Reunion

In the early 1980s I was in college, living on fraternity/sorority row.  But it wasn't a sorority house.  It was the local branch of Maranatha Christian Churches/Campus Ministries founded by Bob and Rose Weiner.  As I have described here and here, Maranatha was a Christian group with strong authoritarian control.   We lived in the Maranatha House and went to church in the meeting room of that house, and we slept on the sleeping porches on the third floor and tried to get our homework done or hold down our jobs, despite endless outreach meetings, prayer meetings and other Maranatha obligations.

On Labor Day this year, 29 years after gradating from college, I went to an annual get-together of  a long-standing group of former Maranatha members from my college town.  The ties I have with these people are very strong, indeed practically unbreakable.  As we ate and talked, laughed and took pictures and caught up on one another's lives, I found myself wondering what it is that binds us together so closely, after almost 30 years.

It's certainly not because we still agree on everything the way we did back then, when we had all the right answers to all the right questions and knew how big a part our group of "God's Green Berets" was playing in the advance of God's "dominion mandate."  It's not because we stayed physically close; though some members still live in the same city, some of us have been scattered long distances. And it's not because we spend our time together living in the past; in fact, I don't think the word "Maranatha" or our experiences there came up once in any of the conversations I had at the reunion this year.

No, the bonds run much deeper than that.

It probably helps that all of us in this group of former members somehow managed to stay married to the spouses we met in Maranatha (which seems a miracle in itself!), and that we all had kids and got jobs and watched the kids grow up-- in short, that we have lived basically similar middle-class lives. And we did all remain Christians.  But those are really just general similarities-- and we have met at least once a year since our children were in infant carriers, and now most of those kids are in college or have finished school and moved out-- but we have not grown apart.

The thing is this.  Even if we don't always talk about our shared histories, the fact is that for several intense years we lived together and ate and slept and washed together (though of course boys and girls chastely slept and showered in separated areas).  We rotated the cooking and cleaning, and we played games in the dining/fireside room and helped each other with homework and gave each other Christmas presents.

We held car washes almost every Saturday of every summer to try to pay expenses for the house's upkeep.  We saved as much as we could to buy oil for the ancient furnace.  When school started, and again in the spring, we had six to eight weeks of meetings every night and were required to hand out flyers for these meetings on campus right after dinner.  There were also shorter "outreach" periods (2-4 weeks each, with meetings 3-4 times a week) at other points during the year.  Once a month we piled into cars and drove to Seattle for a "Maranatha Leadership Training Seminar."  I'm really not sure why we didn't all flunk out of school!

Several times a year we fasted and prayed for up to three days, and sometimes we held all-night prayer meetings, joined via satellite to other Maranatha congregations all over the globe.  (I remember one year the central leadership found out that it's better not to expect even young, strong college kids to pray all night and fast at the same time.  After several kids collapsed, fasting and all-night prayer were never observed at the same time again!  The leadership was actually lucky that no serious health problems resulted that they might have been held legally liable for.)

Whenever we could snatch any spare time, we'd go to movies together (if approved by the local leaders) or watch TV.  One of the girls' favorite activities was to listen to me read stories aloud (Winnie the Pooh, or the Chronicles of Narnia), while they did embroidery or cross-stitch.  (I was glad to be the reader because I loved to read aloud and secretly hated cross stitch, though as a woman I was supposed to like such things.)

We shared with each other the details of our lives and our troubles with parents or siblings.  We bundled up together when the furnace broke down from advanced arthritis or stopped for lack of fuel. We swam together in the house's swimming pool when it was hot (I'm sure the car wash money helped pay for pool treatment chemicals too).  We all knew what each of us looked like in the mornings before showers. We all knew what we looked like in the middle of the night without sleep.

All of this stays with us, even when we don't talk about it.  We have talked about it, of course-- at great length, over the years.  We walked with each other on our journeys out of authoritarian, spiritually abusive religion too.  And it turns out that what we have done together is something pretty rare-- the fact that Maranatha Christian Churches voluntarily disbanded in the early 1990s meant that we could leave Maranatha without shunning or estrangement-- that we were able to come out together.

And though we don't necessarily all agree anymore except on foundational Christian doctrines like the Trinity, the Incarnation, Atonement and Resurrection, we have all, I think, learned certain things from that journey out.

What have we learned?  I think it boils down to this:  that ultimately, there is no value in trying to force one another, or ourselves, to conform to some cookie-cutter standard of who or what we're supposed to be.  That each of us, in our own selves, is essentially and foundationally valuable.  And that our relationships with one another are more important than any differences we might have.

If nothing else good came out of being in a spiritually abusive religious group, this did: that in reaction to authoritarian control, we let go, once and for all, of any desire to control one another. Instead, we simply love one another.

And that should last us another 30 years, and beyond.

Matthew 18 and Spiritual Abuse

I have been asked a few times over the last several months to do a blog post on Matthew 18:15-17, where Jesus teaches about what to do if a member of a Christian group is committing wrongs that are harmful enough that they cannot be overlooked.  Here's the text, from the 2011 NIV:

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

The context of this verse is as part of one of Jesus' large teaching units in the gospel of Matthew.  He is here teaching about interpersonal relationships within the  "kingdom of heaven" [verse 1], which will include all who trust and follow Jesus.  He starts by stating that the greatest in the kingdom is as a little child, which, as I described in another blog post, meant letting go of earthly status and hierarchy. Then He goes on to warn against "despising" any of these "little ones-- those who believe in Me."  In other words, those who believe in Jesus should voluntarily become lowly and without status, like children ("little ones"), and their resulting vulnerability must not be taken advantage of or used to harm them. (For an excellent study of the whole chapter, see the Christian Resource Institute's study by Roger Hahn.)  He then talks about how valuable these "little ones" are to the Father, and how He will seek them if they stray.

It is at this point that verses 15-17 occur: just after the discussion of stumbling blocks put in the way of the "little ones."  The Christian group as a whole can choose to remove anyone who is causing grievous harm to one or more members of the group.  Jesus speaks in terms of "brothers and sisters" to indicate equality of status in the group.  He does not envisage the church as a hierarchy where leaders alone assume the power to excommunicate; an action as drastic as that should be done by the consensus of the whole group.

The rest of the teaching is about interpersonal forgiveness when brothers and sisters sin against one another.  Jesus speaks of the need to forgive "up to seventy times seven" times, and tells a parable whose point is that, since God has forgiven us so much, we ought also to forgive one another.  Taking this section together with verses 15-17 leads me to conclude that Jesus is differentiating between forgiveness (personal letting go of animosity) and reconciliation (restoring relationships).   To forgive someone up to seventy-times-seven times is one thing; to have them "listen to you" so that you have "won them over" is another.   The possibility of excommunication means that relationship is not to be restored when the person who has harmed you is unrepentant and unwilling to change-- even after being confronted with witnesses to the harm that was done.

The principles of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 18:15-17 are sound.  A group should have the power to disassociate itself from people who are causing serious harm to one or more members, and a graduated-step process seems the most appropriate way to deal with such people.  The problem is that these verses are so often misused, particularly by people in power to enable themselves to stay in power.  Here are some examples from around the blogosphere:

From Under Much Grace:

In many spiritually abusive groups, Matthew chapter 18, verses 15-19 is used like a static formula which is misapplied to manipulate and control others. Many misapply it as something appropriate for minor offenses instead of overt sin, as the consequences of the process can result in excommunication from that local church. A person can be offended by someone's behavior, but it may not necessarily constitute a sin, particularly not one that carries such heavy consequences. In aberrant Christian groups, the passage is used to rid the group of “problem,” nonconformist members (who are not sinning) and becomes a means by which clergy can micromanage if not threaten church members. (It is used to manipulate and control behavior.)

Among very litigious groups, the process is used to declare people non-Christian or never legitimate Christians so that they can be at liberty to violate a directive of the Apostle Paul who forbids Christians to sue other Christians, as it is found in a letter he wrote to the Church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 6:1-11). This practice of threatening to “de-Christianize” other professing Christians is actually common among those who follow patriarchy. This type of abuse of the passage has become popular enough that the saying that a person has been “Matthew Eighteened” has become somewhat commonplace among some Protestant Evangelical groups.

From Debra Bouey at Crossword Articles:

When Biblical apologists comment publicly on . . . aberrant, sometimes heretical, teachings, the principals involved, and their supporters, quickly and repeatedly raise the "Matthew 18 Argument", contending that the "brother" [or, as the case may be, "sister"] should have been approached privately, "according to Matthew 18".

From ResolveChurchConflict.com:

Jesus's words here were not intended and should not be used as a general model for all conflict resolution. . . Matthew 18 instructs the church on how to deal with sin on an interpersonal level that is serious enough to remove an unrepentant member from fellowship. . .  Matthew 18 is not applicable for solving differences of opinion and other kinds of problems. 

From Slacktivist:

99 percent of the time, this is the way this passage is used and abused — as a cudgel to beat truth-tellers back into silence. How dare you expose my wrong-doing? Jesus commanded you to come to me privately, so that we could work this out just between the two of us. . .

From the Biblical Seminary Theology Blog:

Does this passage require that abuse victims forego reporting abuse to the authorities and to make a private confrontation of the perpetrator? Sadly, I have heard stories where not only were victims chastised for reporting abuse, but then made to go to the perpetrator and confess their sin of not following Matthew 18.

From Rachel Held Evans' Interview with Boz Tchividjian:

[T]his passage is used as a justification for 1) not reporting abuse disclosures to the civil authorities and 2) convincing sexual abuse victims to privately confront their perpetrators. Needless to say, this misinterpretation of Matthew 18 is hugely destructive on a number of fronts.

