choices and being allowed to make them, part three

I realize the claims I’m about to make here are going to upset some. Many of you are going to violently disagree with me, and I’m anticipating that. I’m not accusing the parents who hold to these ideas as abusers– they have no idea that the system they so fervently believe in as “biblical” is abusive. I’m making some very big, very broad claims, and I’m making them without nuance or complexity simply because of time constraints. There is a Polemical nature to what I’m saying, and I’m aware of that.

Shortly before I married Handsome, I was in his childhood home, kicking around with his younger brother. We’d just finished watching a movie, and we’d been discussing all sorts of interesting things– the merits of a Confederacy over a Republic, for example, and the meanings of oligarchy and aristocracy. Smart kid, right? Well, Handsome came downstairs, and I’m not sure how we got around to this, but we started talking about some of their mutual childhood memories; namely, how they were taught to respect their mother. Handsome and his brother started reminiscing about how their mother would “count” in order to get their attention.

When I say “count,” I’m talking about what we see in the grocery store every day: “I’m going to count to three,” and the child has the opportunity to respond within that time frame, or, well, consequences. That is not how their mother practiced it– she used it only as a means of getting attention, with no threat of consequences implied — but that’s the typical perception of “counting,” I think. Hopefully you agree.

When they started talking about this idea, I scoffed. Probably rolled my eyes, too. “We’re not doing that with our children,” I pronounced, quite firmly.

Handsome turned to me, genuinely confused by my obvious hostility to the idea. “Why not?”

“It’s just teaching them that they can disobey however they want to. That I don’t really mean it when I call them.”

He stared at me, clearly not following. “Huh?”

“Children need to obey their parents. They don’t get to define how and when they obey– we do.”

What followed was a rather intense discussion that, in retrospect on my part, didn’t make any sense. I started trying to argue that “counting” was inherently a threat, and I didn’t want to threaten my children, but somehow completely missed that the kind of authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator-style approach to parenting I was advocating was based on threats.

During our conversation, I started feeling very triggered, and I could feel a panic attack coming on, which perplexed me. Why was I reacting this way? Why was I spiraling out of control? I could feel myself start to tremble all over, and I knew I had to leave. I went up to my room, curled up on my bed and cried, completely not understanding why I was panicking, or even what had triggered me. What was going on? What had caused this? Why was I so upset, when Handsome had not done anything remotely triggering?

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At the time I attributed it to stress- it was a week before our wedding, and it had been a somewhat intense, although still friendly and open, conversation.

I know what it is now, although thinking about it is still very muddled. But, it is linked to the idea of instant, cheerful obedience that was advocated by nearly everyone I knew as a child and teenager. All the books we read taught it, and it was practiced by everyone in the community. Every child I knew had been taught since they were infants that they were to obey instantaneously and without question– and not just their parent. All children were required to obey all adults, and we could be punished by any adult immediately and with the direct approval by our parents.

My supposed “pastor”-’s wife used to summon her children by whistling. She whistled through her teeth, and the sound was distinct, unmistakable, and loud. You could hear it from anywhere inside Wal-Mart, practically. Anytime she whistled, all of her children responded immediately– and in the sense of “immediately” that is the result of programming. Their response was so ingrained, so automatic, when they heard a whistle it was like watching Pavlov’s dogs. For all their talk about the evils of psychology, conservative religious disciplinarians sure jumped on board the behavioral modification and classical conditioning bandwagons.

Personally, I was taught to respond with a cheerful, respectful “yes ma’am,” to any demand, with the rationalization that it’s impossible for a child to say “yes ma’am” and try to fake respect if they’re not actually feeling it. I was required to drop anything I was doing the second I was summoned, because the summons was always more important than anything I was doing.

This continued into adulthood– I was still living with my parents, and had gotten home from an exhausting shift at work. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch the movie I’d rented when my mother called me into the office.

“Why?” I responded, believing it to be a reasonable response. I didn’t want to move. I was tired. I wanted to watch my movie and then go to bed.

“Just come here!”

“But why? I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not. Come here. I want to show you something.”

“What is it?”

“Just come here!” The frustration in her tone was escalating.

I realized at that point that if I was ever going to watch my movie I’d have to do whatever it was my mother wanted. When it turns out she wanted to show me a map because I’d gotten lost the day before, all I wanted to do was leave. Maps are completely useless to me– they make no sense, and unless I am actually driving on the road with one, all those little lines, squiggly and straight, mean absolutely nothing to me. My sense of direction is abysmal, and yes, it takes me a little while to figure out where I’m going and how to get there. But maps– they are worse than useless. But, they work really well for my mother. And, she was convinced, despite my protestations to the contrary, that if I just stared long and hard enough at the squiggly lines I wouldn’t get lost again.

