Today’s guest post is from Lana, who blogs at Lana Hobbs the Brave. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.
When I was in the third grade–in the Bible belt–I was discussing my faith with a classmate, and she asked when I’d been baptized. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, so she told me if I wasn’t baptized, I must not really be a christian.
To be a Christian, in my mind, was synonymous with being saved. In fact, “being saved” is talked about more often in some circles, perpetuating the idea that getting to Heaven is one of the most important parts of the faith.
Now someone was saying I had to be baptized to be a Christian?
If I died in an earthquake at school before I could be baptized, would I go to hell?
I asked the teacher on recess duty if I was doomed to hell. She didn’t really answer.
On the other hand, I was saved by faith alone, right? So I didn’t have to be baptized? So if my friend believed only baptized people were saved, maybe she wasn’t really a christian, since she wasn’t relying on faith alone. Maybe I needed to share the gospel with her.
Since then, Christian has always been a difficult term to wrap my mind around.
Catholics pray to Mary (or so I was told)– so are they the real Christians? Dad said probably a lot of them are, Mom seemed to doubt it. Mormons? Dad knew Mormons, he figured that a lot of them were, but I read a book from the church library that said Mormonism was a cult–so maybe they weren’t.
Then there were the people who responded to calls to “be saved” multiple times, and even got baptized several times, saying :I realized I wasn’t saved before, but now I am.” They believed they were saved, they believed in Jesus and tried to obey, and then they realized they weren’t really Christian– they didn’t have actual faith, they only thought they did?
If that is what Christianity is, how can anyone ever be certain they are really a christian, really saved, really following after God?
Then there are those who claim to be Christian, and bomb abortion clinics, or picket soldiers funerals, or write hateful messages online. They claim to be obeying God, but many quickly say “They aren’t true Christians.” The same goes for Christians like Rachel Held Evans and Rob Bell, when conservatives talk about them. Well, then, what is “Christian”? From looking around, reading what people write, hearing what people say, does it just mean “acting and thinking in a way consistent with my interpretation of the Bible”?
In the preface to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis suggests that the only meaningful way to define ‘Christian’ is “one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity.” He anticipates, in this usage of the word, a possible objection: “may not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?” In response to this imagined objection, he replies :this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful.”
“If once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening,’ the sense of the word Christian, it, too, will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts . . . and obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word.”
Lewis says the original meaning (he also uses the word ‘obvious,’ but I didn’t find it so until he pointed it out) is “those who accepted the teachings of the apostles . . . The point is not a theological or a moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.”
I do find this a far more useful way of talking about it, and it helps us avoid the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy that so many people use when confronted with ‘Christians’ who they really don’t want to be associated with.
Of course, this still doesn’t answer the issue of “who is saved?”
I don’t think Lewis would think this is quite the problem my childhood self thought it was. For one thing, he’s rather an inclusivist, and for another, he seemed to believe the Christian life was more about being a new man than about avoiding Hell.
I think that following Christ” is more about loving others than about whether or not you are saved. I think it makes sense to stop trying to evaluate how “saved” a person is, and instead take them at their word– do they believe in the basic doctrines of Christianity?
And for the record, by that definition, I am not a Christian. There are many doctrines I can’t make peace with right now. As soon as I put a useful meaning to the word “Christian,” I realized I couldn’t take it on myself anymore. I’m now nameless, but I still embrace the teachings of love, humility, and justice.
In the quoted portions, bold are my emphasis, italics are hers.
That, folks, is what we’re going to be talking about today, and I’m going to start us off with a short explanation of what the male gaze is. It’s a term that gets thrown around a bit without being well-defined, and while I’m positive that most of the people who use this term knows exactly what it means, it’s not a term I grew up hearing about an awful lot, for what are now quite obvious reasons.
It’s a pretty intuitive idea, on the surface. It’s something that, as a woman, I live with every day. While our culture plays a huge part of what constructs my idea of beautiful and sexy, that construct is largely based on what your typical heterosexual male finds beautiful and sexy (thin, but not too thin, voluminous hair that isn’t too poofy, breasts that aren’t too small or too big). Many women– myself included– have made decisions about our clothes, our hair, our makeup, our shoes, based upon what a man would think about it. Often, the simple decisions we make to get ready for our day are heavily influenced by what men want to see– or, at least, what we think and hope they want to see.
Very often, especially in Christian culture where the idea that marriage is the ultimate goal is ubiquitous, the male gaze moves away from just surface-level appearances down to behaviors, personality and character. Will a good Christian man think I’m lady-like enough? Will a good Christian man think that my speech and conversation is pure enough? Will a good Christian man trust my character? Will a good Christian man think I’m principled? Will a good Christian man think I’m kind, gentle, meek, unassuming?
However, once I started really unpacking this idea, I ran into a lot of trouble, because it turns into a huge, gigantic, awful mess pretty quickly.
Here is the quintessential problem with the male gaze:
probably NSFW, TW for violence against women
It only works one way. It’s not a two-way street. There’s no such thing as a “female gaze,” and anytime the roles are reversed the results are completely and utterly ridiculous.