It's very important not to lift verses like Matthew 18:15-17 out of their historical context-- how they were meant to be understood and applied in their original setting, to their original audience. Jesus' words were meant to be understood in terms of a small counter-cultural group within an indifferent or even hostile surrounding culture.  Such a group had a much greater need to police its own members for things which today are crimes which should be handled by civil authorities.  Jesus also was not envisioning a church where power was concentrated in the hands of one or two people who would then be in a position to abuse their authority.  Neither was He setting forth some universal principle for conflict resolution to be applied in a blanket manner to all situations.  As Boz Tchividjian says later in the above-linked interview:

Matthew 18 is important for local church life, because Jesus commands us there how to deal with sin. But it is not the only passage in which Jesus tells us how to deal with sin. It must be properly synthesized with others that address the same subject directly and/or indirectly. It is critical to remember that all passages are regulated and interpreted by the balance of Scripture. . . [For instance,] on Romans 13, Jesus tells us through the Apostle Paul that believers are to be subject to the civil authorities.

I don't think that even in the early days when the civil authorities were mostly hostile, would the church have required a sexual abuse victim to privately confront a perpetrator.  1 Corinthians 5:1 seems to indicate a situation like this, where the man who "had his father's wife" appeared to be held solely responsible and the congregation was instructed to remove him from the fellowship.  Women had far less agency then than they have today in any event-- but there appears to have been no idea in Paul's mind that the woman should follow a Matthew 18 private confrontation.

In the authoritarian, spiritually abusive group I was part of in my earlier Christian life, the problem was not so much crimes that should have been handled by civil authorities, but the fact that confronting a leader with his sin would lead directly to leader-led discipline against the person who dared to complain.  Trying to discuss a wrong privately with an authoritarian leader is impossible-- it will immediately be turned around to be construed as your sin, not his.  As the above Slacktivist quote states, Matthew 18 thus becomes a way to keep the rank-and-file members from speaking out.

And of course, authoritarian leaders often also use Matthew 18 as if simply disagreeing with them-- about anything at all-- were sin.  And then once a person has been excommunicated using the Matthew 18 process, they can be treated as enemies and prosecuted or sued accordingly (as the above Under Much Grace article notes).

Finally, a person who speaks out publicly against spiritually abusive doctrines can be accused of not handling it biblically, by taking the disagreement to the person privately first. This has a way of simply shutting down all discussion.  But Jesus and the apostles themselves were actually quite vocal about publicly refuting doctrines and teachings they disagreed with.  Matthew 18 is not about doctrinal differences.

Other passages show situations which were not "Matthew 18" events.  In Acts 15:39 Paul and Barnabas had a "sharp disagreement" without handling it according to Jesus' Matthew 18 teaching, because His teaching simply did not apply to disagreements about who to travel with!  And when Paul found Peter, a fellow church leader, involved in public hypocrisy, Paul also rebuked him publicly (Galatians 2:11-14).  Paul doesn't seem to have expected any of the Gentiles who were being ostracized at the table, to confront Peter privately.  Jesus' Matthew 18 teachings apparently didn't apply there, either-- possibly because Peter's sin was not harmful enough that he needed to be asked to leave.  Or possibly because Peter's actions were in front of everybody, and so his correction needed to also be in front of everybody.  Or perhaps because Peter was an apostle, and Paul thought it best for another apostle to confront him.  Or all three.

It's never a good idea to isolate one set of verses from the rest of scripture and follow them slavishly as if they were universally applicable in every situation.  Particularly in ways that violate the good which the passage intended, and do harm the passage never contemplated.

In any event, Christians, and especially Christian leaders, need to be careful about using passages of scripture to their own advantage at the expense of others.  This is against every principle that Jesus taught-- and it's what most of His rebukes of the scribes and Pharisees were about.

A Bible used as a weapon against other human beings, is always a Bible misused.

"Sola Scriptura"?

"Sola scriptura" is the Protestant doctrine of "scripture alone."  Here is a portion of the definition from GotQuestions.org:

Sola scriptura means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true. . . Sola scriptura was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. . . The only way to know for sure what God expects of us is to stay true to what we know He has revealed—the Bible. We can know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that Scripture is true, authoritative, and reliable. The same cannot be said of tradition. 

The Word of God is the only authority for the Christian faith. Traditions are valid only when they are based on Scripture and are in full agreement with Scripture. Traditions that contradict the Bible are not of God and are not a valid aspect of the Christian faith. Sola scriptura is the only way to avoid subjectivity and keep personal opinion from taking priority over the teachings of the Bible. The essence of sola scriptura is basing your spiritual life on the Bible alone and rejecting any tradition or teaching that is not in full agreement with the Bible.

"Sola scriptura" encapsulates Protestant principles regarding church tradition-- and though historically this has generally referred to Roman Catholic tradition, it can refer to any church tradition. As a Protestant, I support the concept that church traditions-- even Protestant ones!-- should be tested in terms of whether they are supported by Scripture.  But the assumptions underlying this Protestant principle sometimes go completely unexamined, with the result that "sola scriptura" can potentially become a virtually incoherent teaching that is used to support authoritarian and spiritually abusive church practices.

Notice the statement in the GotQuestions.org quote above: "Sola scriptura is the only way to avoid subjectivity and keep personal opinion from taking priority over the teachings of the Bible." The unexamined assumption here is that subjectivity actually can be avoided-- that the Bible provides a method for examining church teachings and practices with a completely objective standard.

The problem is that we read the Bible as finite humans, and though we as Christians trust that God is the source and foundation of objective truth, we are not God and not capable of fully understanding God, nor can we fully step outside our own subjectivity.  The doctrine of sola scriptura sometimes leads us to assume that we can, as N. T. Wright puts it, "read the Bible straight":

There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’. This is rather like the frequent Anglican assumption (being an Anglican myself I rather cherish this) that Anglicans have no doctrine peculiar to themselves: it is merely that if something is true the Church of England believes it. This, though not itself a refutation of the claim not to have any ‘tradition’, is for the moment sufficient indication of the inherent unlikeliness of the claim’s truth, and I am confident that most people, facing the question explicitly, will not wish that the claim be pressed. But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying.

 The fact is that "scriptura" by its very nature is a book that people read, so it cannot stand "sola" -- alone and isolated from the humans who read it.  Every time we read the Bible, we are seeing it through the windows of our own experience, and understanding it according to our own reasoning. And this practically always encompasses at least some church tradition regarding how to understand the text.  So sola scriptura, instead of giving us an objective means for judging the legitimacy of church tradition, ends up merely giving us the illusion of objectivity, while we fail to notice or examine the church traditions and other underlying factors which affect the way we understand the Bible texts.

That doesn't mean there's anything necessarily wrong with those traditional readings.  The consensus of a faith community on the meaning of a text is one check-and-balance against wild and erroneous readings that an individual might come up with on their own.  But faith communities are also human, and some traditional readings uphold human bastions of power and/or reflect human prejudices.  Protestantism arose because Christians like Martin Luther began to question and challenge the existing bastions of power-- but Protestantism itself soon adopted its own traditions and power structures.  Sometimes we Protestants fail to understand the extent to which our sola scriptura doctrine is informed by Protestant interpretative traditions.

And then there's this.  When we say, as GotQuestions.org does, that "Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian," we have to face the fact that "scripture alone" has simply failed to yield one self-evident and incontrovertible meaning for each of its texts.  The reason is, of course, that scripture simply does not stand alone, but must be read and interpreted.  This doesn't mean that each interpretation of scripture is equally valid-- some methods of interpretation are more likely to yield truer results in terms of both the original human and the divine intent.  But always, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13:12, we see "through a glass, darkly."  We can't prove the human author's intent and we can't always fully grasp the divine intent.  So our reliance on sola scriptura as the rule for our faith and practice turns out not to actually be reliance on an objective and certain standard.

Ultimately, we have to rely on the Spirit of God to "guide us into all truth (John 16:13)."  But though Jesus said, "Your word is truth (John 17:17)," He also said earlier in the same passage that He is the truth (John 14:6)-- and we know from John 1:1 that He is also the word!  As I have said in another post, God seems to place much more priority on our trusting Him than on whether we are right about what a given passage of scripture means.  I don't get the impression that the Holy Spirit is particularly threatened by how many different understandings of Bible passages there are.  The truth He guides us into is apparently something much bigger than being right about what this or that scripture says.

The real problem comes when a particular church group uses sola scriptura to uphold their particular reading of the Bible as if that reading and the divine intent were one and the same. Protestant churches that do this are actually setting themselves up as a new magisterium with the power to dictate to their members how to believe and practice.  "Sola scriptura" can come to mean, "Disregard your own experience and reason, and ignore your gut instincts about right and wrong-- they are not to be trusted.  Only the Bible (and by that we actually mean 'what we have decided the Bible says') is to be trusted."  Claiming that the scripture is "clear" and that anyone who questions it is rebelling against God, they actually raise themselves up to the place of God in the lives of their followers.

I believe we do need to take the Bible very seriously and to do our best to understand it the way God would have us understand it.  But we need to do this with humility and with the knowledge that the center of Christianity is the Person of Christ-- that the Bible points us to Him, not the other way around.

"Sola scriptura" without that understanding is simply bibliolatry-- idolatry of the Bible. And it's dangerous.

Seeking the God Beyond God

Blogger PerfectNumber recently wrote a post called Could He Really Accept Me As I Am? I Mean, REALLY ACCEPT.  Using a hypothetical "other" voice, she speaks as if she were calling herself back to a kind of understanding of Jesus, God and Christianity that she can no longer accept: 

Perfect Number, he accepts you as you are, and he will guide you and give you time and help you to change into a "good Christian." 

He'll take you back to the way you were before, forgiving all this straying, all this questioning and the blasphemous things I've said on my blog. 