She was the parent.

I was the child.

What I wanted to do didn’t matter. That I was tired didn’t matter. That I knew myself, my own capabilities and limits, didn’t matter. She knew how to help me, and she wanted to help me right now, no matter if I told her it was a waste of time or I was busy. I didn’t even get to define for myself if I was busy– that was determined by her. I don’t know what’s good for me, but because I’m her child, she does.

This is one of the biggest problems of the “Instant Obedience Doctrine.” No one grows out of it. Not parents, not children. And the children, fed since birth this dogma of absolute, unending, cheerful, complaint obedience to all authority, are implicitly indoctrinated against every outgrowing it.

This is why I believe that the Instant Obedience Doctrine (my term) is inherently abusive.

My parents didn’t abuse me with this doctrine. Our relationship is fine, although we’re having our problems adjusting to me being an independent, autonomous, free-thinking adult. It’s rough, but we’re doing it one day at a time.

The problem with the Instant Obedience Doctrine is that it grooms children to be abused. This is inescapable. Not every child brought up in this doctrine is being abused or will be abused, but it creates an entire system where abuse will be allowed to go unchecked, mainly because the child will have absolutely no concept of abuse. They will not have the ability to think of themselves as autonomous, as free agents, as having rights over their own bodies and what they get to do with them– because this idea is explicitly disavowed. Children do not have any ability to choose in this system– that ability is systematically taken away from them as part of “biblical child-rearing.” We have been taught since infancy that we are never, ever allowed to say “no” to an authority.

Oh, the people who teach this doctrine will pay lip-service to teaching their children about abuse. They’ll say that they’ve taught their children to tell them if someone touches them inappropriately, or if someone does something they don’t like. But the doctrine completely overrules this “stop gap” because the primary, foundational idea in this doctrine is that children are foolish, children are ignorant, and children must be corrected by authorities, usually through physical pain (corporal punishment).

This does unspeakable damage to everyone involved– the parents and the children. Because the children eventually grow up, and if they start asserting independence, like I am now, our relationships can be damaged, because the independence is sudden and unexpected. Expressing my own ideas, disagreeing with my parents can be very emotional, upsetting territory, because the point of the Instant Obedience Doctrine was to raise children who are ideological replicas of the parents. The fact that this doctrine essentially means that parents will never actually get to know who their own children are is completely lost in all the rhetoric.

And for many children brought up in this system, the biggest problem is that they have no access to any concept of being their own, independent person. That idea simply doesn’t exist. They exist to do the bidding of authorities. They are property. These narratives are internalized unconsciously by everyone involved in the process.

Again, not every child brought up in this system is physically or sexually abused by his or her parents, or even by other authority figures in their lives– but they are emotionally and psychologically abused by the fundamental notion that they do not belong to themselves, that they are incapable of making their own choices.

choices and being allowed to make them, part two

I’ve been struggling, hard, with this post, because, honestly, I don’t know where to begin.

I told a story yesterday from my childhood about the ability I had to make choices– to choose not eating something I disliked over eating cookies. My mother would present negotiations like this frequently, but only when the deal was an honest one. Did I want to wear this, or that? Did I want broccoli, or carrots? I could choose not to wear the wool tights if I wanted to put up with the cold. Whenever I was required to do something, like eat my vegetables or dress up for church (I hated dressing up), there was always some sort of choice involved. When my younger sister insisted that she could do it all by herself, she would wear her clothes inside out and two different socks to church. It was important to my mom that her children know the importance of making choices, and that choices have consequences.

When I was nine and we’d just moved to New Mexico, I was placed in the 5-9 year old Sunday School Class, where most of the kids were 6. I decided that I wanted to be in the 10-12 year old class, and I went to the teacher, not my mother, and told her I wanted a transfer. I explained why, and she moved me. All without even asking my mother– I had autonomy, the independence to decide what I wanted for myself and to go get it.

When we started attending our fundamentalist church-cult, much of that evaporated.

But, it didn’t really feel like I’d lost the ability to make decisions for myself, because I was taught, right along with my parents, that they had the duty, obligation, responsibility to make all my decisions for me, because I was a child and couldn’t be trusted (the fact that I was female compounded this exponentially). Verses like “foolishness is bound up into the heart of a child” and a “child left to himself brings shame to his mother” were used to bludgeon us with the concept that children are completely and totally capable of decision-making. Couple that with teachings like that infants are only lying when they cry, and children are essentially property, and you are left with a frightening vision for child-rearing.