The fundamental and most basic problem with Helen’s book is that it is based on the male gaze; the male gaze is accepted as the natural, accepted way that things are. But, I’ll get to that more in a bit. First, let’s start us off with this gem:
To be loved and cherished is a woman’s heartfelt desire in marriage. This book is written to restore your hope in this desire and to suggest principles to apply in winning a man’s genuine love.
This is the opening statement of the book, and it’s the theme that Helen will keep returning to. Oh, you want your husband to love you? Follow this book, and he will! is the promise she’s making. However, she frequently uses the underside of this promise as a threat: don’t follow this book, and he won’t love you.
This statement, however, wouldn’t be so problematic if it wasn’t in the context of this book. Do I want my husband to love and cherish me? Absolutely. Is it totally and completely within in my power to make my husband love me, as Helen asserts? Hmm— maybe not. Also, if my husband says he loves me and does everything within his power to make me feel cherished, but he never respected my ideas or dismissed my opinions? Not cool. This whole “women want love, men want respect,” dichotomy, like most dichotomies, doesn’t really work out that well when it hits reality. To be honest, I’ve never been entirely sure what that statement meant, even after I read For Women Only.
But, let’s keep going:
Do you feel lost in a sea of darkness? Or, you may be in greater darkness. You may think you are happy, when in reality, you are not. Your marriage may seem happy . . . but you fail to see that there is more. You lack the vision to see how happy a marriage can be, and should be. You are satisfied to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, for you have never tasted the banquet. You think the weeds are pretty, for you have never seen beautiful flowers. You may even be content with hell because you have never had a glimpse of heaven.
Unfortunately, Helen is not really just talking about mediocre marriages. In the context of just the introduction, it seems like it could be just addressing marriages that are going along pretty well. Nothing too spectacular, they’re just comfortable. They’ve settled into life together, and just accepted some things as the way they were, and that’s ok.
Sadly, that is not what she’s getting at. This passage is obliquely talking about, you guessed it, feminists. Lets do a quick experiment and see how it turns out:
Feminists are in greater darkness. Feminists think they are happy, when in reality, they are not. Feminists’ marriages may see happy . . . but they fail to realize that there is more. They lack the vision to see how happy a marriage can be, and should be. Feminists are satisfied to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, for they have never tasted the banquet. Feminists think weeds are pretty, for they’ve never seen beautiful flowers. Feminists may even be content with hell because they have never had a glimpse of heaven.
See what I mean? It becomes obvious later on in the book, so if you don’t quite buy it here, stick with me, and you’ll see it for yourself. She also goes on to describe the woman who is reading this book, the woman who is willing to “get vision,” as open-minded, as willing to “truly build a happy marriage.” Two paragraphs later, she also tells us this:
Fundamental, however, is your husband’s love. If he doesn’t love you, your life will be an empty shell.
This is a pretty good example of the kind of language Helen’s going to keep on using throughout the book. It’s going to be assertive and absolute, with purely black-and-white statements dominating almost everything she says. She doesn’t admit to any kind of gray area, or any possible exception. This statement is also doing two things: it is a threat, and it is also re-enforcing the narrative– especially in Christian culture– that single women are incapable of being happy on their own (which applies to divorced and widowed women, as well).
In the next paragraph, labeled “The Answer” we get this:
The first step to a happy marriage is to understand that all life is governed by law– nature, music, art, and all of the sciences. These laws are immutable. To live in harmony with them provides healthy, beauty, and abundant life. To violate them brings ugliness and destruction. Just as unwavering are the laws of human relationships. These laws are in operation even though you may not understand them . . .
We find one woman happy, honored, and loved; and another . . . neglected, unhappy, and disappointed. Why? This book explains why, for it teaches the law she must obey if she is to be loved, honored, and adored.
The law she is referencing here is the malegaze. That is the only “law” she presents in the book– anywhere in the book. Everything the book talks about, everything the book teaches, is established on this idea: do what a man wants, be what a man wants, say what a man wants, behave how a man wants, look how a man wants, and your marriage will be happy.
Next, we run into victim blaming territory. Didn’t take her very long– it’s page 3.
If your husband doesn’t love you, you are likely doing something to cool his affections, or have lost something that awakens his love. You may have begun marriage lovingly but romance is fading. Why? Could it be that you have changed? Take a good look. In most cases a man stops loving a woman after marriage because she stops doing things which arouse his feelings. When you regain your charming ways, love can be rekindled.
And this is one of the reasons why this book was so incredibly popular: because, in an odd way, it puts all of the control squarely into the woman’s hands. Because, as Helen repeats all the way through this, if a woman just does XYZ, then presto-change-o she can get her husband to love her. As she says on the next page, “you hold the keys to your own happiness.”
However, this attitude is also a common marker for co-dependent and abusive relationships. When a wife is in an abusive situation– especially if it’s emotional abuse– the abuser very frequently turns the problem around back onto the wife. “If you would only do Y, then I wouldn’t have to do Z. You’re forcing me to do this, really.” In this situation, however, it’s the abuser that’s calling all the shots, making all the rules. He says jump, the wife says how high. In abusive situations, however, the abuser purposefully changes the requirement of “how high” after his victim has jumped. This book is incapable of changing the rules, obviously, but if an abuser reads this book and tells his wife “yes, this, exactly! Just do whatever this book says, and our marriage will be wonderful!” . . . you can imagine what can happen after that.