Yes, he accepts you as you are, even though you don't believe in purity, and you don't oppose gay rights, and you *gasp* have even been deceived into thinking abortion might sometimes be okay. 

It's okay, Perfect Number. Come back to Jesus. 

And I fear that's the deal. And that's why I don't want to come back to [that version of] Jesus.  I won't give him everything. I don't surrender. Obedience to God is not the highest thing in my life. 

You guys, I want love to be the highest thing.

And life. And freedom. 

And no matter what Jesus says, I won't go along with anything that is, as far as I can tell, incompatible with love and life and freedom. [Emphases in original.]

And then there's the story Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering once told.  This was on an old message board that is now defunct, so I can't share the link, but in the "Quiverfull" movement, women are often burdened with the requirement to eschew all birth control regardless of whether their own health, or even their lives, are in danger.  Vyckie tells the story of a husband who loved his wife enough to refuse to go along with this:

"I had a friend who was bedridden with every pregnancy and each time it was worse ~ not life-threatening, but just really miserable. After the 6th, her husband asserted his "authority" over her ~ and had a vasectomy. He refused to put his wife through that any more.

I remember feeling so jealous ~ I couldn't imagine having a such a decisive husband who was willing to take the responsibility to say, "No more" himself ~ and I was really impressed when he told me, "It may not be the right thing scripturally ~ but if God has a problem with it, He can take it up with me. I will not do that to my wife again." Wow ~ a god-fearing man willing to take on the Lord in defense of his wife. That's love like I have rarely seen."

While I disagree in general with husbands "asserting authority" over their wives, in this case I can't help but see the husband as doing the most loving thing he could in a no-win situation. But I have to ask: what kind of a god is this, that an ordinary human man can so easily outdo him in love and compassion? A deity who would insist on "the right thing scripturally" to the real harm of its followers-- who cares more about rigid rules than about people?

Jesus said in Luke 10:27 that the whole law is encapsulated in this: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart. . . and your neighbor as yourself."  And then when asked "who is my neighbor?" He told the story of the Good Samaritan, the hated outcast who treated a member of the story-hearers' own people with care and compassion.  So the question is, if our enemy is our neighbor, how can our spouse not be our neighbor?  Surely despite whatever this Quiverfull couple's church said, the husband could not have been disobeying God if he loved his wife as himself?

And if "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and if "the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32), then how could Perfect Number be going against Jesus if she's prioritizing love and life and freedom?*  And why should obedience to God be the highest thing in her life if it's not obedience to love?  If we're not obeying love, are we obeying God at all?

The way I see it, if we find we want to be, and can be, morally better than our conception of God, then what we're following isn't God. According to St. Anselm, God is "That than which nothing higher can be conceived." If we can easily conceive of a better, a morally higher God, then our god is too small-- it's only a caricature of God. The better, higher version is closer to the God we're really searching for, the One we should be seeking.

James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix defines the common phrase "God Beyond God":

This is the very ancient idea that, beyond any sort of anthropomorphic deity that we may think of and tell stories about, there must be an even greater reality that transcends our ability to comprehend and describe.

The Christian idea of God has always been an idea of transcendence, of an Entity beyond human conception, but which makes Itself known to humanity using ideas we can understand.
There are a number of places in the Bible where, despite the fact that the writers' human understanding of God was limited (as ours is too), the idea of a "God beyond God" shines through.

• God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" Exodus 3:14. 

• For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9. 

• He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. . . . 1 Timothy 6:15-16. 

• The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. . . . Acts 17:24-25.

If we mistake God's accommodation of God's Self to our limited understanding, for the real God, then we are re-making God in our own image and ascribing to God our own limitations.  We make God into what Joe Hinman on his blog The Religious A Priori calls "just a big guy in the sky."

The result is that we can then end up with a god which is little more than a big stick used to enforce religious control.  Rules get prioritized over people, and obedience to those rules gets mistaken for devotion.  And then when someone protests and tries to seek a more transcendent idea of God, their very seeking is construed as rebellion and disobedience!

To this, some might respond that what looks like love to us sinful humans isn't really love, or that God is holy just as much as God is love, so have to mix our love with hatred of sin.  To this I would reply that love is holy-- because sin is that which hurts ourselves or others, and love will always oppose people hurting themselves or other people.  And anyway, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 shows what love is:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

To bring the familiar words into clearer focus, let's paraphrase the verses using opposites:

Love is never impatient; love is never cruel.  Love is pleased when others do well, love draws attention to the accomplishments of others, love is humble.  Love honors others and seeks their good.  Love stays calm and supportive; love is only angered by the giving of real harm.  Love keeps memories of the joys and triumphs of others.  Love never abandons, never becomes judgmental, never sees the worst in people, and doesn't view loved ones with disappointment or cynicism.  Love never gives up on you.  Love goes on and on. 

Anything counter to this kind of love is not holiness.  And any version of God that is impatient, cruel or any of these other things isn't holy either.

So I say if we're going to seek God, let's keep seeking the God beyond God.  No matter what anyone else says.


--------------------
*Note:  I know that taking snippets of verses like this can look like proof-texting, which means lifting pieces of scripture out of context to make it say whatever you want.  But I believe that the snippets I'm quoting do bring across the meaning I am intending to convey here, when they are taken in context. 

Conformity is Next to Godliness

My first roommate after I left college was a good friend and a lovely person.  She still is both of those things, though she lives far away.  But there was one dynamic to our relationship in those early roommate-days that wasn't all that lovely.  We haven't talked about it, but I think she'd shake her head in amusement and chagrin as much as I do now.

You see, she was very skilled, even back then when we were young, in the domestic arts.  She could whip together a dinner for six people without turning a hair.  She could make jams and jellies.  She could sew beautifully-- she eventually made her own wedding dress, and then my bridesmaid dresses.  Her cupboards were organized, her shelves were organized, even her junk drawer was organized.  And when she cleaned the kitchen, it knew it had been cleaned!

And I?  I wasn't a bad cook.  But that's all you could really say about me and the domestic arts.

This wouldn't have been a problem except for the kind of Christianity we were both involved in. We attended the same church, and the church taught that women were designed by God primarily for homemaking.  The Proverbs 31 woman and her superlative skills in food preparation, sewing and the like were the standard to be sought and attained.  I never really could attain it.  My sweet roommate seemed to do it effortlessly.

And this meant that somehow she was a better Christian, a more spiritually mature person, and a better woman, than I was.

Our church never put it this way in so many words, and I'm sure my roommate never consciously told herself as much. I know I never put it into actual words, in my mind or aloud.  But under the surface I think we both knew she was measuring up, and I wasn't.

A similar kind of thing happened to the guy I ended up marrying.  We weren't together at the time, but when he joined the same church and began to "grow in Christ," a certain idea of Christian manhood was held up to him as the standard.  A spiritually mature, godly Christian man was, first of all, an extrovert.  No one said as much, but that was the general idea.  A godly Christian man always prayed confidently and articulately in men's prayer meetings.  A godly Christian man knew how to loudly "take authority over the devil and his works" as a true prayer warrior.  A godly Christian man could go into a park and talk to strangers about Jesus with boldness "like a lion," just as Proverbs 28:1 said.  A godly Christian man was a born leader.

The young man who eventually became my husband was quiet and a little shy.  He met the church's standard easily when it came to reading the Bible privately (though he had a discouraging tendency to come to unapproved conclusions about what he read), but in prayer meetings and "witnessing" he just couldn't measure up.

This is not to say a woman couldn't be a good "prayer warrior," or that a man couldn't be a good cook. But there was always this sense that you had to meet the basic expectations for Christian manhood and womanhood first.  If you did that, then these other traits were an added plus.  If not-- well, they were nice traits of course, but-- well. . . . it just wasn't quite good enough.

There were other, more general things too.  The church was a charismatic one, which meant that outward displays of emotion were encouraged.  We didn't want to be like the "church of the chosen frozen," you know!  I don't think there was anything wrong with our dancing or waving our arms to the music, or with our cheering and applauding as a "praise offering" to God.  The problem was that those who were less comfortable with these outward displays were treated as if they were just not as devoted to Jesus as those to whom these things came naturally.

Personality, you see, was often mistaken for spirituality.

One of the most ludicrous things was how, at nearly every church meeting, we were exhorted from the pulpit to "give God the loudest shout that you've ever given!"  I remember thinking, "but I shouted as loud as I possibly could last time, and the time before.  It's physically impossible for me to shout louder than that!"  This, I might add, was pretty much as far as my rebellious thoughts ever went.  I still obediently shouted as loud as I could-- though I was one of those who felt adoration, and God's presence, far stronger when I was alone in complete silence.

Most of the time (with the exception of the domestic arts) I was pretty good at being what I was expected to be, and doing what I was expected to do.  Naturally easy-going, I usually had no problem going along with whatever the leaders said we should do.  My basic quietness, and the good manners my mother taught me, were generally interpreted as meekness and deference to my spiritual authorities-- even after I stopped believing they were always right.   The fact that at pot-luck dinners I'd rather talk theology with those of the guys who weren't watching sports, than discuss marriage and children in the kitchen with the women, was a bit puzzling to people, I think-- but in general, I was considered a good, godly Christian woman.  But this was really because (with the unfortunate exception of the domestic arts) I happened to have lot of the traits associated with godly womanliness.  It didn't really have much of anything to do with following Jesus.

On the other hand, my roommate-- the one with the super-homemaking powers-- tended to be naturally much more outspoken and even a little loud.  I suspect that just as I felt inferior to her in the domestic arts, she might have felt inferior to me when it came to having a "quiet and gentle spirit" per 1 Peter 3:4.  How was she to know that it wasn't actually my spirit, my "inner self" as the same Bible verse says, but simply my outward personality, that was quieter and gentler than hers was?