And what we wind up with is my sister practically starving herself for two days because she refused to eat cheddar-broccoli soup and smile while she did it. Or me, as a twenty-four year old woman, curled up in a fetal position, sobbing into the carpet, having one of the worst panic attacks I’ve ever had because I wasn’t “allowed” to exit a conversation that was triggering me and go to my room. The insanity of it all was that I could have left the room– my father would never had physically restrained me. But I had been taught, since I was ten years old, that I do not have individual autonomy, free choice, or personal agency. After it was over he realized how insane it had been and apologized to me, in tears.

The problem is that we had both bought into the horrible lie that, as my parent’s child, they were the Absolute and Supreme Authority Over my Life in All Things. It never even occurred to me to think differently. When I went to the gynecologist for the first time, and she asked my mother to leave the room, I was completely baffled by the idea that I might have gone somewhere and done something my mother didn’t know about. The gynecologist was trying to tell me that it was “ok” if I was honest with her, she couldn’t tell my mother, it was against the law. I had a hard time explaining to her that I was with my parents every single waking moment of every single day, that there was absolutely nothing in my life they didn’t know about, because they were responsible for approving and being a part of everything I did.

This teaching has caused me so many problems as an adult– largely because I’ve been taught that having personal boundaries is wrong. I was taught to always nod my head and do exactly whatever any adult had told me to do, instantaneously, without complaint, and always. There was no room for “can I do it in five minutes?” There was zero tolerance for any kind of refusal, on any basis. There was never an excuse for disobeying anyone. Or even really saying “no” or “stop.” Personal feelings– feeling uncomfortable with a request, for example– were so far outside the point they didn’t bear consideration. And when, as an adult, I started establishing boundaries with people I’d never had any kind of boundary with before, the only result has been the termination of our relationship.

My parents were not abusive, let me make that clear. But, as a family, we swallowed this entire destructive system. Thankfully, for my family, the consequences were not severe. I was so thank-my-lucky-stars blessed because no one besides the pastor in my church abused me as a child or teenager (that would come later, in other relationships). But the consequences, for many, can be. Oh, the consequences can be horrendously and heart-breakingly hideous. The things that have been done to children in the name of patriarchy and “biblical” child-rearing are staggering and horrific.

Because, essentially, in this system, children do not have rights.

In this system, the only rights that matter are “parental rights,” and the organizations that seek to protect parental rights want to see Child Protective Services completely abolished, they openly campaign against the UN Rights of the Child, they call child abusers “heroes.” They openly support (and hire) men who have been convicted of sex crimes against children.

In this system, children are property. And you raise these children to literally be automatons– except, unlike Asimov’s positronic brain, there’s no Third Law– there’s no instruction to protect ourselves, only to obey.

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This is where I’d like to ask for your help.

You might be aware that there is a petition for the Home School Legal Defense Association to openly acknowledge that homeschoolers can also be abusers, and to educate their members about child abuse.

I want to ask you to go, read the 300+ stories, and sign the petition. If you’re someone who is familiar with CPS conspiracy theories, or you were someone who was abused in a homeschooling environment, or you knew someone who was, please tell your story, too. There’s other outlets– like Homeschoolers Anonymous, which is attempting to collect the stories of the once-homeschooled adults. There’s Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which is researching and collating all the documented cases of homeschooling abuse it can find. The Wartburg Watch monitors any and all of the damaging, destructive trends and teaching that appear in Christian culture.

These issues are  . . . so far beyond words. They are horrifying. They are abomination. They are anathema to anything a Christian should believe, to anything a decent human being should believe is true. The fact that there are entire organizations bent on openly supporting these concepts and then blatantly covering up the natural consequences . . . deeply grieves me. I’ve been reading these stories, and there are days where I can’t take it anymore, when I curl up on my bed and weep for all those who have been so gravely wounded– or destroyed– by these teachings.

This post is going to be a safe harbor. Ordinarily my comment policy is as open as I can make it– but not for this. I will not tolerate comments that dismiss or belittle the evil of these ideas, or attempt to justify them in any way. I will not allow that to happen here, on this post.

If you are someone who has been affected by these teachings, who has suffered abuse or trauma because of these ideas, you can speak truth here. You can tell your story– if that is something you want to do. If you want to share your story, but do not want to share it publicly, you can email me, or send my facebook page a message.

forgedimagination (at) gmail (dot) com.

facebook.com/defeatingthedragons

choices and being allowed to make them, part one

[me, from around the time of this story]

When my family was stationed in Iceland, we became close friends with another family up there. We were over at their house all of the time– at times, it feels like we spent most of our time there. My parents usually asked them to babysit us whenever they were celebrating or having a date night, and I loved the sleep-overs we had there.

The story of one such sleep over is one of the funniest of my childhood– and a pretty accurate depiction of who I was, and who I am now.