To be fair, marriage advice books are firmly within the “self-help” genre. Which means that part of the book’s marketability and saleability is based on the claim it makes– a reader will approach any self-help book with can this book help me? and if the answer is “maybe,” that’s not an effective strategy to get people to buy your book. However, I think there’s a particular failing among Christian marriage advice books in a way that’s totally different from the self-help genre in general: these books don’t claim that they can help, these books claim that their way is the only Christian, biblical way.
The next section is labeled “Self Dignity.” To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what she means by this, even after reading the book. When I think of dignity, however, what I envision is someone with a healthy amount of self-respect. A person who doesn’t demean themselves, a person who– whatever circumstances he or she is in– stays true to themselves. That’s not exactly what she means, though:
Does your husband ever speak to you harshly, criticize you unduly, treat you unfairly, neglect you, impose on you, or in any way mistreat you? The important thing is not what he does but how you react.
I think this idea is linked to an idea that seems like common sense: you can’t control anyone else but yourself. You’re not responsible for anyone’s actions, but how you respond. If someone is mean and ugly to you, it doesn’t mean the correct way to react is to be mean and ugly right back.
However, that’s not really where Helen is going with this. Here, she is again promising that if you respond to his ugliness in a way that all men appreciate, than you’ll diffuse his anger (which is one of the reasons why “a kind word turns away wrath” and the admonition to “heap coals of fire on their head” always frustrated me). In short, by responding to his anger “correctly,” you do control how he treats you after that.
All of that has a basis in reality to a certain extent (escalation, for example, doesn’t exactly help communication), but where she goes with it is troubling. She tells women that she wants them to be “fiery” or “little spitfires” or “saucy.” However, she comments here that her goal is to show women how to have something that she will call “childlike anger,” which she says can “turn a crisis into a humorous situation,” that “childlike anger can increase love and tenderness.”
This becomes a huge, glaring problem as we get into the book, because part of Helen’s definition of “fascinating womanhood” she very openly acknowledges is “childlike.” She infantilizes women all over the place, and it becomes deeply disturbing. She wants women to be treated with tenderness, to be cherished, and how she does that is by turning full-grown women into swooning, giggling girls. “Feminine,” to Helen, is intrinsically linked with “girlish.”
As an aside, she warns the women who read this book not to use what she’s teaching them to woo away a married man. Because, obviously, all men lack any sort of self-restraint or self-control and you can use your feminine wiles to get any man you want. My eyes rolled so far back into my head it hurt. I had a girlfriend in college who very confidently told me that she could “get any man she wanted,” and, looking back, I think it was because of this book, which she loved.
To close out the introduction, just in case you didn’t quite believe me when I said that this book is based on the male gaze:
The study centers around the ideal woman, from a man’s point of view, the kind of woman who awakens a man’s deepest feelings of love.
As a young teenager, I had an immense respect for my cult leader’s wife. I was best friends with her daughter, which meant that I was one of the few people who were frequently invited into their home. I spent many weekends having sleepovers at their house, watching John Wayne movies until the wee hours of the morning, playing army in the backyard for hours on Saturday. The first time I ever had grits was in her home, the first time I made cookies she taught me, the first time I went garage sale-ing I was with her. I admired her– her frugality, her work ethic, her constancy in her faithfulness to her husband in all things, the sacrifices she made for her family, her earnestness in raising her children… she was a large part of what I pictured in my head when I envisioned the ideal wife. My parents marriage was, and is, healthy, but my cult leader’s wife fit more easily into the mold I was being taught was the biblical role for a wife. Even to this day, when I’m reminded of the Proverbs 31 woman, I think of her.
One Sunday morning, after the cult leader had disbanded any kind of “youth group” and told the teenagers that our regular Sunday school was canceled and we were expected to attend Sunday school with the adults, the cult leader preached a message on marriage. I don’t exactly remember the context of the entire sermon, but I do remember feeling relieved that his wife hadn’t been there to hear it– she had been keeping nursery that morning. My mother leaned over to my father and whispered “thank God Miss Dianne* wasn’t here to listen to that.” But, in church, he said the exact same thing:
“Husbands, you know how it is, you know what it’s like. Sometimes, you just really don’t want to be married anymore. Nothing about marriage seems worth it, and it would be better if you were just alone. Can I get an Amen?”
While a few men in the congregation muttered an unenthusiastic amen, I looked over at Miss Dianne, and I will never forget the look on her face. She was crushed, devastated– destroyed by the husband she submitted to.
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Growing up, I didn’t know the word complementarianism, officially, but what I did know was that a wife was intended to “complement” her husband. A husband and wife, united, made up for lacks in each other. They filled out each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Even today, I can appreciate the core of this idea, even though it is frequently over simplified and reduced down to ideas like “opposites attract.” There’s a certain beauty in two people meeting together and becoming stronger because of each other. That’s what I find most stunning in the imagery of becoming one flesh.
