It's All About Jesus-- Isn't It?

When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  Paul the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 2:1-2.

Paul preached and taught that Christianity is all about Jesus.  And Jesus's teachings are centered around the "kingdom of God" with Himself as its inauguration.  When Jesus first came preaching the gospel at the beginning of Mark, He said, “The time has come, [and] the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Mark 1:14-15. 

"The time has come" was shorthand in Israel for "The Messiah has arrived."  Jesus was saying that He was the Messiah, and because He had arrived, the kingdom ruled by God, rather than men, was near us, right here on earth.  This was the good news that people were to believe.  In Luke 4:14-19 He proclaimed in the synagogue that the verses about God's anointed coming with good news for the poor, healing for the blind and freedom for the oppressed, were fulfilled right then and there.

As N. T. Wright puts it in Simply Jesus:

Jesus behaves from the start both with the sovereign authority of one who knows himself charged with the responsibility to inaugurate God's kingdom and with the recognition that this task will only be completed through his suffering and death.   [Emphasis in original.]

And in the next chapter he says that after the Resurrection:

A new power is let loose in the world, the power to remake what was broken, to heal what was diseased, to restore what was lost. . . Jesus's risen person-- body, mind, heart and soul-- is the prototype of the new creation. . . The thing about the new creation is that it simply overflows with the power of love. . . [t]his love is strong, powerful, life-changing, life directing.  New creation has begun; and its motivating power is love.  [Emphasis in original.]

In Christian churches everywhere this weekend, the death and resurrection of Christ will be celebrated, because Christ is the center of Christianity. 

Isn't He?

Why does it seem so often like Christ is only the center of Christianity on Easter weekend?

Certainly if you asked average people on the street what Christianity was, what Christians were all about, "A bunch of people following Christ" would probably not be what they would say.  They'd be more likely to talk about stopping gays from marrying and women from having abortions, fighting for prayer and against evolution in the schools, and trying to keep crosses, manger scenes and copies of the Ten Commandments on display in public places.

Most people have no quarrel with Jesus-- in fact, they rather admire Him.  But a large number of people have real problems with the way we Christians talk and act.  And maybe it's because Jesus really doesn't seem to be at the heart of our religion at all.

The old creation lives by pride and retribution: I stand up for myself, and if someone gets in my way I try to get even.  We've been there, done that, and got the scars to prove it.  Now there is a completely different way to live, a way of love and reconciliation and healing and hope.  It's a way . . . that is as unthinkable to most human beings and societies as-- well, as resurrection itself.  That's the point.  Welcome to Jesus's new world.  N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus.

I think Dr. Wright is right (no pun intended) that the way Jesus lived, the way He taught us to live, is "unthinkable to most human beings and societies."  Maybe that's why we're so bad at living it.  Maybe that's why it seems so much easier to fight culture wars.  Maybe that's why it's easier to think of ourselves as "Bible-believing Christians" than "Jesus-following Christians."  The Bible is concrete: a book we can hold in our hands.  We can look inside its pages for instructions on how we and everyone else are supposed to behave and think, and we can try to enforce that in our world.

But Jesus said to the Pharisees, "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." John 5:39.

The Bible was meant to point us to Jesus.  We Christians often act as if we think it's the other way around.

And we turn the New Testament-- a set of books made up of narratives, prophecies, explanations to Gentiles of what "the time is come and the kingdom of God is near" means in their own mindset, and letters of encouragement and advice to young churches, into a book of rules and new law.  And then we try to get our governments to enforce it.

I want to dedicate my Easter this year to returning to Jesus as the center of my faith.  I want to learn once again to follow Him, and no merely human agenda-- not even that of a church or churches in my country.

I want to recognize that trying to impose my morality on others from the government down (instead of trying to love them and come underneath them to lift them up, to meet their spiritual and physical needs), isn't what Jesus was talking about when He said "Follow Me."  I want to understand that it's not about just living my life as usual, either-- just going to work and coming home and cooking dinner and watching TV.  I don't know exactly how He wants me to do as He did-- I don't know exactly what that is going to look like in my life-- but I want to do what that beautiful song by Gene MacLellan from the early 1970s said:

Put your hand in the hand of the man

Who stilled the water . . .

Put your hand in the hand of the man

Who calmed the sea . . .

Take a look at yourself,

And you can look at others differently,

By puttin’ your hand in the hand of the man

From Galilee!