Mrs. Willis* had spent the entirety of this particular day baking. She’d been making all kinds of breads, fruit breads and nut breads and pumpkin bread and cinnamon raisin bread, and cookies, cakes . . . her kitchen counters and her enormous buffet were covered in sweets. Me and her eldest daughter could barely keep our fingers out of the dough– and the finished products. Mrs. Willis had spent all day laughingly slapping us away and telling us to go play instead of trying to “help” her bake.

I was, however, present in the kitchen when she’d prepared the casserole for dinner, and I noted what she’d put into it: tomatoes, butter beans, spinach, sour cream– which were pretty much My Entire List of Foods I will Never Ever Eat. By the time dinner rolled around, I was dreading it, because my mother had one strict rule about being somebody’s guest and eating her food: if you don’t like something she’s serving, you take a “thank-you bite” (a small helping, but a helping), you eat the entire thing with a smile and without complaining. In fact, your performance should be so good she doesn’t even notice you didn’t like it. But, after that, you don’t have to eat any more of it.

When we sat down to dinner, I was relieved by the side dishes: plenty of salad, crescent rolls, corn, and green beans. She’d put on a full spread, and I was able to eat to my fill. I took as small a portion of the casserole I thought was polite, and then as much salad, green beans, and crescent rolls I could stomach, because, seriously, crescent rolls.

Mrs. Willis, however, noticed that I hadn’t eaten much of the casserole. “Samantha, would you like another helping?” She asked, gesturing toward the casserole with the serving spoon.

I shook my head. “I’m ok. I’m full.”

“But you’ve eaten nothing but salad and bread. You need more than that, this is the entrée.”

I pointed to the spot on my plate where the sour cream had left a smudge of sauce behind. “I had some. I’m ok.”

“Samantha, you either eat more of the actual dinner, or you don’t get any dessert.”

I looked longingly at all the cakes, the cookies, the cinnamon-roll monkey bread, then looked back at Mrs. Willis. “That’s ok.” It was worth giving up all those chocolate-chip cookies that had been perfuming the house all day to not have to eat more butter beans swimming in spinach and sour cream.

Mrs. Willis was dumbfounded. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the “deal” she’d offered had not really been a deal at all– she’d expected me to instantly cave in order to get cookies. When I had accepted her terms as agreeable, she was shocked. Later, after I’d been sitting on the sofa for hours watching the party guests munching away on cheese balls and tarts and my mom finally arrived to pick me up, Mrs. Willis told my mother what happened:

“You will not believe what Samantha did!”

My mom sent one stern glance my way. Uh-oh. “What happened?”

“She wouldn’t eat any more of dinner, even when I said she had to eat more or go without dessert!”

I could see mom’s lips twitch– I knew that look. She was trying to avoid smiling when I’d done something both adorable and bad. “Did she take a thank-you bite?”

“A what?”

“A thank-you bite. Did she eat a small helping without complaining?”

“Well, yes.”

“And did she complain about not getting any dessert?”

“Uhm . . . well, no. She hasn’t. She’s been very quiet since dinner.”

“That’s what I’ve taught her to do. Samantha,” she called to me, letting me know it was time to go. I got my coat and walked over. Mrs. Willis still seemed to look flabbergasted. We left, but before we went home, mom stopped and got dessert. We laughed together over caked chocolate donuts and iced glasses of milk.

the commandment with promise

One of my best friends during my college years was abused by her parents.

I helped them.

Lizzie* is one of the most amazing people I have ever known. She completed an incredibly difficult course load (20 credits every semester, with winter and summer classes squeezed in around the edges) and maintained a 4.0., all while also assisting in freshman chemistry courses and tutoring anyone who asked– including me, when I needed help to study for my GRE.

She is a fierce, strong, independent, and courageous woman. She’s faced challenges I can’t even bear thinking of– she is eshet chayil: a woman of valor. Of the numerous trials she endured, some of the most severe were dealt out to her by her parents. To many of the people who saw glimpses of her life, all they probably saw were helicopter parents— a bit controlling and demanding, maybe, but not abusive.

I knew better.

I watched her starve herself every day because she didn’t have time to eat– she constantly skipped meals in order to work on her assignments. I begged her to come with me to breakfast, lunch, dinner– but she couldn’t. If she got anything less than an A in all of her courses, her parents would be enraged. I knew. I saw it happen, once.

I listened to her mother scream at her on nearly a daily basis that she was ugly, revolting, unlovable, and undesirable. Her education was her only shot, her mother told her, because no man would ever want to marry her.

I sat with her when she cried because she’d just found out her parents had left another church because of her father’s lack of propriety toward teenage girls.

