Marriage - Woman be Subordinate...What!!???

Brothers and sisters:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is head of his wife
just as Christ is head of the Church,
he himself the savior of the Body.
As the Church is subordinate to Christ,
so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ loved the Church
and handed himself over for her to sanctify her,
cleansing her by the bath of water with the word,
that he might present to himself the Church in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish.
So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one hates his own flesh
but rather nourishes and cherishes it,
even as Christ does the Church,
because we are members of his Body.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.

This is a great mystery,
but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.
In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself,
and the wife should respect her husband.

Horror of horrors!  Not this passage, it is so anti-female!  Imagine, a modern woman being subordinate to her husband, could anything be more disgustingly male chauvinistic?  This passage should be re-written or better yet, maybe just deleted from the Bible.   Hold on there cowboys and cowgirls, let's just breathe deeply and see what Paul was actually saying. 

First of all, you have to read the WHOLE passage, you cannot stop with the sentence that some women find so very offensive.  If you read the WHOLE passage and think about what Paul is saying then you can see clearly that this does not place man above woman or woman above man, it places Christ overall as an example of what our marriages should be like. 

Paul does say wives be subordinate to their husbands in everything. (Gasp - now calm down.) He tells the men to love their wives as Christ loves His Church.  He is saying the same thing twice.  In marriage two become one and while each does not lose their individual identity they should love one another as Christ loved us.  In other words, we should put the other person in our marriage first.  We should be falling all over each other in our attempt to being helpful, kind, understanding, and loving.  Paul does not give men a license to lord it over their wives and the wives are told to love their man as Christ would. 

We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We would not do something to intentionally hurt ourselves, no we nurture our bodies with food, drink, exercise (more or less), recreation and sleep.  When we marry we are to treat our spouse as if he or she was ourselves and we should do no harm and we should nurture them, allow them the freedom to grow into the person that God wants them to be and they should do the same for us.   

So in our reading, you can change the sex to the other and say "Men be subordinate to your wives..."  and "Wives love your husband as Christ loves the Church..."  It is the same thing said twice to make a point. It goes back to "Love one another as I have loved you." 

When we marry, our lives are no longer our own, the two become one and their unity should reflect that of the Trinity.  God the Father loves God the Son and this relationship between Father and Son forms the Spirit who loves them both.   In marriage, man loves woman, woman loves man and both love God who is the silent partner in our marriage. 

So when someone asks if you believe the passage and agree with it, don't be afraid to say "yes."  For this passage is not about man and woman but rather about man, woman, and God.