This Easter I want to fall in love all over again with the One who said "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom."  Luke 12:32.  The One who said, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." John 3:17.

Fellow Christians, I'm coming to realize that before we can change the world, our own world has got to change.  We have to abide in the Vine first, for apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:4).  And if we do change the world, what we change it into needs to look a lot more like Him and a lot less like us.  And we need to do it according to His way of doing things, not ours.

And to my readers who aren't Christians-- I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that what you've been feeling from us has had so very little to do with what Jesus came to bring.

Maybe lately it hasn't been all about Jesus, for a lot of us.

But maybe it can be.

For I believe He is Risen.  He is Risen indeed.

Thoughts on 25 Years of Marriage

This weekend my husband and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  I don't necessarily think that makes us experts on marriage, but I did have a few thoughts, for whatever they're worth.

I think the best way to start a marriage is with friendship.  The best way to keep a marriage strong is with friendship.

Respect is part of love, and both partners need it.  Put-downs and personal attacks have always been off-limits in our marriage.

Passion in a long-term marriage is more like banked coals than like a bonfire.  It glows just as hot deep down, but isn't as showy on the surface.  The way we've kept the fires banked so they never go out, is to never stop flirting.

We tried gender roles.  Then we climbed out of the boxes and tried just being ourselves and supporting one another in being who we are.  That worked much better.

Believing the best of one another helps us be our best to one another.

Trying to see through one another's eyes really helps.  So does really listening.

In case of conflict, a little humility goes a long way.

When in doubt, try 1 Corinthians 13.


That's all I've got this week.  We're leaving today to spend a weekend on the coast!

Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week: My Contribution

This coming week Wine and Marble, Joy in this Journey and Shaney Irene will be hosting a Spiritual Abuse Awareness synchroblog.  Many bloggers will be posting one blog a day for several days, describing their own experiences of spiritual abuse, how it has affected them, and what they wish they could tell others.  I am a once-a-week blogger, so I've decided to just do one post in which I give shorter answers to each of the three sets of questions to be addressed. 

As I shared in my post Don't Talk About It:

In Ephesians 5:1-13 Paul . . . says in verse 11-13:

"And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that is visible is light." . . . 

[I]n the light is where the enabling stops. In the light is where the perpetrator must face himself and his deeds. In the light is where the victim can see that the shame is not hers to bear. . .

[So] do talk about it. Stop sweeping it under the carpet. The stories must be told.

I'm happy that so many people are being encouraged to tell their stories.  And I'm going to tell a little more of mine.  So here are the questions set forth on the synchroblog, followed by my answers. 

What is your story? Share your experience — showing the details without going into specifics about places or people involved. What made the environment spiritually abusive? Was it language, unspoken social codes, beliefs, assumptions, expectations? How did these factors enable the abuse? How did you eventually leave, and why?

When I started college in the early 1980s, it was in a new state and a new town.  I had lived all my life till then in a little town in Colorado, but my parents and I moved to Oregon for my father to start a  new job there, and I moved into the dorms in a town about an hour's drive away from them.  For the first time in my life I was completely alone.  I remember the loneliness I felt as I walked for the first time into the dorm dining room to see not one face I recognized.

I had been a Christian for a couple of years and quickly began looking for a church.  The one I found was a campus ministry that had established churches in college towns all over the United States.  The people there welcomed me with so much warmth and enthusiasm that I immediately felt at home there.  I know they were sincere-- but what I didn't know was that they had been taught to treat newcomers this way; it was a technique I later learned is called "love bombing"-- but the rank-and-file members of the group, I still believe, were as ignorant as I was that this was a cult recruitment technique and were simply doing as they were told out of a sincere desire to follow Christ.  In any event, my loneliness made me especially vulnerable, and I soon joined.

It was only after I was committed to the group that the coercion and control began.  We were required to attend each and every meeting of the church, including long weeks of outreach meetings where services were held every evening.  Many students' school work suffered; I managed to keep my grades up by having no activities whatsoever outside of classes and church.  We had to have the church leaders' permission to go home to visit our families, and permission was not given during outreach weeks.  We were also required to go out before meetings and pass out flyers on the sidewalks to draw people into the services.  In fact, we had to get permission for anything outside church, school and jobs; I remember being forbidden to go see a free showing of the Disney movie Fantasia, because it was "demonic."  The Star Wars series was also forbidden;  I had seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before I joined the church, but it would be years before I got to find out how the series ended with Return of the Jedi!