I kept my phone next to my bed at night during the weeks I knew her father was threatening her family with committing suicide, praying that his ‘hunger strike’ against his children’s supposed ‘misbehavior’ would end.

I massaged her shoulders, arms, and wrists when the stress and intensity of her life caused her so much pain she could barely move.

I gave her all my phone credits because her parents demanded that she call them every Sunday afternoon regardless of whether or not she had the time.

I held her when she broke down after her parents had violently and forcefully ended not one, but two relationships with amazing young men who were deemed “worthless pigs” by her parents, even though they refused to even speak with either of them.

I listened to her worry about what her younger siblings were going through, watched her desperately try to distract her parents, to show her younger siblings how to avoid her parent’s wrath and fury.

I could go on, and on, and on. These are just the tip of the iceberg– the trauma and damage she suffered at the hands of her “godly, loving, Christian” parents could fill a book. She was emotionally crippled by them– rendered almost incapable of expressing or even having emotions in any normal, healthy way. She struggled to find outlets– poetry, music, stories, but she found it impossible to let anything truly affect her. Numbness and detachment were the only ways she had of coping.

And even thought I bore witness to nearly every single thing they put her through in college, the only encouragement I was allowed to offer was no encouragement at all. The only thing I was allowed to say to her was obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right, and honor your father and mother.

I spent years in college wondering what I could do to help Lizzie. I sat with her on every Sunday afternoon, watched her take a deep breath and steel herself every time she called home, tried to help her get through what I now know are panic attacks every time a phone call ended. I knew to the very core of me that what her parents was doing was wrong. Not just wrong– vile. I wanted to tell her nearly every day that she didn’t have to deal with this– that she could walk away, that she didn’t have to listen to their threats and slurs. I wanted to tell her that her parents were liars.

But, every time I tried to say the words, honor your father and mother would stop me.

Somehow, I was aware that Ephesians 6:4 is coupled with the admonition for children to honor their parents: that fathers are explicitly instructed to “not provoke your children to anger,” but I was not able to see verses three and four as connected, and inter-dependent. Because of what we had both been taught about how to read the Bible, verses like Ephesians 6:3 are treated the same way as Ephesians 5:22. In both of these instances, the command for children to honor and women to submit are independent of the commands for fathers to not provoke and husbands to love. In this frame, it does not matter if fathers or husbands are abusive and unloving– the commands to honor, obey, and submit still stand.

This method of application results in consequences so horribly disastrous and horrifying that the only thing left to say is that this application must be grossly inaccurate.

Women cannot be required to submit to abusive husbands.

Children cannot be required to obey abusive parents.

This cannot be how the Bible works. This cannot be the proper understandings of these verses. To allow this interpretation and application is to invite destruction into our lives. It’s to blithely give abusers, rapists (marital rapists or otherwise), and potential murderers the “biblical” vindication to believe that what they are doing is right and just.

There must be a place in our understanding of Scripture that allows for nuance, complexity, and grace– in order to place what seems to be dogmatic, unalterable commands in the daily-ness of our lives must mean that we make adjustments. That we see the balance presented in these passages. We must read all of Ephesians, not just handpicked verses that seem to be calling for unequivocal application. We need to see that Paul is asking us to walk in love and wisdom, to expose with our light the abusive things done in darkness and in secret.

We should recognize the whole pattern of these two chapters, that Paul was completely upending anything anyone knew about how society should function– that the life-changing part of these passages was not children, obey or servants, obey, or wives, obey, but for fathers to not do anything to provoke their children, for husbands to sacrifice themselves for their wives, for masters to stop threatening their servants and remember that everyone is equal in Heaven.

The Pharisees saw Jesus and his disciples working on the Sabbath– farming, reaping, harvesting. This, to them, seemed to be an obvious and direct violation of the commands regarding the Sabbath. It could not be clearer to them that Jesus, the man running around claiming to be the Son of God, a mere mortal who blasphemed God and claimed the ability to forgive sins, was breaking the Commandments. Scripture was very clear, very plain. There was no debate, no opportunity to even misunderstand this Command. They even had their stories about the time in the wilderness and the gift of manna, and how they were commanded to gather a double portion before the Sabbath so that they might observe the Sabbath rest.

And what did Jesus say to them? I desire mercy. He asked them to not condemn the guiltless.

Mercy, meaning divine favor or compassion.

