The Left Is Going After Michelle Bachman

The title and subtitle from June 30, 2011 Slate says it all:

Hail to the Housewife

Can Michele Bachmann be the leader of the free world and still obey her husband like a good evangelical?

What never ceases to amaze me how is ignorant the left is of Christianity.   Ephesians 5:21-33 are the verses that leftists (and some misogynistic Christian men) like to quote very selectively:

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Got that?  "Submit to one another": that means that both husband and wife have a humble obligation to each other.  If you want to quote the following version alone, you are missing the whole point of "submit to one another."

 ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
 ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing^[b] her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”^{[c] 32} This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Husbands who love their wives "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her": what does that mean?  Does it mean Jesus beat up the church, gave arbitrary orders, yelled, "Go out to kitchen and get me some pie, woman"?  No, Jesus died a horrible death to redeem mankind from sin.  And yet the left, because it has no knowledge of Christianity, does not understand that men are supposed to be ready to sacrifice themselves for their wives, and that submission in marriage is a mutual thing.

Successful marriages, in my experience, are based on a husband and wife who are prepared to move beyond selfishness.  Two people who are entirely focused on their own needs do not last.  There may be physiological reasons, but there are certainly cultural reasons why women tend to be self-sacrificing.  Where the husband is selfish, and the wife gives, gives, and gives, it often ends in depression.  Especially as divorce has become widely accepted, it often ends up there.  Less commonly, I have seen men prepared to sacrifice their happiness for a wife who cares about nothing but herself.  The trajectory of marital failure looks different, but the results are usually the same.

I don't really see any reason why Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann can't be President of the United States and a Christian wife.  Sarah Palin as Todd's wife is an entirely different sphere of work from President Sarah Palin.  This notion that a Christian woman can't be a strong and effective leader is not Biblical--the early Church was awash in women performing important roles.