over the grabbing for power.
The question is: what will you choose?
Have you experienced the difference between competitive Christianity and Kingdom partnership? What would change in your relationships if power flowed in circles instead of down pyramids? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this revolution of mutual honor.
Blessings,
Susan 😊