If we are not reading and applying our Bibles with love, grace, mercy, and compassion at the very forefront of our thoughts, we are allowing the opportunity for injustice and a language of carnage to become a part of what we think is right.

the supposed myth of teenaged adolescence

I’ve talked a lot about the fundamentalist cult I was raised in, but something I don’t very frequently talk about here is my experience with the conservative religious homeschooling movement. For many people, the conservative religious homeschooling movement was what sucked their families into fundamentalist and cult-ish mental frameworks, but that’s not what happened for my family. My mother started homeschooling me because my kindergarten teacher held a séance in class, and the DoD school was the only educational option besides homeschooling. By the time we moved back Stateside and had more options, my mother realized that homeschooling was allowing me to excel academically in ways that other options wouldn’t– academically, that remained true through high school and college, although academic success came with its own drawbacks.

However, homeschooling was an integral part of the cult (those who didn’t homeschool received horrible condemnation), and the ideologies we embraced are consistent with a more mainstream homeschooling experience. Even for families that didn’t have children, or didn’t homeschool, the ideologies of the movement found its way into everyday interactions.

One of the popular elements of the conservative religious homeschooling movement that appeared in the church-cult was the belief that “teenage adolescence” is a modern societal construct and is a completely unnecessary stage. I can remember all the arguments for this vividly– how men and women married extremely young; in “fact,” women in early America very frequently married as soon as they got their periods at twelve or thirteen (this is false: the average age of marriage for a Puritan woman was 23, as young as 20 in South Carolina). Indentured servitude and apprenticeship were exalted as prime examples for how young men ought to behave– by learning a trade as young as 10 or 12 (and we were supposed to ignore the exploitative and abusive nature of child labor).

While teenage adolescence and the “delayed adolescence” seem to be results of our modern age, the concept that because it hasn’t been in practice since the Medieval ages makes it unhealthy . . .  bothers me, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Being a teenager, for me, was a difficult experience. I was not an “adult,” so I was therefore not permitted to interact with or engage with adults except as an inferior child, so the other option was to interact with children– but as an adult. In my environment, this forced me to sit at the “children’s table” during social gatherings, acting as a monitor or babysitter, but neither was I permitted to act as a child in other settings. I was expected to behave as an adult, was given the responsibilities of an adult, but was not allowed to have any privileges of an adult. I was not permitted to go anywhere on my own, without my parents having explicit knowledge of exactly where I was going and when I was returning. The only time I was not with my parents I was being closely monitored by other parents.

I was not allowed to exercise the ability of making my own decisions about what I would wear (all clothing had to be tried on and approved by my father immediately following its purchase), how I would style my hair, if I could wear make-up, or when I would go to bed (I had a “bed time” of 9 o’clock until I was 16, and 10 o’clock until 18). I was not allowed to have a private space– my bedroom door was to remain open at all times, and I was discouraged from being in my room for extended periods. I could not “disappear” to my room when upset or hurt– it was considered a cowardly withdrawal, and I was forced to immediately control and dismiss my hurt feelings and interact with my family as if nothing had ever happened. There were many moments that I would curl into the fetal position on my bed and desperately wish that I could just get in my car and drive for an hour or two without explaining where I’d be going or when I’d be back.

Perhaps one of the most demeaning elements of my teenage experience was a nickname I earned during one of the few times I was allowed to interact with adults. We were playing cards, Phase 10, I think, and I did something that seemed “uppity” or arrogant to the adults at the table. I don’t remember what it was, but, the response of one of the adults at the table, a woman I admired greatly, was to call me “sub-adult.”

Unfortunately, this nick-name made the rounds among the other adults at church, and it continued to haunt me well into my twenties. The people who used it probably did so unthinkingly, and they had no idea how much it stung, how much it hurt, and how I had to fight back tears every time I heard it. It was used to remind me of my place– I was not an adult, but neither was I child, and neither was I allowed any of the attitudes, practices, relationships, or experiences of a teenager.

To me, being called “sub-adult” represented absolute failure because my success as an individual was measured by how “adult” I could be. I was well-behaved when I acted how an adult was expected to act. I was articulate because I could talk like an adult. I was responsible because I could shoulder the burdens of an adult. I was “good” in as much as I behaved as neither adult nor child nor teenager. I could not have angsty, emotional moments because that was what a “teenager” would do. I could not disagree with any adult, because that was perceived as “teenage rebellion.” “Teenagers” were the ones who thought they “knew better,” but they were obviously wrong. “Teenagers” made destructive decisions. Teenagers had crushes. Teenagers argued. Teenagers talked back. Teenagers disagreed. Teenagers wore outlandish clothes. Teenagers didn’t practice discernment. Teenagers were naïve. Teenagers were heedless, directionless, purposeless. Teenagers thought they were capable of being autonomous and independent. Being a “teenager” equaled being incomplete and unhealthy.