The church leaders never actually said, "We forbid you to go to these movies."  It was subtler than that. "I believe seeing this movie would be bad for your spiritual health and your walk with Christ, and He has given me watch over your soul according to Hebrews 13:17, which also tells you to submit to my authority."  That was the message.  Anyone who disobeyed an elder was privately rebuked, and sometimes became subject to a session of "casting out of demons" where all the elders gathered to pray for hours over the disobedient one and cast out the "spirit of rebellion" and (if she was female) the "Jezebel spirit."

If you persisted in going against the leadership, you would be publicly rebuked in front of the entire congregation, which would be called to a special meeting for this purpose.  If this didn't bring you back in line, excommunication resulted.  People who were excommunicated, or who left on their own, were considered either apostate or covenant-breakers, and remaining members were expected to ostracize them under threat of excommunication themselves.

Control was enabled through a hierarchy called "shepherding," where longer-term members were appointed as "disciplers" of younger members.  Disciplers and disciples were expected to meet together at least once a week, when the disciple's life that week would be reviewed in excruciating detail, followed by prayer and Bible study.  Most of us who eventually became disciplers ourselves were at least a little embarrassed by this and never did as detailed a job as was actually expected; I know that I didn't.  But I tried to do what was expected of me, and I remember being confused at the feelings of hidden resentment and avoidance I received from some of my disciples, a few of whom later left and were considered my failures.

These are just examples of many controlling techniques used by the leadership hierarchy to keep members in line.  I have shared about some of the others in posts like this one  and this.

The story of my group is unusual because eventually the campus ministry organization voluntarily dissolved.  Many of the pastors of individual churches banded together and forced the resignation of the founders and the dissolution of the ministry in 1989.  Local churches like the one I (and now my husband) still attended were left to either dissolve or become independent, non-denominational congregations.  My local church did the latter, and my husband and I continued to attend there until 1999, when we left because of fears that a new central organization was arising to bring the former member-churches back under its sway.  Our local church was no longer controlling, however, and we left amicably and with the respect of the then-leadership.

As far as I know, the central organization that did reorganize the remaining churches is not controlling or cultic in nature (friends who remain in the church seem happy and healthy), but once we joined a new church (chosen above all for its openness and the humble, non-controlling stance of the leadership), we were happy not to return, for reasons set forth in my answers to this next set of questions:

How has your experience affected you? What has it done to you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, etc.? What has your journey been like? How have you gotten where you are today? Do you feel you’ve healed? What do you still struggle with?

I suffered less than many who leave cultic groups because of the voluntary disbanding of the group.  I was never a victim of excommunication, and I was never shunned by friends who stayed.  Still, I find I have a kind of shuddering disgust at the mere thought of certain common church activities like church conferences (mandatory regional and national conferences were another method of group control that I'll share about in more detail someday) or prayer meetings.  Even the thought of attending events like this triggers old feelings of distress, resentment and helplessness.  To this day certain words such as "total commitment" or "sold out for Christ" give me soul-deep, knee-jerk reactions of nausea and repulsion.  I have no desire to return to the old church because of these memories and the possible reactions that returning would trigger, even though I don't believe my former church is spiritually abusive today.

The turning point of my journey was when I decided (I think it was around 1995) to take everything I had been taught to believe by the old group, lay it on the table, and jettison whatever didn't line up with my experience of God's love, my understanding of the Bible, and/or simple factual knowledge and reasoning.  This journey continues to this day, as I continue to explore and learn more in each of these three areas and to allow new understanding to change my thinking.  I've found, though (especially on the Internet), that even questioning certain evangelical/fundamentalist doctrines now puts me on the outside of what many who seem to consider themselves gatekeepers believe to be acceptable Christian belief-- and this is true even though I continue to hold to the Nicene Creed and other longstanding definitions of orthodoxy.

I don't believe the question "Do you feel you've healed?" can be answered with a simple yes or no.  Healing is a process that I've come a long way in, but I probably will never be completely "over it" once and for all.  Nor do I feel I should seek to be.  The Resurrected Christ still keeps the wounds in His hands and side, which tells me that our wounds are part of who we are and remain valuable to God.  As long as my old, continually healing wounds keep me sensitive to the sufferings of others, and help me hold my current doctrines and beliefs lightly and with humility and willingness to be persuaded to change should I find them harmful to myself or others, then these scars are worth keeping.

