God is not mocked: A man reaps what he sows- John Piper’s marriage trouble

If they permit husbands to abuse,
is there anything to keep them from using power and control against their own wives?   -Waneta Dawn

John Piper takes leave of ministry to work on his marriage HT Cheryl Schatz.

I was hoping to be able to finally give you an example of a Christian whose public display of repentance rose to the level of professing Buddhist- Tiger Woods’.  Piper’s statement that “there is no whiff of unfaithfulness on either side” sounds very much like Benny Hinn’s letter.  I judge Piper’s response to marriage travail far better than Hinn’s: Though he avoids a firm “the buck stops here!”, Piper’s words inch toward an admission of pride, and Piper stepped down from his ministry to focus on his marriage.   But I have to admit that I am disappointed, that unlike Tiger,  Piper leaves the door open for his wife to be blamed

As you may have already heard in the sermon from March 27-28, the elders graciously approved on March 22 a leave of absence that will take me away from Bethlehem from May 1 through December 31, 2010. We thought it might be helpful to put an explanation in a letter to go along with the sermon.

I asked the elders to consider this leave because of a growing sense that my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry-pattern need a reality check from the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, I love my Lord, my wife, my five children and their families first and foremost; and I love my work of preaching and writing and leading Bethlehem. I hope the Lord gives me at least five more years as the pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem.

But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I’ll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry. Since I don’t have just one deed to point to, I simply ask for a spirit of forgiveness; and I give you as much assurance as I can that I am not making peace, but war, with my own sins.

Noël and I are rock solid in our commitment to each other, and there is no whiff of unfaithfulness on either side. But, as I told the elders, “rock solid” is not always an emotionally satisfying metaphor, especially to a woman. A rock is not the best image of a woman’s tender companion. In other words, the precious garden of my home needs tending. I want to say to Noël that she is precious to me in a way that, at this point in our 41-year pilgrimage, can be said best by stepping back for a season from virtually all public commitments.

No marriage is an island. For us this is true in two senses. One is that Noël and I are known inside-out by a few friends at Bethlehem—most closely by our long-time colleagues and friends David and Karin Livingston, and then by a cluster of trusted women with Noël and men with me. We are accountable, known, counseled, and prayed for. I am deeply thankful for a gracious culture of transparency and trust among the leadership at Bethlehem.

The other way that our marriage is not an island is that its strengths and defects have consequences for others. No one in the orbit of our family and friends remains unaffected by our flaws. My prayer is that this leave will prove to be healing from the inside of my soul, through Noël’s heart, and out to our children and their families, and beyond to anyone who may have been hurt by my failures.

By John Piper. © Desiring God.  Website: desiringGod.org

Personally, I think the whole problem is that he is entrenched in bad destructive marriage killing doctrine on how a marriage should work. Why has it taken 41 years for him to finally hear and regard his wife?

Here is an excerpt from his book “The Momentary Marriage” by John Piper (source)

The Sadness of Scorned Beauty

It is a great sadness that in our society—even in the church—the dif­ferent and complementary roles of biblical headship for the husband and biblical submission for the wife are despised or simply passed over. Some people just write them off as sub-Christian cultural leftovers from the first century.  Others distort and misuse them—I mentioned earlier that I actually sat in my office once with a husband who believed that submission meant his wife should not go from one room to the other in the house without asking his permission.  That kind of pathological distortion makes it easier for people to dispense with texts like these in the Bible.

But the truth of headship and submission is really here and really beautiful. When you see it lived out with the mark of Christ’s majesty on it—the mutuality of servanthood without canceling the reality of headship and submission—it is a wonderful and deeply satisfying drama. So let’s ponder from this text first what submission is not, and then what it is.

What Submission Is

If that’s what submission is not, then what is it? At the end of Chapter 6, based on Ephesians 5, I suggested that submission is the divine call­ing of a wife to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and help carry it through according to her gifts. That’s what we see here as well. It’s the disposition to follow a husband’s authority, and an inclination to yield to his leadership….

Noël expressed her misgivings communicated clearly that she endorses my leadership and affirms me in my role as head; and 4) because she has made it clear to me from the beginning of our marriage that if, when we have done all the talking we should, we still disagree, she will defer to her husband’s decision.

God’s Way Is Good for Us

So I end this chapter with the reminder that marriage is not mainly about staying in love. It’s about covenant-keeping. And the main rea­son it is about covenant-keeping is that God designed the relationship between a husband and his wife to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. This is the deepest meaning of marriage. And that is why ultimately the roles of headship and submission are so important. If our marriages are going to tell the truth about Christ and his church, we cannot be indifferent to the meaning of headship and submission. And let it not go unsaid that God’s purpose for the church—and for the Christian wife who represents it—is her everlast­ing, holy joy. Christ died for her to bring that about.

Clearly, Noel bought that this Genesis 3:16 paradigm is “good”. Can you see there how she gave him the male trump card?  Of course he took it!  And went to great theological lengths to justify it and promote it to others.

HT Paula Fether

Really, I suspect that Piper could have kept going like this the rest of their lives.   Why not?  He gets his way every time!  AND he gets to proclaim that his marriage doctrine is a “scorned beauty”,  “God’s way” and “good for us”.  I suspect that his wife’s unhappiness has been instrumental in this new inclination toward self examination and I pray that this will lead to a full scale renunciation from him of marriage killing doctrines.

I remember when I was a wholly owned subsidiary of this doctrine.  I remember walking outside and talking with God and reminding Him that HIS Scripture PROMISED that HIS yoke is easy and HIS burden is light and I did not find it so at all.  The burden was so heavy, I could see no way out of it but my death.  I wanted to die: my frame of mind was such that I would have embraced cancer or something as an escape hatch from God to bring me relief.

Waneta Dawn’s post just a few days before Piper stepped down is amazingly prophetic. As Dawn suggests, the breaking news confirms: The blindness he exhibited in advising women in troubled marriages profoundly damaged his relationship with his own wife.  Hopefully, he is on a journey and will continue deeper.  I find hope in Piper’s declaration of  “a growing sense that my soul, my marriage, my family, and my ministry-pattern need a reality check from the Holy Spirit”.

CBMW uses Power and Control Tools of Abusers- by Waneta Dawn

First, Piper minimized (made light of, spoke of them as being insignificant) emotional, verbal, and spiritual abuse by calling them “verbal unkindness.” Then he denies the seriousness of the situation by telling wives to endure it “for a season.” With his focus on wife submission, and his emphasis on allowing a wife to refuse to submit ONLY if her husband is CLEARLY asking her to sin, he is blaming wives by holding them responsible for their husbands’ sin against them, except in cases that are so extreme even Piper, or another pastor with male authority bias, would agree they are sin…

But the fact that Piper and Ware have publically shown their unconcern for the plight of abused wives, that they have blamed wives rather than held husbands accountable, that they have excused or minimized the husband’s abusive actions, that they are not horrified by the abuse, makes it clear that they permit husbands to abuse.  If they permit husbands to abuse, is there anything to keep them from using power and control against their own wives

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