I had a childhood– a healthy, amazing childhood. My parents were, and are, amazing parents– I love them, and have a good relationship with them today. The problem is that by the time I was a teenager, we’d been in the fundamentalist cult for four years, and we had collectively bought into this idea that “being a teenager” was somehow a sub-standard way of approach to those years between twelve and twenty. I was immeasurably proud of my status in this environment– I can’t tell you how many times I parroted the line that “I already knew that my parents know more than me,” or that I’d never had a “rebellious phase.” I could take care of myself– I did all my own schoolwork with practically no supervision by highschool, I could cook, I could clean, I was amazingly dedicated to practicing piano, all with little or no pressure from my parents. But, somehow, perversely, I was also proud of the fact that I was inferior to adults and knew my place, and knew better than to question those who God had placed in authority above me. I respected the “hoary head.”

The biggest problem with all of this is that because I never practiced any sort of rebellion whatsoever, I was actively discouraging myself from developing my own thoughts and opinions about things. Oh, I would have told you that my beliefs were my own, that I knew what I believed for myself, but I would have been lying. I didn’t have individuality or autonomy. I listened to the music my parents listened to, or the music expressly approved by them. I watched the movies they watched. I held the political opinions they did. I argued what they argued. I didn’t have access to any of these things as myself, but as a “sub-adult” version of my parents.

importance of being honest

Currently, I am on vacation in Florida, so this will be my post for the week. I’ve gotten some  ideas for the next few weeks (and I’m going to start a long-scale project for which I am very excited to begin in a bit). There’s some issues that I really need to tackle, just for myself, so it’s going to be hard, rough, slow going for me. I may not be able to post every week day like I have been, since I’m going to have to slug through these issues at my own pace. But, I think they’re becoming more important for me to really wrestle with, so I’m finally doing it after avoiding it for weeks.

But, for the moment, I am on vacation. Last night I went and saw a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. If you’ve never seen it the play performed, the film adaptation is pretty solid (after all, who doesn’t love Colin Firth in Victorian frippery?).

The most hysterical part was the location of where I saw this play performed: I was at my undergrad college. I’d seen it performed there a little under ten years ago now, and it never occurred to me back then how funny the play actually is in that context. The Importance of Being Earnest is a scathing critique on Victorian society, and Wilde spares no one. Like all excellent satire, he makes a mockery of the rich and powerful: their social dynamics, their priorities, their politics, their ideals.

My undergrad college shares all of the same issues.

The play advocates toward a more post-modern understanding of human interactions and the rules and boundaries we set, and it especially critiques the Victorian (read: complementarian) approach to gender roles, which Wilde portrays as completely ridiculous to the highest degree. My undergrad college idolizes those roles to the same ridiculous degree that the characters act out.

What made it so horribly ironic was that the audience was completely blind to the fact that the play was satirizing them. I was laughing my head off the entire way through, and many people were turning around and staring. They had no idea what the play was actually saying about the way they choose to live. It was weird to be the only person to get the joke. Normally, I’m the one who doesn’t quite catch on to the cultural references.

Handsome even pointed out the quote they chose to open their playbill: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” He just laughed and commented that it was a strange quote for the college to endorse, since they proclaim that the truth is always pure and simple. They probably only saw it as some of the nonsense Algernon Montcrieff lets fly throughout the play and used it to comment on the Liz Lemon–style “TWIST!” at the end. They have no idea how very true that statement is.

Also, side note: I wore a Grecian-stye wrap dress with a deep V neckline. Oh, the judging judgment and the glares that would have roasted me alive a few years ago. Seriously, guys, mouths dropped open and claws came out. It was spectacular.

Enjoy this week, and I’ll see you on the other side.

the sky is falling, overreactions, and facts

If you have conservative Christian friends on facebook, then you’ve probably seen this article on how Christians are about to be court martialed for talking about Jesus. The first time I saw this article appear in my news feed, my eyebrows shot up into my hairline. A few years ago I would have begun immediately panicking and doing everything I could to stop this terrible atrocity from taking place (i.e., signing this petition). But, that was then. Today, I searched for the headline, realized that there wasn’t a legitimate news source reporting on it, and I also noticed that most of the places running the story were . . . well, corners of the internet I’m familiar with, and no longer trust. Yesterday, the Washington Post covered it, and they actually went and obtained some facts. Like, an actual statement from the Pentagon, instead of the inflammatory, inciting words of a rather intense political idealist.

But, my instantaneous thoughts when I read all of the original articles were tempered by my own personal experience. I’m a military brat, so I have a passing familiarity with military procedure and policy, and military culture. It has been long-established military procedure to reprimand anyone who gets pushy about their faith– or non-faith. It’s just not allowed, especially because of the rank system. That’s one of the first things people miss: military life is absolutely nothing like civilian life. We don’t even operate under the same court system. Military personnel are required to live by a stricter code; they still have First Amendment rights like every other American, but the practice of those rights is a helluva lot more limited than it is for say, someone like Westboro.