Why should those who haven’t been hurt care about this issue? What do you wish you could tell those who want to help but weren’t close enough to know or see your situation? What do you wish every pastor knew before starting ministry? What would make the church a safe space for you?

The shepherding/discipleship movement didn't die when my group disbanded.  Although the term "shepherding" is no longer used, and though some of the original founders of the movement have renounced these spiritually abusive teachings, they are still alive and well today, most notably in Sovereign Grace Ministries, which is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit alleging abuses directly related to shepherding-style hierarchical control.

Involvement in spiritually abusive religion can happen to anyone.  I would say to most evangelical Christians that at least one person they know probably has been, or is now, under the influence of one of these groups.  Many evangelicals and their pastors are involved in, or being strongly influenced by, current incarnations of spiritually abusive religion.  If you do know or suspect that a friend or loved one is in one of these movements, the best thing to do is stay in their lives.  Don't let them drive you away, but-- and this is equally important-- don't confront them directly.  Instead, ask them gentle, non-confrontational questions about what they share with you.  "Do you think this is the way Jesus taught His disciples to act as leaders?" or "Is this how brothers and sisters in Christ should treat one another?" could be good questions, but if they respond defensively, back off.  If you can just start them thinking, without thinking of you as an enemy who is trying to make them break their "covenant" with their church or its leaders, you may be able to be there for them if they do decide they want out.

Church is a safe place when questioning is welcomed and dissent is allowed, where leaders don't seek or allow themselves to be treated as stars or celebrities, and where each person's walk with Christ is considered to be his or her own business.  I wish and hope pastors starting ministries are being alerted to the catchwords and pet teachings of spiritually abusive movements, and I think classes on the warning signs of spiritual abuse should be taught in Bible schools and seminaries.  Pastors especially should be aware that some of the most well-known and vocal religious leaders today are influenced by and/or propagating spiritually abusive doctrines and practices, and to carefully weigh and test everything, holding tightly only to what is good, just as Paul advises in 1 Thessalonians 5:21.

It is for freedom that Christ set us free.  As Christians, we should be combating spiritual slavery, not living under it or promoting it.  We have the opportunity of being Abolitionists, denouncing spiritual slave-holding wherever we find it.  Many of us may also have the chance to be a spiritual underground railroad for those seeking to escape.

If I and the other bloggers this coming week can influence others to become spiritual Abolitionists, it will help bring a sense of meaning and resolution to all we went through.  I for one am grateful to the synchroblog organizers for this opportunity. 

A Walk in the Wetlands

A great egret has been visiting the wetlands where my husband and I walk every day.

As we walk along the boardwalk that loops through the standing water, we see him from a distance, a splash of white against the dark shrubbery behind him.  He stands in the water, neck curved, watching for tiny green frogs among the drowned grasses.  Or he stalks, head swaying back with each long-legged step forward.

Breathless, we pass the binoculars back and forth between us, standing at the closest point to him that the boardwalk will allow, hoping he won't fly away.  But we gasp with the beauty of it when he does-- when the huge wings open, curving in a great arc as he scoops air beneath them.  As he rises. As he flies.

He is gone, and we walk on, speaking of him in hushed voices, hoping that when we come back again tomorrow, he will have come back too.

Gerard Manley Hopkins said it best:


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil,
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

As the sun disappears behind the foothills of the mountains, spreading a glory of pink and gold over the darkening sky behind it, we walk among the cattail stalks, listening to the marsh wren chirring just out of sight.  

In the willows above, red-winged blackbirds call to one another, their bright shoulder-patches ruffling up with every call.   There are so many that they sound like a concert of reed flutes.  They dive from the trees to sway atop the cattails, then flutter up again to perch in the branches.  "Poke your neigh-bor!' my son used to tell us they were saying.  He has grown too old now for such imaginings, but the blackbirds' song does not change.

Mallard ducks are flying in to roost in the cattail beds for the night.  Their short wings make a whistling sound as they beat at the air, losing altitude gradually as they circle.  Below in the shallow water, ducks that have already found resting places quack sleepily, or flap their wings in indignation when the newcomers land too close.

Later we pass through a wooded area where the water merely pools among the trees.  We remember the time a sudden knocking sound made us raise our heads, and a pileated woodpecker eyed us from the trunk above, crest burning bright over a white-striped face.

We never know exactly what we will see in the wetlands.  Pacific tree frogs shout from the puddles, and Oregon red-spotted garter snakes sun themselves on the boards, disappearing with a flick of their black tails when walking humans approach too near.  In the spring and fall, woolly-bear caterpillars trundle along the wooden rails, always seeming to have somewhere very important they need to be.