However, in conservative religious environments, there are limitations and boundaries to what complementing your husband can look like. I grew up with this idea that women were to be “keepers at home,” that there was a universal standard of femininity I was expected to live up to, that my role and responsibility was in being a wife and mother. I was taught that envisioning a role for myself that included roles in addition to a maternal one was sinful and selfish. If I attempted to be a wife, a mother, and a career woman, I would most definitely become depressed, maybe suicidal, my marriage would be ruined, and I would fail as a mother.
On top of that, I was also taught that there is one biblical structure for marriage: a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the Church. I am called to obey and submit to my husband in all things, regardless of how my husband might behave toward me. If he was treating me badly, I was taught that it was probably because I was not practicing biblical submission. All I had to do, in order to ensure a beatific marriage, was be a submissive wife, and the rest would fall into place.
I can’t really deconstruct everything that is wrong with those particular set of teachings, but I want to talk about where these teachings come from, and why complementarianism is exalted as the “only form of biblical marriage,” and why the egalitarian position is frequently dismissed because, supposedly, we don’t read our Bibles.
The first place that many complementarians will go to in order to argue that complementarianism is biblical is Genesis 2 and 3. They begin with God’s decision to create Eve:
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
The key word there is helper. There’s a lot to be said about this word (‘ezer, or עֵזֶר). At its most basic, “helper” really is probably the best translation for the word, although “help meet” is used as well. Many complementarians argue that this means that women were created to help men. That was the reason for Eve’s existence, and continues to be the definite, primary purpose of women today. This passage seems to “very clearly and plainly say” that this is why God created women. We are helpers, not leaders.
But let’s take a quick look at where else this word is used. First of all, Genesis 2 is one of only three places that ‘ezer is used to describe a person or a people; the other fifteen times ‘ezer appears, it’s to describe God. It’s used twice in Deuteronomy, where God is described as someone who “rides through the heavens to your help” and as a “shield of help.” It’s used again in the Psalms, where the God of Jacob is called upon for protection, for him to send “help from the sanctuary.” In other places in the psalms, God is a “help and a deliverer,” or as the one responsible for all of creation.
If God is helping Israel, if we’re going to be consistent in our hermenuetic, it means that he is in a subservient position to Israel. He is not leading, or directing. He is not the one making the decisions. He’s helping, that’s all. Israel is the leader, God is the helper.
I think it’s also interesting that when this passage eventually comments on what their relationship is going to be, it’s in the directive for men and women to become one flesh. To me, that doesn’t say hierarchy, or that one is to be dominant over the other. That doesn’t make any sense, really. My body is one flesh. How does any part of my body have dominance over another? In fact, when, a “part” of me does have dominance over another “part” of me, it’s usually to my detriment. When my head rules my heart, or when my heart rules my head, there’s imbalance, and it’s dangerous. I’m not operating in a way that is true to all of me, to every part of me.
Complementarians also use Eve’s deception to show her up as weaker, as more fallible, than Adam. Some have even claimed that the serpent went to Eve because he knew that he wouldn’t have been able to deceive Adam. Except, Adam was with her. He was there, listening to the same deception. Some have argued that Adam only ate the fruit because he knew that God would send Eve out of the garden, but he loved her too much to let her go alone.
I don’t have to space to tackle all of that right now, especially since the biggest argument that complementarians pull from this passage is after the Fall, when God is cursing Adam and Eve. When God curses Eve, he tells her that her pain in childbirth will be multiplied, that her desire shall be for her husband, and that he will rule over her.
Those five words provide much of the foundation for complementarian ideals; they argue, over and over again, that it is God’s design for men to rule over their wives. That’s the way it should be, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If women violate this God-ordained order by not allowing our husbands to have the rule over us, we are inviting our own destruction. We will be unhappy. We’ll be miserable. Because, deep down, we know that submitting to our husband’s headship is the way it’s supposed to be.
Except… morphine exists, as do C-sections, and epidurals.
Why is it that women are “fighting against the natural order” when we want equality with our husbands (note: complementarians frequently argue that a husband and wife are equal-- we have equal, but separate roles. This is a problem, because complementarians are not defining “equality” the same way, because women in the complementarian role are to submit to their husband’s headship. If there’s a hierarchy, they’re not equals), but there isn’t a problem with reducing our pain in childbirth? Or, while we’re on this subject, why is it that no one talks about “violating God’s ordained order” when we try to get rid of weeds, or when we develop reapers and irrigation to help combat our difficulties?
I’d like to highlight something that is present in this passage: when God sends Adam and Eve out of the garden, it’s to send them to work the ground. He’d just finished cursing the ground, but he still sent them to till and harvest it, to survive– and to eventually thrive.
Yes, the Genesis passage curses Eve with a husband who will “rule over” her. But it also includes the hope that this is not the way things are supposed to be. God didn’t create our relationships to work this way– he created us to be “one flesh,” in complete unity. And he sent Adam and Eve out into a world that would be hard, and full of struggles– but struggles and trials they could defeat together.
Today’s guest post is from Way of Cats, a former fundamentalist who now considers herself spiritual. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.
In my Midwest rural birthplace, my parents had a mixed-faith marriage. He was a Lutheran; she was a Methodist.