Other friends of mine in the church, I remember, sometimes had serious trouble conforming.  Those who couldn't manage it sometimes ended up leaving the church or even being thrown out.  Why was it, I wonder now, that no one seemed to be able to see that those who succeeded at "godliness" were most often those to whom the approved behaviors simply came naturally?

Why does it seem like this is still often the case in many churches today?

I'm not talking about those things which Galatians 5:22-23 calls "the fruit of the Spirit":

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

It's true that some of these will come easier to some personalities, and others will come easier to other personalities.  But every kind of personality can cultivate these basic virtues, and they won't necessarily look the same in every person.  But what I'm really talking about is when a certain outwardly recognizable stereotype is viewed as "godly" for one whole subset of Christian people (like men or women, or church leaders, or children), or even for all Christians everywhere.  If you fit the stereotype, or can fit yourself into it, you're approved.  If not, you get disapproval and censure.

Under Much Grace, Cynthia Kunsman's informative blog about spiritual abuse, points out that this tendency to seek conformity to a set of unspoken and unwritten expectations can be a spiritually abusive practice:

Manipulative and authoritarian Christian groups manifest this phenomenon all of the time, with great predictability. One of the most significant problems with cultic groups stems from the many different *informal* rules that are held, communicated, and followed by the group, though they often do not directly communicate these rules to new members. . . All groups have standards, expectations, and unspoken rules, [but] cultic groups are riddled with unwritten codes and expectations that are never brought into the light of scrutiny. . . [T]he consequences for failing to comply with [a] standard can range from formal and severe to informal and avoidant.

Every social group has some standards and unspoken rules.  When you meet someone in Western culture, for instance, you shake hands, and to ignore an offered handshake is extremely rude.  But when the standards become restrictive boxes that require everyone in a group to be alike, that's a problem.

Isn't the God who made us, a little more creative than that?  Since God's wisdom displayed through the church according to Ephesians 3:10 is "manifold" (meaning "many and various," in both the English and the Greek texts), shouldn't there be many and various ways to be a good Christian?  And shouldn't it be possible to do so while still being ourselves?

As I remember reading somewhere once (if I could remember where, I'd cite it) individuality in humanity is a feature, not a bug.  Jesus didn't expect Peter to act just like Andrew, or John to act just like Nathaniel.  Or Martha to act just like Mary.

Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the better thing-- but He didn't insist that Martha choose it too.  He didn't reject her act of service in making a meal-- He just told her she was getting too worried and bothered about it.

I think if Jesus had come in person to my apartment when I was just out of college, He'd have praised my roommate for her individual way of welcoming Him, and me for mine. Neither of us would have felt like we didn't measure up.

No conformity required.  Just love.

Christian Cliches: "Don't Be Lukewarm"

When I was a member of Maranatha Campus Ministries in college in the early 1980s, we used to drive five hours to Seattle every few months for a regional "Maranatha Leadership Training Seminar," or "MLTS."  Maranatha considered every member of its churches to be in training for some sort of Christian leadership.   If you were called to Maranatha, you were supposed to be part of a special rank of Christians-- God knew who His leaders were and deliberately called us into this ministry.  We were meant to stand out, to be a cut above.

I remember one particular MLTS where we were all told to split up into groups and march around several college campus blocks where the seminar was being held, singing at the top of our voices a Christian song called "We Are Taking Over."

The lyrics were, as far as I remember them, like this:

We are taking over
We are moving out in God
We are lifting up our Jesus
In the power of God
There is none to hold us
No more shall we be afraid
He has given us the victory
In His mighty name

Please don't ask me who wrote it; I have no idea.  If I had a name to attribute it to, I would.  But maybe it's actually a kindness that the writer remain anonymous.

Aaanyway . . . 

Imagine standing on the steps of your fraternity or sorority house or college apartment building and listening to a group of 20 or 30 college kids singing this in unison as they march past.  

Even back then I was pretty sure what they were thinking was not, "Oh, look how bold that group is! Look at the fire in their eyes!  I want to follow Jesus like them!"

I was pretty sure that they were really thinking something more along the lines of, "Aren't those Jesus dorks ridiculous and arrogant!  Good thing they can't really take over!" 

But I sang and marched on doggedly, remembering Luke 6:36: "Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets."  I had to be willing to bear shame for the name of Christ.  If I didn't, I would be lukewarm. 

That was the one thing no one wanted to be.  Jesus couldn't stand you if you weren't on fire for Him.  Like a mouthful of lukewarm water, He would spit you out in disgust.  That's what Revelation 3:15-16 said.

To be lukewarm was to care what other people thought.  To be lukewarm was to be unwilling to give it all for Jesus-- to hide your light under a bushel.  On-fire Christians were bold and courageous, like God told Joshua to be in Joshua 1:7. Didn't Proverbs 28:1 say the righteous were as bold as lions?

So we held our heads high and sang as loud as we could, taking courage from one another's volume. Oddly, what most people did when our group came into earshot was not to smile (which would have shown they were Christians too) or scowl (thus revealing their apostacy).  No, they just put their heads down and hurried past as if they were embarrassed by us.  Or was it for us?  No matter.  Deep in their hearts they were under conviction by the Holy Spirit, right?

Looking back on it today, my husband commented that what we were actually being taught was that devoted Christians were supposed to act like the people Jesus described in Matthew 6:5 and 23:5 - 

[T]hey love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. . . Everything they do is done for people to see.

Doing religious acts boldly and publicly was what you did naturally when you were "on fire" - because you were so lost in your love for Christ that you didn't care what anyone thought.  People in love don't hide it, our leaders said.  A man in love will carry a dozen roses down the street while telling everyone around him how beautiful his girl is.  If we're really in love with Jesus, won't we act like that too?  We'll want everyone to see!  We'll want everyone to hear!  If we don't, there's something wrong with our relationship with Christ.

If we don't, we're ashamed of the gospel, and He will be ashamed of us when He returns.

Somehow the idea that the people Jesus was describing who acted like this were "hypocrites" never quite registered with us back then (and I'm not saying, nor do I think He was saying, that every spontaneous public act of religious devotion is hypocritical).  But for us, being on fire meant that we could thank God, like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11, that we weren't like other people.  Except that unlike the Pharisee, this was really true when it came to us.

Matthew 6:5 didn't apply to us.  We weren't doing all this "to be seen by others."  We were just so in love we couldn't help ourselves.

Except that these supposedly natural, supposedly spontaneous outbursts of public love for Christ were so often staged-- so often planned and executed in advance to make the biggest impact possible. So often what we were doing had everything to do with not getting rebuked by our leaders or despised by one another, and almost nothing to do with how we actually felt about Jesus.

Here's what the "don't be lukewarm" verse actually says.  In context, it's part of one of the letters from Christ to the seven churches in the early chapters of the Book of Revelation:

Revelation 3:15-20 -

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.

Was Jesus really talking about what we thought these verses meant?

Many Christians today think so.  The most common idea still seems to be that "lukewarm" means "not zealous, not passionate."

Christianity.Net explains it this way:

[B]eing lukewarm is akin to comfortable Christianity. One in which we think we are rich and prosperous and need nothing but fail to realise [sic] that we are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. It is this type of Christianity that causes Jesus to say that he wants to spit him out of his mouth! And God’s counsel to us is in Rev 3:19, where he says to Laodicea and to us; ‘those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be zealous and repent’. Lukewarm Christianity is one that has lost its sense of being zealous.

The word translated "zealous" or "earnest" in verse 20 is the Greek word transliterated "zelo'o," meaning, "to burn."  This does seem to be a play on words with the word"hot" in the same verse. To stop being "lukewarm," one can heat up to a state of zealousness. But there's a problem with thinking that what Jesus is talking about is simply emotional passion.  The problem is that in verse 15 Jesus also praises those who are "cold."  He isn't saying the only acceptable state is "hot."  "Cold" is also good.

Eric M. Pazdziora at the Quivering Daughters blog sets this out very well in his post  Myth of the Lukewarm Christian:

[T]his is a bit confusing, given the standard interpretation. If the “hot” people are those who are “on fire” for the Lord, then the “cold” people must be… atheists? Flagrant sinners? Crooked politicians? Richard Dawkins and his merry band of infidels? Could be, but then why does Jesus say “I wish you were cold or hot” like they’re both equally good? Surely He doesn’t consider it the same to be on fire for Him and stone-cold against Him? . . .

And what does the passage actually say the state of being "lukewarm" is about?  It doesn't actually equate lukewarmness with lack of emotional passion; it equates it with believing we don't need anything, that we're spiritually just fine.  Lukewarmness in the actual Bible text is about not noticing our need for God.

Since this is so, both "hot" and "cold" must refer to differing states of noticing our need for God, both of which please Christ.  "Hot" could be a reference to the warmth of love we have when God's presence is felt, or the zeal of wanting to do something for the One who has done so much for us. "Cold," on the other hand, could refer to the need we feel in prayer, when we seek God in hunger and emptiness. Or they could mean something along the lines of what Pazdziora goes on to describe in the same blog post:

 If you’re “hot,” then . . . you’re seeing your need of Him and depending on Him to burn away your impurities and kindle your love.  If you’re “cold,” you’re apart from Him—and you feel it. . . Being “cold” is just as good as being “hot,” from a salvific standpoint, because in both cases you’re seeing your need, insufficiency, and helplessness, and coming to depend on Jesus for His grace, forgiveness, and righteousness.

The Pharisee who thanks God that he is not like other people is actually being lukewarm.  So is the one in Matthew 6:5 who prays aloud on the street corners.  To be lukewarm is to feel that you've got some sort of inside track with the Almighty; that your careful piety or public devotion have put you on velvet.  That God really should be grateful to have a devotee like you.

