Last night my husband and I watched 50 Shades of Grey. Well, I watched and he fell asleep. We’d joked that we should watch it, thinking that it might be entertaining. I had read the trilogy before he and I got married. Of course, I’d thought it was shocking in some areas but with mediocre writing and character development, it wasn’t really much different than the romance novels I used to pilfer from my mom’s bookshelf as a teenager.
My attitude about the BDSM content of 50 Shades of Grey has changed now that my husband and I live a CDD lifestyle. Caught up in the thralls of the 50 Shades popularity, I thought that the dominant-submissive relationship of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele was exotic and a fantasy. But, once I met my husband, I filed that information away to a deep place in my brain, knowing now that I had found the love of my life and didn’t need to think about a fantasy anymore.
So, we started watching the movie and I soon found myself thinking, That’s not how it should work. First of all, the girl falls into bed with this dominant stranger within a few days of knowing him and soon agrees to a BDSM relationship with him. He spanks her several times in the movie and ties her up on contraptions within his “Red Room of Pain.” Not to spoil the ending, but she finally leaves after he straps her 6 times with a belt. The relationship is seemingly ended by that act of dominance.
But was it a relationship to begin? As a secular romance novel, there is nothing in the book that talks about women submitting to their husbands as is fitting to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22). The submissiveness that Christian Grey desires is not Biblically based. It is sexual and sinful. Entertaining for some? Maybe. But it’s not a depiction of Christian domestic discipline.
So I watched the movie and listened to the characters discuss submission, rules, and hard limits. But what was missing was the reason why. Maybe it’s because the mainstream media doesn’t accept this concept, but the reason why submission exists is because women must submit to their husbands and all should submit to the Lord. The movie left me numb and disappointed that I’d spent two hours watching something so unbiblical.
What I realize now is that my movie-watching experience solidified my walk toward Biblical submission. If I choose to call my husband “sir,” or wield to his opinions, or accept his punishments, then I am not embarking on a 50 Shades of Grey episode. I am, however, submitting to my husband in a Biblical way as Ephesians 5:22-24 dictates: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
A Submissive Wife's Journey 