And, as someone who feels a tear-jerking patriotic swell anytime I see a “God and Country” bumper-sticker, I can tell you, honestly, that the Christian culture in the military can be obnoxious at times. Just like Christians everywhere else, we can get pushy and demanding and get carried away and do or say something ridiculous. Which is what Weinstein, the man who called proselytizing “treason,” is reacting against. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty.

In short, the sky is not falling.

So why did so many people run around acting like it was?

The answer lies in something called the persecution complex. This is not a new idea, and it’s certainly not limited to Christians. I’ve seen it happen in pretty much any group of people who collectively feel passionately about something. Sometimes the concern is valid, and should not be dismissed as merely the persecution complex when that’s not what is happening. Marginalized groups who talk about racism aren’t reacting to nothing, and when feminists start talking about the War on Women, we’re not making it up. But, sometimes, our passion and fervor can run away with us and we start jumping at shadows.

In my experience, however, conservative Christians are almost entirely reacting against a perceived threat that just doesn’t exist. Just because our government isn’t operated purely on fundamentalist views of “biblical principles” doesn’t mean that Christianity is under attack.

One of the problems with the persecution complex and how it shows up in Christianity is that there’s a couple of verses that have been twisted in order to teach that if you’re a Christian, you should expect opposition:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” — Romans 9:33
“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” — I John 3:13
“If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” — John 15:19

There’s a tactic that shows up a lot in Christian sermons and discussions, and it’s illustrated by the above. When there’s more than one verse that sounds like they’re talking about the same thing, then, suddenly, it’s perfectly alright to ignore context– having more than one verse means that you are using Scripture to “comment on Scripture,” and that’s supposedly sound hermeneutics. Wrong, but that’s worth its own post. So, before we move on, let’s look at context.

John’s passage is in the middle of Jesus’ explanation of the role of the body here on earth, where he uses the Vine & Branches metaphor. He follows that depiction of grace, growth, community, and love with a warning: our life isn’t going to be a bed of roses, and sometimes, people are going to despise us. On occasion, whole governments have tried to expunge Christianity. This happens, I’m not going to deny it (although Christians aren’t the only ones singled out for their beliefs). This passage, however, does not give Christians free license to believe that simple disagreements are persecution. Just because someone doesn’t think the way we do and feels strongly about it doesn’t make what they’re doing “hate.”

I John, 3:13 is in the middle of verses that are focused entirely on the body of Christ loving and caring for each other. In my Bible, the section is headed “Love One Another,” and its concluded with an entire portion dedicating to laying down our lives, and not closing our hearts to the needy. So, it seems pretty clear that if the world does hate us (and again, disagreement is not hate), what’s our reaction supposed to be? Run around screaming and Signing All the Petitions? Not exactly– we love,  and we continue on with our lives.

The Romans passage is probably the one that’s been the most twisted and the one most harmed by terrible applications. This is the verse a lot of people turn to when they start talking about the Gospel being inherently offensive (which, problems), and the fact is that the context has nothing to do with how it usually gets applied. First of all, it’s in the middle of Romans 9, which I will be honest and say I barely understand. But, it appears at the end of the chapter, after a thorough dissection of justice and the law. And, verse 33 follows Paul’s question about how some have conflated the Gospel with the Law. He’s making a reference to Isaiah 8:14, which, ironically, is preceded by this little gem:

For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warmed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, “Do not call conspiracy all that his people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.”

So, a verse that in the New Testament, completely removed from any context, has been used to say that “the Gospel offends people,” is actually a reference to not believing in conspiracies and living in dread.

Huh. Irony.

I’ve seen the damage that this “persecution complex” can do. It allows people who claim to be Christians to be filled with vileness and hate. It’s been used to justify the actions of so many preachers and evangelists who use this verse as a “get out of jail free card” anytime they want. Oh, you’re offended? Obviously, it’s not me and what I’ve said and how I’ve treated you, it’s the Gospel! You’re just offended by Jesus, and the Bible, and you think it’s foolish. That’s not my problem, it’s yours. And oh, poor me, the world hates me and says I’m a bigot and a hater, welp, the Bible said they’d say that! I’m just preaching truth here!

Things like this are why it’s hard for me to stay quiet. Because this, this is wrong. Not every single person who posts conspiracy articles on facebook are like this, and I’m not accusing them of that, but this is where that mentality leads. This is how Scripture, which is overflowing with love and grace, has been used to hurt and wound. Because of three verses surrounded on all sides by a call to love, Christians have formed an entire system for evaluating each other: how persecuted are you? Because, after all, a good Christian is one who everyone hates.