And when it comes right down to it, that was the attitude we were taught to have in Maranatha.  We were "God's Green Berets."  We were His special warriors, separate from common, complacent ordinary Christians, elite because of how very "on fire" we were.  If we were actually managing to feel what we were supposed to feel, we thought He was so pleased with us, that we were rich in devotion, wealthy in spiritual capital.

We didn't realize we were actually just over-stressed young people struggling with a spiritually abusive form of religion.  That our knowledge of our own devotion* had rendered us exclusionary, judgmental, and (especially when marching and singing about taking over) just plain obnoxious.  And that we were hurting not just those we found wanting, but ourselves too.

Pazdziora puts it like this:

[I]f you know about Spiritual Abuse, you recognize a few other all-too-familiar themes lurking in the subtext. 

There’s a strong temptation to elitism there—you want to be better than all those “lukewarm” folks, don’t you? Legalism’s waiting to pounce, too; it blends in perfectly as long as you define “On fire” as “Doing our things” and “Worldly” as “Not.” All that’s left is for us to spin “I will spit you out of my mouth” as “You might be eternally lost if you don’t do our thing” and we’re practically in cult territory.

 When "don't be lukewarm" is interpreted to mean "be emotionally hyped up at all times for God," the result is spiritual abuse.  Jesus never said we had to be constantly "on fire."  No one can actually live like that.  To think we can is to become self-righteous when we're feeling the "right" feelings and self-condemning whenever we're not.

The New Testament actually acknowledges that Christian people move in and out of many different emotional states.  Joy and sorrow, excitement and rest-- all are natural and expected parts of Christian life.  All that is asked of us is that we remember that He is the vine and we are the branches, and we need Him (John 15:5).  When we do that, when we let go of spiritual pride and self-righteousness and trying to drum up the right emotional state in ourselves-- that's when we stop being lukewarm.

We need to stop using "don't be lukewarm" as a cliche that means exactly the opposite of what the Bible is really talking about.  We're not doing anybody any good.

Especially not ourselves.

------------------------------------------

*I should add, in all fairness, that the devotion was often quite real-- and we were often prevented from truly feeling we were above needing God by the sheer weight and volume of the expectations placed upon us.  But self-righteous complacency still was a common result of understanding ourselves as "on fire for God."

Christian Cliches: "Lean Not on Your Own Understanding"

When I was part of Maranatha Campus Ministries back in the 1980s, "Lean not on your own understanding" was a cliche they were particularly fond of.  I remember when they were teaching us that Genesis 1:28, where God told the first male and female to "have dominion. . . over every living thing that moves on the earth," was a divine mandate meaning that today Christians are to "have dominion" in society and government, to "take over" for Jesus and make Christian principles and morality the "law of the land."  I remember shaking my head in puzzlement.  That passage doesn't say anything about human beings ruling over other human beings.  According to that passage, there weren't any other human beings back then to have dominion over! I thought.  But when I tried to express some of this to others in the group, their response was, "Lean not on your own understanding."  We were to believe what the Bible said (by which they actually meant what the leaders interpreted the Bible as saying) without question.  We were to think as we were told to think. To do otherwise was not "trusting in the Lord."  It was "leaning on our own understanding."

Another way this cliche is sometimes used is to elevate ideology over practicality; to keep people clinging to a particular "conviction" about how the Christian life is best lived, even if life itself is increasingly showing that the ideological system just doesn't work.  Vyckie Garrison, a former Quiverfull movement member, wrote about this a while back in an open letter where she commiserated with a fellow member who had tragically lost a child during a home birth:

Although we both knew full well that a big part of what makes for better outcomes in natural childbirth is when fully-informed pregnant moms are in control ~ they are listening to their bodies and trusting their instincts ~ as Christian quiverfull women, we also learned to distrust our feelings and we daily practiced dying our own selves, surrendering control, leaving the decision-making to those in rightful authority. . . Looking back, I can clearly see now how verses such as “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding”. . . set us up as women to doubt our own perceptions ~ to dismiss our fears as irrational or as the devil sowing seeds of distrust. Our deeply beloved belief system denied us an important safety net ~ that of our own feelings. When our bodies and our minds screamed out, “Something is wrong!” our faith calmed us down. . . .

Both of these meanings of "lean not on your own understanding" are spiritually abusive, cliched versions of scripture that divorce the meaning from its context, both biblical and historical. I don't think either of these things is what "lean not on your own understanding" is really about.

The words actually come from Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

This verse is part of a long set of instructions and counsel given by a father and/or mother to a son (see Proverbs 1:8).  Verses 7 and 8 of Proverbs 3 together form a poetic parallel-- a form of Hebrew writing in which two sentences say the same thing in slightly different ways:

Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear [revere] the Lord and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones.

"Do not be wise in your own eyes," then, is basically a restatement of "Lean not on your own understanding."  The word "understanding" there is the Hebrew biynah, which refers to the grasp of knowledge. To put it in today's vernacular, what is being said is, "Don't think you have all the answers."

The problem is this.  When "Trust in the Lord with all your heart" comes to actually mean "Trust in what you think the Bible is saying without considering any other interpretation," or "Trust in the doctrines taught by the leaders of your particular movement without question" -- this is the exact opposite of the Proverb's intention.  If we really stop believing we have all the answers, this should make us more willing to question what we think or have been taught to believe. It should make us more open to the evidence and realities around us.  It should increase our sensitivity to such things as gut feelings, which are a different thing than "understanding" and which may very well come from God.

Also, the Proverb says "with all your heart."  What we mean by "heart" and what it meant in Bible times are two different things.  We think "heart" is only about feelings and instincts; we use the word "mind" when we mean our thoughts and reasoning processes.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" thus is easily misinterpreted as advice to focus on our feelings towards God and to leave our reasoning out of it.  But the word translated "heart" is the Hebrew word leb, which refers to the whole inmost self: feelings, thoughts, conscience, memories, inclinations, decisions.  If our whole innermost selves are relying on God rather than on our own understanding-- whether it's our own grasp of knowledge or that of a church leader or an ideological group-- then we can listen to new input and our own reactions, learn facts and knowledge we may not have been aware of, and lean on the Holy Spirit to help us sift through it all.

I believe Paul was expressing the essential meaning of Proverbs 3:5-6 when he said, "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God." (1 Corinthians 8:1-2.)   This part of Paul's letter is about how "knowledge" about food sacrificed to idols can be destructive to others-- as any form of knowledge can when it becomes elevated into an ideology that trumps actual human needs.

"Lean not on your own understanding" was never meant to support any such ideology. It was never meant to support trusting in our own grasp of knowledge-- even our knowledge of the Bible-- over trusting in the Lord Himself.

Our faith isn't supposed to be in formulas, or in how if we push the right buttons according to our ideologies, everything will be rosy.  It's when we treat faith like that that we're actually leaning on our own understanding.  Not when we're healthily questioning, listening and learning.

So let's stop acting like we have all the answers.  That way we can grow in our understanding rather than leaning on it.

Saved by Being Right: Christianity and Dogmatism

In the Christian group I belonged to in college, we believed we had all the answers.

Other Christians might differ from us in doctrine, but we knew the truth, straight from the Bible. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it," we would say.  We even knew why everyone didn't see things the same way we did.  They were deceived.  Or they were "in compromise" with sin and were trying to justify themselves.  Or they were "lukewarm" and just didn't want to "pay the price" to really "press forward in the things of God."

I remember the time I mentioned to an older church member that I wondered about young-earth creationism.  I asked her if maybe the earth wasn't six thousand years old.  Maybe God didn't intend the "days" of Genesis 1 to be viewed as 24-hour periods?

She became very upset.  "It was evening, and it was morning, one day," was what the Bible said.  How could I possibly be questioning that?  If we were going to start changing the meaning of Bible words, who knew where it could end?  If we started to believe the wrong things, what would happen to us?

I shut up.  But I couldn't help seeing what was behind her eyes as she put me back on the straight and narrow.

Fear.

Oh, there was fear of the leadership, of course.  No one wanted the pastors to decide a demonic spirit of deception was upon any of us. They would take us into a private room where a group of the most trusted members would spend hours shouting at the demon to come out of us.  In the worst case scenario, we could be subjected to public rebuke in front of the whole congregation, or even be excommunicated.

But the fear went deeper than that.  It was in essence a fear of not believing properly-- a fear that we could find ourselves on a slippery slope towards actually falling away from Christ.

"It's very important what you believe," they told us. Whole sermons were preached on this.  We were saved by faith in Christ, and though we were supposed to enter a trusting personal relationship with Christ through that faith, what "faith" meant, ultimately, was believing the right things.  Hebrews 11:6 was constantly repeated to us:   "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

Belief is high priority in Christianity.  Even apart from the spiritually abusive, controlling segments, it's high priority.  One of the most famous things Jesus said was, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3:16, Emphasis added.)  And Paul said, "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9, Emphasis added.)

But there's a problem.  Belief, as most often understood in the modern Western world means "Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something" or "Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons." The word also has a third meaning, "The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another," but when we say, "I believe in God" or "I believe in the Resurrection of Christ," that third meaning isn't usually what we're talking about.

But Jesus and Paul spoke of belief primarily in that third sense.  Belief in something as an accepted truth was not nearly as important as trust and confidence-- not in a set of tenets, but in Christ, the Father God and the Holy Spirit.  Belief in doctrine was meant to spring out of that trust-- not the other way around.

If you ask most Christians straight out, they will usually say that they do believe it's trust in Christ that saves them.  And yet so many times, we live our lives as if the really important thing was what we mentally hold to be true-- or even simply that we hold the approved opinions.