My first firm memories of church were after our move to the small-town South. We went to non-denominational, bible-believing, born-again churches. I joined Youth Group and went to sleepaway Bible Camp every summer. I cried in my seat when a revival group took over evening worship and screamed a blow-by-blow re-enactment of the Passion of the Christ.
I spent seventh grade in a Southern Baptist Christian Academy where we had chapel twice a week. The first row would get hit with spit from our principal, raving about the demonic influences of “rock music.” Girls’ skirts and boys’ haircuts were measured with a ruler. I mastered the art of the five-second shower, lest the Rapture occur during that window, in which case I would be naked in front of God and Everybody.
My science class discussed tectonic plates as though God himself had assembled them. Evolution was a lie, and our textbook for this discussion was a Chick Tract. We grew used to our teacher lifting his head and saying, “Do you hear that? It’s the godless Communist hordes coming down the road. They are going to come in here and point a gun at your head and kill you unless you deny Jesus Christ.”
He would use his finger as a gun, and point to each of us in turn, moving through the rows of desks. The beige weave of his polyester slacks and the ketchup tinge of his breath would embed itself into our about-to-be-blown-out brains.
Make no mistake– I grew up Fundamentalist.
We would get sent home from school if we had the nerve to wear a blouse and jeans, since everyone knew we were allowed to wear a “pantsuit,” where the top matched the pants. Of course we were expected to be chaste before marriage; that was not a part of dating, where That Boy was supposed to Respect Us and get us home by our ridiculously early curfew. A woman could be a manager, a teacher, an accountant or nurse or even a doctor; but she better bring her best covered dish to the potluck, and she would (of course!) do the washing up along with all the other women.
In my early teens, I did chafe at my circumscribed “woman’s role” in the church. I was happy when my intellect was respected by our classically trained minister, who spoke Greek and read Aramaic. He would discuss theology and morality with me and lend me books. Why, I could be anything… except a President, (of anything!) or a pastor.
As a bright, and academically gifted girl, I was expected to pursue a career, so long as it didn’t interfere with the two or three children I was also expected to have. More than that meant I wasn’t “taking precautions” and having too many children for us to support.
What alternate Universe was this? It was biblical-literalist, full-immersion, haters-of-secular-humanism Southern Baptist in the early 70s.
I left Christianity entirely at fourteen, shortly after I did what every Fundamentalist is subtly discouraged from doing: reading the entire Bible, cover to cover, without a study guide or Sunday School teachers or pastors to “interpret” things for me.
Once we have read other works of art, the Bible is so-obviously a collection of history and poetry and myth, the incredibly preserved testament of a people who gave birth to one of the world’s greatest Teachers; Jesus. I took the red words and ran away.
Back then, I thought I was being oppressed. I had no idea.
Now, wandering around the Spiritually Abused sites where people tell incredible stories of inconceivable oppression, I am humble and grateful. As bad as my parent’s divorce was, it at least put us beyond the reach of what the Protestants have become; a Quiverfull, woman-hating, incredibly abusive, sect that has completely lost track of what Christianity is supposed to be about.
God is Love. It’s not that difficult.
While I had legitimate issues with the “role of women” as described by religion during my teens, I was never regarded as Less than Human. I was never just an incubator who cleaned. Sure, I felt that way, but in the early 70s, I was never actually treated that way. What triggered this War on Women?
It was Feminism. That’s all. Women’s Liberation. Because, at that time, what my church taught was not that different from what the entire culture believed and practiced. Women could go so far, and no further. This is what broke up my parent’s marriage.
Years later, when my mother confessed that it drove her literally crazy that my father could not handle money, and she felt driven to divorce him, I was stunned. Why didn’t she, with much more skill as her later life proved, just take over the finances? Because she hadn’t been raised that way. It didn’t even occur to her to do that.
It wasn’t done.
Women escapees from Spiritual Abuse are very familiar with the ways certain ideas are not allowed to be thought– familiar with all of this was a backlash against Women’s Liberation. It’s not God at all.
Be keeping women slotted into housekeeping and shutting up, it’s easier for small men to feel superior. This is what happens when they cannot inspire respect with their accomplishments. They can only bully fear from the weak and vulnerable.
So, I keep swearing to myself that I won’t keep writing reactionary posts. I do. I really do. I make all these beautiful promises about keeping my head down, not getting involved when someone says something unintelligent . . .
And, after ranting about it a little bit, and stomping around on twitter (only two tweets for this one! two! I did so good), I decide that hey, this is an issue that actually needs addressing. Because, yes, I’m reacting to something that got published on the internet– but I’m also reacting to the place where these ideas come from. And these ideas come from a very scary, very dark place. A place I lived most of my life in.
So, to get us started, here’s the significant portions of the young man’s letter I’m going to address:
. . . I’ve been checking off the various boxes over the years to become a better mate, yet I cannot seem to find any girls of marriage potential.
I have not been able to find any Christian girls who are virgins. If I successfully get a date, as it moves along I am constantly disappointed to find out they have had sex with numerous men before. Each makes the typical statement that they were mistakes and they’ve asked God for forgiveness and moved on. Unfortunately, as a potential husband, there is no option for me to “move on” beyond the infidelity . . .
