There is, you know, a difference between an indicative and an imperative. Then recall that most people don’t. If you tell people that a Christian is self-controlled, then they try to be self-controlled instead of trying to be Christian. But self-controlled is an indicative of a Christian. Take up the commandments of Christ, and you begin to get the self-control. Take up self-control itself and you get tired and irritated.

Women don’t need to learn how to be the good wife; the “Proverbs 31 wife”. The Proverbs 31 Wife is an indicative–what a good wife looks like–, it is not an imperative. The imperative–what a wife must do–is obey her husband, raise her children, and run her household well and with honor. That’s it. If she does those things she will become more and more like Proverbs 31 Wife even if she is totally ignorant of that model.

Submission is the absence of rebellion. Wives don’t have to learn “how to be submissive”; they just have to decide not to rebel. You literally cannot learn nothing, and anyone who tries to teach submission (the absence of rebellions, e.g. nothing) with caveats is therefore only teaching the caveats; the ways of rebellion that sound legitimate. That’s why, I am sure, there are no caveats to wifely submission in the Bible.

Which is to say: Most of the women who write on submission should shut up about that, and write about how to run a household, and how to care for children. Of course, women aren’t confined to chores and chirrun. They could write about other things, as well. Singing, for example, is a wonderful endeavor of a woman. Painting is good, too, as is dancing…and there are not half a dozen who would satisfy my notion of an accomplished woman.

Let them teach each other those, and let them leave exceptions of submission alone.

[CC: Expanded from a comment here.]