And the problem with this, of course, is that if every thought and opinion must be the "right" one according to our religious group, we are in danger of being so right-thinking that we never actually think at all.

Theologian and Bible scholar Peter Enns, Ph.D. says:

The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that degrees, books, papers, and other marks of prestige are valued–provided you come to predetermined conclusions. . . that doctrine determines academic conclusions. 

Evangelicalism is not fundamentally an intellectual organism but an apologetic one. It did not come to be in order to inspire academic exploration but to maintain certain theological distinctives by intellectual means. These intellectual means are circumscribed by Evangelical dogma. . . As an intellectual phenomenon, the Evangelical experiment is a defensive movement.

How many times have you talked to a Christian who asserts that your disagreement with him or her is in fact a moral failing?  That your problem is lack of faithfulness to God or disrespect for the Bible? For many of us, it doesn't seem possible that someone could carefully and prayerfully examine a Bible text and end up honestly seeing it differently than we (and our minister or pastor) see it. 

Christians can come to believe that God gave us minds not for the purpose of learning and exploring the world He gifted to us, or for growing in our understanding of God, God's ways, and ourselves-- but for holding onto to our beliefs and dogmas against all comers. 

"Dogmatism" is the logical fallacy of "[p]roposing that there simply cannot be any other possible way of making sense of and engaging with an issue but the one you represent." Dogmatism is "[t]he unwillingness to even consider the opponent’s argument. . . the assertion that one’s position is so correct that one should not even examine the evidence to the contrary."

Dogmatism in Christianity, I think, comes primarily from fear.  If we believe we are saved by faith, and we define faith primarily in terms of having the right set of beliefs, then anything that challenges those beliefs must be resisted as evil.  Our thinking becomes defensive rather than inquiring, didactic rather than exploratory, closed rather than open.  We see our role as the instructors and correctors of others, rather than as listeners and learners.  

We all want in our heart of hearts to be listened to and understood.  But dogmatism strips us of our ability to listen and understand.  We become fundamentally unable to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

In the end, all we have is spiritual pride.  

And the Bible actually warns us against this.  Paul said in 1 Corinthians 8:1-2, "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God."  And Jesus said to the Pharisees in John 9:41, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."

We aren't meant to believe we have all the answers, or to believe that's even possible.  We're meant to walk humbly with God, to not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to (Romans 12:3).  We aren't supposed to be one another's mental police, but one another's servants. 

To my readers who are Christians:  if "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6)," we don't need to be afraid. We can be free to explore, to examine, to seek greater understanding in all things.  Having a difference of opinion is not a slippery slope to heresy. Questioning is not a slippery slope to apostasy.  

Questioning is a way of appreciating the complexity of the universe God placed us in.  And allowing others to think differently is a way of appreciating our own complexity as human beings. 

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18.  It's time to let go of fear of not being right.

Because we're not saved by being right.  We're saved by trusting in Christ.

Why I Can't Go to Christian Conferences

Canadian author and Christian blogger Sarah Bessey wrote on her blog this week a piece called In Which I Have All the Feelings About Conferences.  Here are some of the things she said:

Conferences are the new church planting phenomenon: everyone wants to do it. Everyone thinks theirs is different. Everyone thinks they’ll be the real voice of Jesus or the one to reach their generation. We’ve got a niche for you! conferences for everyone! you get a conference! and you get a conference! and you get a conference! but part of me doesn’t like conferences – not as a model, not as an experience, let alone as a method for real and lasting change. 

****
The real transformations of my life didn’t come about at a conference or on a mountain top; the real transformations in my spirit and my character and my life were born and tended and raised in the daily mundane habits and faithfulness of my life.

***
I see conferences as entertainment and mass commodification of the Gospel. Some of them smell like a machine, like a big hairy complex business to me, and so I am suspicious. Probably it’s in my nature to be suspicious, after all I’m a Gen-Xer and a western Canadian. I guess my bullshit detector is set at a bit too high of a setting. I am wary of Group Think and emotional manipulation and spiritual manipulation because I’ve experienced – and committed the sin of – them all. We know how these things work once we’ve been on the inside, it isn’t rocket science. I have seen behind the curtain. What’s the line between hope and hubris? 

***
But here’s the rub: I still like conferences. 

I do. 

I love the big hairy worship events. I can shout down a preacher for preaching good. I love to take careful notes and cry at the altar and dance in the aisles. I love the bonding experiences of conferences, the friendships I make, the networking connections. I love it. I get it.

 ***

I worry that conferences are fracturing the Body of Christ. That they are making us go from experience to experience, stadium to stadium, round table to panel, think tank to gathering, instead of burrowing down into our real lives. 

I worry that they isolate us from our communities because we have these big gigantic teachings that blow our minds and set our hairs on fire, but we have no one to actually live it out with and so we end up feeling like failures or like “no one gets it” and we vacillate between failure and pride. 

***
The average conference ticket costs between $100-500 but factor in airfare, hotels, food, and you’re looking at nearly $2,000 sometimes.

Now we’re down to the brass tacks: I don’t go to conferences because I cannot afford to go to conferences.

I’m baffled at the sheer number of people who go to conferences, seemingly endless Jesus camps with meet-ups for old friends, and I think who are you people? There must be a lot of money in the world. I guess these things aren’t for people like me. By their nature, they are exclusive, and we’re there because we’re people of privilege.

I get all of this. Everything she said resonates with me-- the love and the suspicion and the worry and the bafflement. I used to feel all these things when I went to conferences. But when I viewed her post, and now as I sit down to write this, tears are gathering at the back of my throat and I'm much more upset than I thought I was going to be. But I'm still going to talk about this because I need to say it. And maybe, maybe it will heal some old sore spots that it turns out are still much sorer and more painful than I thought they would be after all this time.

I can't go to Christian conferences anymore.

I haven't gone to a conference since I was in my twenties-- and I'm turning 50 in a month. Every year my sweet friend who is the leader of the women's ministries in my church sends out a mass invitation to the Jubilee Women's Conference. It's a local conference that costs just $35 and is held right in my own church's sanctuary-- so it really isn't exclusive or just for people of privilege, and somehow I doubt if it's a big complex business machine full of emotional and spiritual manipulation. The webpage for the conference doesn't even mention any glitzy worship band or high-powered team of speakers-- just a local author sharing from her book. This conference seems to avoid all or most of the things that made "Christian conference" into such a negative thing in my mind and heart.

And yet I still can't bring myself to go.

When I was in Maranatha Campus Ministries in my college years and after, every year there was MWLC - the "Maranatha World Leadership Conference." Held in a large city-- usually Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas-- it gathered together all of the members of Maranatha from churches all over the United States and Canada, as well as many from Australia and other church plants overseas. It constituted three days of famous speakers, world-class worship bands, dance teams, light and sound and glory. There were individual classes in the daytime and stadium events in the evening, and people who had moved across the country to start new Maranatha churches would reconnect with their old friends and get a chance to hear Bob Weiner and Joe Smith in person.

Attendance was mandatory.

That's right-- mandatory. Most church members were either in college or married with young children, and yet we were all required to "step out in faith" to raise the money to attend. We were supposed to ask our parents, our aunts and uncles, or our (hopefully) rich grandparents; we were supposed to contact local businessmen and request donations; to participate in car washes, bake sales and other fund-raising events.

It was hard.

What was especially hard that first year is that the young church I attended was brand-new in the city of Eugene, Oregon, and was finding it hard going just to pay for the huge house we were renting (formerly a fraternity house), even with most of us living in the house and paying rent. The car washes and bake sales that were supposed to help members pay for the conference were actually going towards house utilities. And it was 1982, right in the middle of a terrible recession that kept many of us from finding summer jobs.

I tried everything. My parents wouldn't help pay for it and wanted me to find a job. And I tried; I really did, but without success. We were new to the area and I didn't know any businessmen I could ask. I remember in desperation trying to sell my old flute to at least be able to pay the registration fee. The most anyone would offer me was $35, and I needed $100. I was near despair. Most of the other church members had found some way to attend, but I was getting nowhere.

At last the church leaders told me they were giving me permission to miss the conference. They knew my heart was in the right place, they told me, because I had done all I could to try to go, but maybe for some reason it wasn't God's will for me that year.

I knew what they were thinking, though. The problem was my faith. I didn't have enough faith to move mountains, and so God could not or would not bless me. Maybe, I thought in my heart of hearts, God just isn't pleased with me. Maybe God doesn't think I'm a good enough disciple.

So I watched tearfully as everyone else went to the airport, and I stayed behind.

The rejection I'd faced from prospective employers all summer was intensified by what felt like God's abandonment, as I missed what everyone later told me was a fantastic time in the Holy Spirit, a life-changing encounter with God and destiny.

The next year I did manage to get a summer job. My parents had wanted me to put the money I earned towards my living expenses that summer, so they could have a break from supporting me (they paid my way through all four years of college, bless them!), but when they saw how desperately I wanted to go to MWLC, they said I could use the money for that. Excitedly I contacted a travel agent and bought plane tickets, sent in the check for my registration, and when the time came, boarded the plane with my friends and pastors.

And I had a good time. Really, I did.

But. . . .

Well, there was the speaker who used his one-hour slot to give the entire stadium a tongue-lashing about our lax spirituality and our selfishness.

Then there were the intense, hyped-up testimonies about the mission field and how important it was that everyone go on at least one short-term mission during their lifetime-- no exceptions. We were all told to bow our heads in prayer, then take out a card and write down on it what nation we felt God calling us to.

I felt like God was saying, "The United States."

All I could feel was intense gratitude that we weren't required to put our names on the cards and turn them in.