My female friends keep telling me, “It’s not that big of a deal, and no girls over 20 are virgins. The fact they’ve had sex doesn’t change much.” But not only do I not believe them, there’s lots of scientific as well as biblical evidence for it being a big deal! And that’s on top of the human feelings of betrayal, shame and dishonor of knowing your girl didn’t love you enough to not sleep with other men, as well as the mental images you’ll have for a lifetime of her being sexually active with her lovers.
Feel free to go vomit into a bucket, or go scream into a pillow. I had to go furiously clean my kitchen after I read this. I’ll wait for you.
Ready? Ok.
Honestly, though, the first thing that clues me in to this young man’s attitude is in the words “checking off the boxes.” He talks about all the things he’s done to ready himself for marriage– getting a job, settling down, all that. Those are all fantastically good things. I encourage anyone who asks that waiting to seriously think about long-term relationships until you’re established can be a very good, healthy thing. Doesn’t make it the right circumstances for everyone, but it can help. So yay. He’s waited until he’s more established to start looking.
But, when I think back to all the men I knew growing up, men who declared they’d follow this same formula, men who ascribed to all those kissed-dating-goodbye ideas, I think I know where this man is coming from. And he’s coming from a place where men are The Supreme Commander over All Things– in the church, in the home, in the workplace. In a word, that’s called patriarchy, which will be important in just a sec.
So, his entire letter is dedicated to asking for some guy on Boundless.org to give him justification. He’s not really interested in advice– he’s interested in having Scott Croft affirm his belief that “finding a virgin” is some sort of biblical mandate, that he’s right in believing that he shouldn’t marry anything ‘less’ than a virgin. That, because he’s a virgin, and he’s “checked off all the right boxes,” that he deserves a virgin. That he deserves to feel “betrayed” and “sinned against” by any unmarried woman having sex with someone who isn’t him.
After he opens with not finding women who meet his standards as a “potential,” he then labels the act of a woman having pre-marital sex as infidelity.
Infidelity.
Let’s let that sink in for a moment.
Because, ladies, having sex before you’ve even met your future husband is cheating. And, in this frame of reference, it’s cheating because, guess what– you belong to him already. You’ve belonged to him from the moment you were born (because, of course, any suitable husband will be older than you). Because God made you for each other. God knew who you were going to marry when he formed you in your mother’s womb. Behaving like you’re not already married? Not possible. Because you are, before you’ve even sworn that vow. Your body, your vagina, isn’t yours. It’s his, your future husband’s. Always.
And because your vagina belongs to him, if you let anyone else in there, he deserves to feel betrayed, and shamed, and dishonored by what you’ve done with your body.
I’d like to highlight the words he chose to use– betrayal, shame, and dishonor. That’s the language of patriarchy. He can be betrayed if you’ve broken a vow to him– a vow you’ve never even made. He can feel shamed by you, because he has the right to control what you do before you’ve met him. He can be dishonored by you, because you belong to him. Your honor, your choices, are his. You don’t get to make decisions based on what betrays and dishonors yourself.
And to top it all off, you just don’t love him enough. A man you’ve never met. And he’s going to continuously feel threatened by your previous sexual partners, because he has always owned your body. It’s his possession, and someone else dared to touch it. No, you dared to let someone else touch it.
That being said, I think that even with those who in general agree with the emotional and physical virginity idea thought this letter-writer was an unmitigated ass.
So, moving on to the response, where everyone shouted a great big cry of “here, here!” Because it has its own problems.
This is the second sentence of Scott Croft’s response:
To begin with — especially in light of what I am about to write below — I want to affirm you in your belief that premarital sex is everywhere and always a sin, and that it is a sin not only against God, but against one’s eventual spouse. I deeply wish that more single people — especially those who profess to be Christian — lived out that conviction.
And then he goes to the Bible to back up this point.
Matthew 15:19– doesn’t say that pre-marital sex is a sin against your spouse.
Mark 7:21– doesn’t say that pre-marital sex is a sin against your spouse.
I Corinithians 6:18– this explicitly states that sexual immorality is a “sin against your own body.”
1 Timothy 5:2– includes the word “purity” which means “clean,” but it’s a stretch to make that about sex.
Galations 5:19-21– doesn’t say that pre-marital sex is a sin against your spouse.
Song of Solomon 2:7– “don’t awaken love until it pleases.” Ok. Maybe that’s about sex. Maybe.
Hebrews 13:4– is specifically talking about already married people, so, no particular relevance here.
Interesting thing about all those passages– they are references to “sexual immorality,” which is a vague enough term, but we can assume (at least for the moment) that they’re not talking about prostitution or pedophilia, but pre-marital sex. Even if we accept that assumption, none of these passages say pre-marital sex is a sin against your future spouse. None. Not one. One of them even says, quite clearly, that “sexual immorality” (whatever it is) is a sin against your own body.
Scott does go on to say some things that I agree with– that all of these principles affect men and women equally, which doesn’t really get said very often in our patriarchal culture when men own a woman’s vagina. He also goes on to say that issues like pornography are more damaging than pre-marital sex, so kudos to Scott for that.