It is true that when the lights were playing over the stadium and the music was rushing, and everyone was shouting and dancing and crying and praying, I felt the presence of God very strongly. I will never forget the emotional and spiritual high.

But then when it was over, it all felt sort of fake and hollow. Was that God's presence I had felt, or merely the frenzy we'd all been whipped into by the speakers and the band?

I think now that it was probably both. I know what God's presence feels like when I'm not emotionally hyped up at all, and I'm sure it's real. But the hype and emotionalism actually made it seem less real.

But the worst thing was the feeling that somehow we weren't just adoring God, but the keynote speakers and the Maranatha leaders and the worship-team stars. It was a celebrity event, and I was sure those people up there were spiritually above the rest of us down in the seats. They were on a higher plane where God's favor and blessing rested on them in ways I would never experience.

Deep down I resented them for being closer to God than I could ever hope to be.

And I felt guilty for it.

The conference came to an end, and we all went home, and somehow the grand and glorious things we knew we would do when we got home, never quite materialized. Our hyped-up faith that can move mountains returned to the normal, gritty faith that finds a way to do the chores, attend the prayer meetings and hand out flyers for the next local meeting while trying to complete two 20-page lit papers and study for three midterms.

There was another conference the next year. And the one after that. And I managed to go to one of them, but the next year I had just graduated from college and needed to get a job, and that was the year the Eugene Maranatha church merged with the Maranatha church in the next town, and somehow no one was requiring us to step out in faith to go that year.

I think, all in all, I went to three MWLC's. The leaders eventually stopped holding them every year, and then finally the entire ministry dissolved, and the local churches were left on their own to sink or swim. Ours swam, but it became a kinder, gentler fellowship, and in the end my family and I left it without acrimony on either side, and we joined the kind, gentle church we attend now.

Where, every year, I get invited to a local women's conference that I can't bring myself to attend.

Too much baggage. Even the thought of paying a registration fee I know I can afford, brings back the old feelings of being coerced and not measuring up.

Even the thought of spending a couple of days with a group of women I enjoy, listening to a calm speaker and (probably) the regular church music group, brings back old feelings of confusion and resentment and guilt, and of being asked to give out of myself beyond what felt comfortable or even safe.

I guess what it boils down to is that those old conferences equate in my mind with a vast array of personal boundary violations that I can't even quite articulate.

So I'm staying home. And I'm writing this, about my love-hate relationship with Christian conferences, which is about confused love and guilty hate, from a past I still have not managed to lay to rest. I think writing this actually has helped a little. . .

I'm glad that people today go to conferences and are blessed by them. I really am.

But until further notice, count me out.

The "Jezebel Spirit" Teaching: Priming Churches for Spiritual Abuse

It's a story my husband Jeff likes to tell from before we were married.

We were both members of a coercive Christian group of "charismatic" persuasion-- meaning that the group believed in supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Like most charismatic groups, our church believed that Christians and churches could be harassed by, or even come under the power of, demonic spirits. We believed God had called us to "rebuke" such spirits in the name of Jesus and drive them out of our lives and the lives of others.

One evening Jeff was sitting in the living room of the apartment he shared with his roommate (I'll call him Mike). Mike's best friend (let's say his name was Dave) was visiting, as he often did.  The evening news came on.

Dave stared for a minute at the female news anchor, who was speaking in an assertive, confident voice.  He raised his hand in a karate-chop motion and shook it at the screen.  "I rebuke that Jezebel spirit in the name of Jesus!" he said.  Mike nodded agreement.

My future husband stopped himself from rolling his eyes.  "Why are you doing that?" he asked.

"Look at her!" Dave said.  "She's controlling and bossy.  She thinks she can take over a man's role.  She's got a Jezebel spirit!"

Jeff sighed, but didn't try to argue. There wasn't really any point.  Mike and Dave's ideas were right in line with our church's teachings.  Jeff's disagreement would only be looked at askance.  But even then he didn't see that simply doing a news anchor's job while female indicated the presence of a "Jezebel spirit."

Jeff and I left the charismatic movement when we left our Maranatha Campus Ministries church, some years after we were married.  I have nothing against the charismatic movement in general; I think their emphasis on real-life experience of the divine is a valuable and needed part of Christianity as a whole.  But even some charismatics have problems with belief in the existence of a "Jezebel spirit." As my online friend and respected colleague "TL" at SpoudazO Logos says,

It is unfortunate that there are those who have added to Scripture to claim that an evil woman of the Old Testament is now a female demon going about influencing mostly women to be like her in Christian churches. There is no biblical ‘spirit of jezebel’. What there is, is a real woman who lived and died. . . Her spirit does not roam the earth in the form of a demon and influence people.

Unfortunately, as far as online charismatic voices are concerned, TL is definitely in the minority. Googling "Jezebel Spirit" yields multiple websites dedicated to describing the supposed Jezebel spirit and giving points on how to fight it. There are also a number of books specifically about the Jezebel spirit: Iowa pastor Francis Frangipane wrote one simply named The Jezebel Spirit in 2001. Author John Paul Jackson put out a similar title in 2002. Florida minister named Jonas Clark has a website containing several pages devoted to stopping this evil spirit-- he even offers a CD learning course which will cost you $150 to break free from being Jezebel's eunuch. I even found a sales guide listing 10 or 20 titles on defeating this supposed "controlling" spirit and its corollary, the "passive" Ahab spirit.

There is even a website dedicated to information about this spirit: jezebelspirit.net.  To be fair, they may not subscribe to the idea that the Jezebel spirit is actually the same being as the woman Jezebel who was married to Ahab, king of Israel, as described in 1 Kings 16 through 2 Kings 9.  The way I understood the "spirit of Jezebel" when I was in Maranatha was that this was an evil spirit that possessed both Queen Jezebel and another woman called by the same name in Revelation 2:20-23, and which still influences women to manipulate, seduce and control men.

But what I found later, in the years when I went back to everything I had been taught as a Christian and searched the Bible in a reassessment of my beliefs, was that there is actually no biblical support for believing in a "Jezebel spirit" at all-- whether as the spirit of a woman in history which has become a female demon, or as a demonic spirit which possessed that woman and is still active today.  Neither the 1st - 2nd Kings stories, or the Revelation passage, say anything whatsoever about a demonic spirit.  Rather, the Kings passages describe the real activities of a real woman, and the Revelation passage uses the symbolic name "Jezebel" to refer to a woman whom the writer considered to be committing similar sins to those of the original Jezebel.

Charismatics are taught to test everything -- every experience, every teaching, every doctrine-- against the Scriptures, which are the check and balance to keep their emphasis on the supernatural and on spiritual experience from leading them away from orthodoxy.  I remember how carefully this was pressed on us when I was in Maranatha.  But the teaching on the spirit of Jezebel turned out to be only one of many areas where I found, on re-examination, that the Bible actually didn't say anything like what I'd been taught in Maranatha.

So why am I bringing this up now?

Because it appears to me that the teachings about the Jezebel spirit are continuing to escalate even past the beliefs I once had about it, to the point where Charisma News columnist Jennifer Leclaire says there is a "spiritual warfare culture" where this spirit has "rock star status" (Leclaire actually believes in these spirits herself, though she is one of the voices cautioning common sense and restraint.) This faithsite.com article considers the Jezebel spirit to be the primary spirit that attacks churches and church leaders in an attempt to control and take over, while a lesser "Absalom spirit" acts as a sort of chief lieutenant.

The spirit of Jezebel is called "a spirit of witchcraft."  This is fitting because this entire set of spiritual warfare teachings is teetering on the edge of a witch hunt.

And, as most witch hunts do, it is primed to target primarily women.

Looking more closely at the faithsite.com article linked above, here is how the Jezebel spirit is defined:

Jezebel is not just a principality or power. It is a stronghold of the second highest classification of demons listed in Ephesians Chapter 6. It is a “ruler of the darkness of this world” holed up in a strong and unbroken woman. . . Jezebel exists to undermine the authority and anointing of the man of God. 

No scriptural authority is given for the existence of the Jezebel spirit or for linking it with the "principalities and powers" described in Ephesians 6.  But though the article gives the following caveats:

All strong females are NOT Jezebels . . . All of the above is NOT to say that women should not be in positions of authority and influence in the local church. Priscilla is always mentioned alongside her husband Aquilla in the New Testament and appears to be the primary pastoral figure between the two,

it goes on to say:

Jezebel is a woman with issues in her heart concerning male authority. She has probably been wounded by a male authority figure(s) in her past, and hasn’t allowed God to heal those inner wounds. A Jezebel is often a woman who has great disrespect for her father, either because he abused her, ignored her, or because he spoiled her by never confronting her immaturities as a child, and who let her run over him. Regardless of the why, she has nursed a deep disrespect for manhood inside her heart. . .

Sometimes a Jezebel is a Jezebel because, by default, she had no example but her mother… who was a Jezebel herself… in the home.  Men ought to wear the pants in their marriages. Some have a quieter personality than the wife, but they should still assert themselves enough to clearly demarcate who is the head of the family unit. . .

A foolish woman will just take over the husband’s role because she senses he is unsure of himself and she has the stronger personality. But this is unscriptural!

This is very much in line with standard charismatic doctrine, which (unlike in most other evangelical groups) allows women to have authority in the church, but which (as in most other evangelical groups) maintains that the man has "headship" over the wife in the marriage and the home.  But notice what has happened here.  Though women are granted leadership positions in the church, if a woman is perceived in any way as "having issues concerning male authority," the next logical step is to conclude that she has a Jezebel spirit "holed up inside her."  It may be that it is not she who has issues with a man or men in authority in the church, but the male authority who has issues with her.  No matter. By default, suspicion rests on the woman, while any issues that the man or men might have are easily overlooked.