But then . . .
In other words . . . you are right to be frustrated at the sexual immorality you see, and it’s quite understandable for you to feel hurt at the notion of marrying a woman who has sinned against you by having sex before her marriage to you.
Heavens. I don’t know how to make this more clear, but there is no evidence, from the Bible, that pre-marital sex is a sin against anyone. If it is a sin, which is not what I’m addressing in this post, it’s only a sin for you, personally. It only becomes something that can be “against” someone when that someone is a man, and he owns your vagina, and because he owns it, deserves to be upset about what happens to it.
Going to use a ridiculous example here, but it’s like my car– if someone came along and took my car for a test drive without my permission, I’d have a right to be pretty dang upset. Because it’s my car. I paid for it so that I would have exclusive rights to it, and no one could use it but me.
But guess what? My vagina isn’t a car. It’s not anybody’s property– not even after I get married. If I decide to commit adultery, it’s not a betrayal because I’ve done something with my husband’s property that I didn’t have the right to do. It’s a betrayal because, as a human being who made a promise to stay faithful to my husband, I would have broken that promise by having an affair. Vow breaking, in my opinion, is a serious issue.
Back to the article– Scott does affirm that just because a man or a woman has pre-marital sex it doesn’t mean they can’t get married. Yay. But then he just goes back to the same tired line– that this man is justified in being upset that a woman who’s had sex has “betrayed him” and “sinned against him.” Scott tells the man to ponder grace and forgivness, after just making that task extraordinarily difficult by saying “y’know what, women who’ve had sex did betray you, and they did sin against you.” He’s said exactly what this man wanted him to say. This man wrote that letter asking for justification in believing that a woman having sex is a betrayal against his ownership– and he got it.
To round this out, I’d just like to remind everyone that Rahab was a זָנָה, which is usually translated as “prostitute.” And she is in the lineage of Jesus Christ.
Edit: I’d also like to note that Scott doesn’t say that it’s only a sin against a man when a woman has sex, and that it’s not equally as much as a sin against a woman when a man has sex. However, the idea in both the letter and the response is based on the patriarchal notion that a woman’s virginity belongs to a man. It’s an “update” to say that a man’s virginity also belongs to a woman, but it’s the same idea. This idea is wrong because it completely ignores concepts like individual autonomy and personal agency. No one’s decisions belongs to anyone else. Male or female.
I wrote this post a few weeks ago and hesitated to put it up, but after reading R.A. Savilla’s account at Rachel Held Evan’s blog, and the overwhelming response to it, I’ve decided that this needs to be said.
The story of Abraham and Isaac, if we’re being honest, makes Christians uncomfortable. If you’re not the least bit bothered by God telling Abraham to perform a human sacrifice and Abraham being willing to do it, I’m suspicious of your humanity. God told Abraham to slaughter his son as a sacrifice, and he almost did it, hoping against hope.
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of this story, but I am familiar with what many people consider to be the triumphant ending — at the very last moment God sends an angel to step in, and he provides a ram for the sacrifice. It’s become a narrative we use to talk about our lives– sometimes, it looks like God is asking us to do something so difficult we can’t even wrap our brains around it, but he will always swoop in at the very last moment and provide a solution, or to save us from whatever we were about to face. And hopefully he’ll do this in the most spectacular, most miraculous, way possible.
Many of our narratives revolve around Abraham in this story– doing the hard thing that God asks of us, even when we don’t fully understand why. We don’t have all the information, so we just have to trust that there’s something more going on, something larger at stake.
But I’ve always wondered about Isaac.
We don’t know much about him in this story– we don’t know how old he was, we don’t know how much he understood about his father’s God, we don’t know how much God has told Isaac about the Abramic Covenant. All we have is a question:
“My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
We don’t know how he responded to Abraham placing him on the altar he had just helped his father build. We don’t know if he was begging his father not to do this, not to kill him. We don’t know if he only cried, or if he did anything at all.
Most of all, we don’t like asking the question of the moment– where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
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I have a medical condition called Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome, complicated by IBS and endometriosis. This means that, for most of the month, I experience uncomfortable, but most of the time, manageable pain. It’s a dull ache that most of the time I can ignore. I’ve learned to live with it– to not eat a bunch of dairy, to make sure that I drink as much water as possible, to eat enough fiber, to walk and move even when I don’t particularly feel like it, to not jostle myself, to never run, to take things slowly and don’t push myself. I always have to sleep on my right side– if I lay on my left side, the internal bleeding caused by the endometriosis shifts to a new spot, and the pain intensifies.
But, during my period, all hell breaks loose. I live in absolute dread of my period coming. I try not to think about it too much, because simply thinking about it makes my anxiety skyrocket. I start taking anti-inflammatory meds the week before, slowly building up to 800 mg a day. During my period, I have to take hydrocodone just to survive, but it barely even touches the pain. I take it not because it actually reduces my pain, but because it helps me not care so much.
I can’t move, hardly at all. If I’m home by myself, I keep the painkillers and food I can eat while lying down next to my bed. I try not to drink that much– if I have to go to the bathroom, I have to crawl there, and going to the bathroom is so excruciatingly painful it terrifies me and I usually end up sobbing because the pain is so bad. At moments, the pain is breathtaking, and all I can do is cry. There have been times that I have actually passed out and gone into shock from the pain itself. It starts out pretty localized– but, over the first two days, it spreads all the way up to my ribcage and down to my thighs. I have trouble sleeping, and, occasionally, I’ll have cramping so bad it wakes me up– you can put your hand on my stomach and feel the spasms. Sometimes, you can see the cramps clench everything in my lower abdomen; you can see things jerking and twitching just below the skin.
I don’t usually talk about this.
Over the years, I’ve built up a c’est la vie approach to my medical problems. I shrug it off most of the time if anyone asks, which is rare, because I tend not to tell people.
I learned not to talk about this the hard way.
In small groups, in churches, when people ask for prayer, there have been times where I’ve mentioned my health problems. A long time ago, I used to ask people to pray that they would simply go away, that I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. I used to ask that they would pray that God heal me. But, now that I’ve been dealing with this for over ten years– about 150 periods– if I ask for prayer from anyone, it’s simply a prayer for strength.
I’ve stopped doing even that, usually– because then many people will confidently assert that no, they won’t pray for strength. I don’t need strength– I need God’s healing touch on my life. “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” they’ll chirp with a promise that I’ll be on their minds every morning. And, a few weeks or a few months later, I’ll bump into them again, and they’ll inevitably ask how I’m doing. And I’ll shrug and say, “oh, about the same.”
I’m a living reminder that God doesn’t always answer prayer.
Oh, they’ll toss out the typical “sometimes God says wait,” but when you’ve been waiting for ten years and it’s only gotten worse instead of better, you have a tendency to think that’s a load of bunk. Or, their eyes will narrow slightly, and they’ll inform me that if I only believed, I would be healed.
I don’t tell them about the darkness– I don’t tell them about the fear and the terror that grips me in the week leading up to my period. I don’t tell them that, sometimes, when the pain is so bad I honestly don’t know how I can stand another second of it, that most of the time, I start screaming at God, at life, at the pain, at everything. I don’t tell them, that in my most desperate moments, that I pray for God to kill me. That I beg God for an answer– where is the lamb? Where is my at-the-last-moment spectacular rescue? Where is God reaching down in my life and sparing me from this?
The short answer– there’s never been, and he never has. There probably never will be.
On most days, I’ve accepted that.
And that makes people uncomfortable.
Because I’m the reality that life is largely a very painful experience, and, most of the time, it doesn’t go away. There’s nothing we can do to wish our lives magically better– we have to deal with the daily aches, the common pains, and move through our lives knowing that there are occasionally excruciatingly painful things outside of our control. I’m the reminder that no matter how much we think of ourselves as survivors, as fighters, that sometimes, it’s a battle with no end in sight– ever.
I’ve talked about my experience, but I’m actually rather lucky. My ongoing pain is something I can hide rather easily. I might disappear from church occasionally, but other than that no one really knows unless I tell them. But there are many, many people who can’t hide it, not really– but they try. They do everything they can to downplay their pain. They’re ashamed. They’re embarrassed. They don’t want to make the other people around them uncomfortable. Very often, these people are blamed for their pain– they must have done something to deserve it. God is punishing them. They just don’t have enough faith for God to heal them. Their prayer life must be weak. Maybe they’re not even a Christian.
And that’s wrong. Because we should be coming alongside the people who suffer, the people who mourn, the people who are in pain. And yes, it’s uncomfortable, and yes, it takes work, and yes– it necessarily means that we must accept the reality that not everything can be fixed. It means sacrificing our hero complexes and sitting down with that person in compassion and empathy– and realizing that we probably have no idea what that person is going through, but we don’t have to.
I wrote a guest post on my experience with conservative Christian homeschooling textbooks for Jonny Scaramanga’s blog, Leaving Fundamentalism.
As a homeschooled child growing up in the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement in the rural South of America, my family depended on textbooks provided to the homeschooling movement by Christian publishers. We used a smattering from a variety of publishers– Bob Jones Univeristy Press, A Beka (distributed by Pensacola Christian College), Saxon Math, McGuffy’s Readers, Alpha & Omega, and a few others.
I was intensely proud of my homeschooled education. In many ways, it was a good one. I studied Latin, Greek, and logic all the way through high school. I had the freedom to read everything Jane Austen and Charles Dickens ever wrote before I was sixteen. In some ways, my education was solid. It was good enough to get me through a Master’s degree, at least.
In other ways . . . it was dreadful.
There are huge– monumentally huge– gaps in my education, and I’m not talking about the fact that many homeschoolers tend to struggle with science and mathematics.
The most glaring problem with Christian-published textbooks is that they’re wrong. Factually and ethically wrong . . .
Where the passionate are fed. Where the spiritually starving are nourished. “Artists,” she said, “are simply people who are passionate enough to imagine things that do not yet exist.” Seona Reid, Principal of Glasgow School of Art, graduation 2003
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual crime, it’s not your fault. You are not alone. Help is available 24/7 through the National Sexual Assault Hotlines (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org).