It may be that problems in this hypothetical woman's marriage are due to an overbearing husband who disrespects and belittles her, and she feels the need to resist him.  No matter.  If she has "a problem with male authority" or asserts herself so that she is perceived as not letting him "wear the pants," she is suspected of having a Jezebel spirit.  And this is where the demarcation of this supposed evil spirit as "a stronghold of the second highest classification" becomes deadly.  Here is how the church is advised to deal with a Jezebel spirit:

There can be no détente with Jezebel.
Jezebel has to be dealt with.
Jezebel does not have it within herself to change.
Jezebel will strike again.
Jezebel must be run off.
[Emphasis added.]

Once a group of church leaders decides a woman has a Jezebel spirit, there is no appeal.  There is no argument.  And there is no mercy.

Many of these websites do say that it's possible for a man also to have a Jezebel spirit.  This, of course, simply subjects men to the same Catch-22 situation that church women may find themselves in.  But the deck is already stacked for women to be far more easily and frequently colored with the Jezebel spirit brush (sadly apropos, I suppose, since the woman Jezebel in the Bible is known for "painting her face!").  A man who challenges authority may simply be considered forceful.  A woman who does so is much more likely to be viewed as under the influence or possession of a demon of Satan's first echelon.

This is even more clear when viewing the Jezebelspirit.net website.  On its Introduction page it equates the Jezebel spirit with what psychologists call "narcissistic personality disorder":

The worldly term for the spirit of Jezebel is ‘malignant narcissism’ for which there is no cure. Some traits of narcissism include: excessive self-love; firm conviction that he or she is better, smarter, or more talented than other people; becomes irritated when other people don’t automatically do what he or she wants them to do; thinks most criticisms of him or her are motivated by jealousy; regards anything short of worship to be rejection; often complains of being mistreated or misunderstood; has fantasies of doing something great or being famous, and often expects to be treated as if these fantasies had already come true.

On this page the same basic idea is reiterated:

Those who are "infected" with the Jezebel Spirit are evil, and practice evil. Their character traits are well described and categorized in the secular world who classify these people as Narcissists or Psychopaths for whom there is no healing treatment or cure. [Emphasis in original]

Based on this, the website then warns:

When it comes to Jezebel, you can forget about praying for her to come to truth and repentance. You will be wasting your precious time. Also, you must never sympathize with her. You must be 100% against her, and stop having hopes for her recovery and well-being! She is not your sister or brother in the Lord. She is living in the strength of demonic soul power, absolutely sold out to doing evil, and completely out of the will of God and obedience to God. She is her own master, and ultimately she serves Satan. Yes, you are dealing with a human being behind the Jezebel spirit, but don’t be weak. This is a pure spiritual battle. You might ask: “Isn’t she just a poor deceived person herself?” Yes, she is deceived, but don’t you also be deceived to have any weakness for this person. If you love the person, cut soul ties immediately, and surrender her completely to God, for Him to determine her destiny. Remember again the book of Revelation where God gives her time to repent, but she refuses to do so. Do not try to save her, or you will go down with her. You need to alienate yourself completely, and have no patience and tolerance for her actions.

All these seemingly controversial points for a typical Christian mindset need to be dealt with before you are ready to fight Jezebel. Anything less than these attitudes will cause you to doubt, and fall prey to her. [Emphasis in original] 

Though there is truth in the idea that a person with narcissistic personality disorder cannot be trusted, and that churches should be aware of this disorder, recognize the traits and warning signs, and not let such a person destroy their congregations, the equation of this disorder with the Jezebel spirit is dangerous.  Narcissistic personality disorder is in fact quite rare.  False identification of church members as having this disorder and then shunning them as pure evil, is a real possibility.  This is particularly true since readers are encouraged to see the influence of the Jezebel spirit everywhere:

The Spirit of Jezebel is a dominating factor over the entire earth today. Jezebel hovers over the Television and Film Industry, causing most TV shows to portray a demonic, twisted, and perverted outlook on life. It cleverly teaches people to strive for material wealth, monetary success, and anything that has to do with instant gratification. . . The Jezebel Spirit is found in the church. Spirits like jealously, controlling submit-to-me pastoring, greed, possessive leadership, erroneous doctrine, focus on outward appearance, and self-promoting ambition all derive from the Spirit of Jezebel. . . The Spirit of Jezebel manifests in politics through narcissistic leadership, officials who love power and choose to steer a nation away from God through immoral legislation. The media is full of corruption, greed, desire for power, hunger for approval and attention, lies and deception, overindulgence, and money-hunger.

And then, even though none of these things are exclusive or even primarily found in women-- even though recognized medical websites like the Mayo Clinic state that narcissistic personality disorder affects more men than women, Jezebelspirit.net equates the Jezebel spirit almost exclusively with women:

The reason we believe the Jezebel spirit only pertains to women is because of the fact that men have been given natural authority from God, it’s not something they would need to fight to get, they already have it! Women, on the other hand, have not been given that same authority, and they would need tools to try to take that position of leadership that the man has. This is where the Jezebel spirit comes in. A demon will come to a woman presenting different tools she can use to regain power over the man. These tools are, among many others: manipulation, control, domination and seduction. For a wounded or scorned woman, these tools come as a temptation she cannot resist, and she grabs them, and starts using them. This is the moment she opens the door to become possessed by the demonic spirit that promises to provide her with everything she needs to accomplish her goal. She may or may not even be aware of what a devastating spirit she has just welcomed into her life. . .

At the other hand, when a man seems to be using some of the same tools as the Jezebel woman does, it is usually not a Jezebel spirit, but a power hungry spirit that comes from being an extremely wounded individual who has most likely been abused in one way or another, and need to control and manipulate his circumstances out of fear of being hurt again.

It is interesting how the website equates "controlling, submit-to-me pastorship" with the Jezebel spirit-- even though even in charismatic churches which allow women some church leadership, the pastorate is still overwhelmingly male! -- and then says that a man who acts like this probably has only a "power hungry spirit" that comes from being hurt and abused (the name seems to indicate that this is a spirit much lower on the totem pole and thus less dangerous than the Jezebel one).  The stage is set for men in the church to be treated with far more sympathy and less fear, even if the men are controlling or manipulative.

The website also uses the threat of the Jezebel spirit to keep women in a subordinate place within marriage:

One of the saddest things is the Jezebel Spirit's influence in Christian and non-Christian marriages, and the lack of understanding and effective arrest of these issues when they appear. . . Even if the woman possessed by the Jezebel Spirit is married, it will never be a marriage where she will acknowledge her God-given role in the marriage. She will have an attitude of wanting to be equal to the man in all matters — even try to prove to be a better leader than the husband. 

One of the main purposes of this evil spirit of Jezebel is to have the wives in the marriage take over the spiritual headship from their husbands, teaching and controlling them, and in doing so, reversing God’s order for marriage. Unless the husband fights his wife for supremacy, he will ultimately end up assuming the second place in the marriage.

Thus a marriage in which the man and woman desire to share authority equally is turned into a demonically influenced marriage controlled by the spirit of Jezebel.

So what we have here, in terms of spiritual abuse, is the makings of a perfect storm.

Here are some of Jezebelspirit.net's primary identifying marks of a person under the Jezebel spirit:

- Believes [themselves] to be right. Wants to win. Will argue till you drop.
- Has a blame/guilt mindset: Everything comes down to who is right and who is wrong.
- Is unwilling to compromise on priorities: Everything has to go the way they have planned it.
- Is strongly defensive when approached for criticism and correction, even guidance.

When ordinary human traits such as defensiveness under accusation become markers of demonic activity, it becomes impossible for an ordinary church member to deny she has one of these spirits, as denial would be perceived as one of the demon's tactics.  Accusation and conviction can easily become the same thing. And the worst thing is that it becomes easy to declare that simple disagreement that there is such a thing as a Jezebel spirit, is actually evidence of being under the influence of the Jezebel spirit.  This makes it impossible to engage in any sort of rational conversation about the factuality or even the scripturality of these claims.

Even when my husband and I were young charismatic Christians, the criteria for identifying a Jezebel spirit were vague and self-contradictory.  This is why a young man in Maranatha, years ago, could blithely decide that a woman he saw on television was possessed by a Jezebel spirit, simply because she sat at a desk where he was used to seeing a man sit, and spoke in a way he was used to hearing a man speak.

But now things have progressed even beyond that.  And it's far too late to nip this teaching in the bud; it came to full flower with the advent of the Internet and is now spreading its pollen on the wind.

My fellow Christians, my charismatic brothers and sisters, please: this sort of thing has to stop.  For the sake of innocent Christian women who sit beside you in church, combat this teaching!  Examine the passages in 1st and 2nd Kings and Revelation for yourselves, and search for any indication that they are talking about an evil spirit ranking first in Satan's army.  Examine the spiritual warfare passages such as Ephesians 6, and see if they give any warning of a Jezebel spirit, or of any spirit to beware of in one of the sexes over the other.

You won't find it.

It's extremely likely that even now, Christian women who do not have narcissistic personality disorder are being accused of having this spirit and are being disciplined or shunned by their churches, with no possibility of self-defense, simply because they have strong personalities or serious goals outside the home. A tendency to bossiness is sometimes a weakness of the stronger personality types, and though it's a flaw in both sexes, it should not be mistaken for demonic influence when exhibited by a woman.

This is not what the family of God should be involved in. Ephesians 3:10 says that the wisdom of God made known through the church is "manifold" -- meaning multi-faceted, varied and diverse. Christians, male and female alike, have a variety of personality types, gifts and talents.  Let's celebrate them and not be afraid of them just because they don't fit gender stereotypes.

We can be careful of the possibility of mental disorders within our midst without setting ourselves up for witch hunts.