We notice gnaw-marks on the trunk of a tree and wonder if the beaver we saw last year is back.  In the dusk we would see its wet brown back slicing the water, and once or twice even heard the "smack!" as the flat tail struck the surface.  And though we haven't glimpsed it in some time, still the trees carry "beaver bites," as we overheard a very small human visitor call them once. 

The wetlands.

This is the place where the tension and frazzle of the day drop away from us.  The place where life has been lived just as it is, for centuries before humans ever built houses or drove cars or collected taxes.  This is where it all drops into perspective, where none of the things that worry me are important; where, as Hopkins wrote,

nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. . . 

Here in the wetlands, the presence of God is palpable.  Here in the wetlands, I find that the things that so concern humanity are only passing, temporary things. Here, the seasons and the cycles change always, but nothing ever changes at all.

Here I can breathe.

Here I can think.

And here is where I like to come alone sometimes, to worship.

I just wanted to share it with you today-- with anyone who comes and wants to walk that boardwalk with me in their thoughts.

I hope you enjoyed it.

"But That's What the Bible Says"

I have written extensively on this blog about why "But the Bible clearly says" isn't necessarily a very good defense for certain traditionalist positions.  I've written a lot of posts that analyze certain texts which are supposedly "clear," but which maybe weren't intended by the original writers (or understood by the original audiences) to mean what seems so "clear" to us today.

This isn't one of those posts.  Today I just want to write a few things from my heart.

I came across another Internet discussion this week that was all too familiar.  A Christian writer said some general things about why having women in all areas of church leadership was a good idea.  He talked about how women's perspectives, women's voices, are part of the myriad wisdom of God, and how the church is unbalanced when the only voices it listens to on Sunday mornings are male ones.    How women's leadership might be the key to societal and world-wide healing and change in areas that most affect women, such as sex trafficking and spousal abuse. How Paul praised women leaders in his epistles and valued their labors for the gospel.

And as is so often the case, the responses of women who thanked the writer for empowering them were nearly overwhelmed by the voices, both male and female, insisting that this was all against God's clear commands in the Bible that amount to "Women can't and must not."

Women can't.

Women must not.

Exactly how much, and in what ways, women are to be restricted is never agreed upon by these voices.  It's a song where some sing verses that say, "Complete silence.  Keep her head covered and don't let her even pray or read scripture aloud."  And others sing verses that say, "No, she can speak and even teach, as long as she only teaches children or other women."  And others sing, "Just keep her from saying anything while standing behind the pulpit.  Let her speak from the floor, not the podium."

But on the chorus they all join in.  They don't agree on how much, they don't agree on where or when or which-- but "Restrict her!  Keep her under male authority!" they sing in unison.

And the reason is always the same.  "We have to uphold what the Bible clearly says, no matter what."

But what does it actually mean, that a woman must be restricted, under male authority?  Why must she be?

"Because she's more easily deceived," some say.  "Because Adam was created first, woman second-- and therefore he was created to lead and she to follow," say others.  And others simply say, "Neither of these, but it doesn't matter.  Who are we to question God?"

But if God designed things from the beginning of creation so that woman must be restricted, kept under male authority, then one of two things is going on.

Either women are not equal to men, because God created them with a certain lack of authority over themselves, or ability to lead others, that men do not lack.  And this lack is intrinsic to womanhood, while any lack a particular man may have in the area of leadership, is simply an individual characteristic, not intrinsic to his manhood.  This makes women, in their essence as women, inferior to men.

Or women are equal to men, but God simply decided that women, because they are women, despite lacking nothing that He gave men for authority over themselves or leadership of others, may not use that authority or leadership.  In other words, they are to be under male authority even though God did not design them or create them to be suited for being under male authority.  This makes God, in His essence, arbitrary and unjust.  He makes rules without good reasons.

But those who restrict women today don't generally ask why.  They don't think about what it means, that women should be restricted.  They don't believe women are inferior, and they don't believe God is arbitrary.  "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it," is enough for them.

And this is the sad thing.  That we'd rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal but yet somehow lesser-- or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but that God is still just-- than to believe it's possible we're misreading our Bibles.

We'd rather restrict women and have the Bible be "clear" than admit that we just might be wrong.

Certainty is more important than female humanity.

Because here's the thing.  To consider women lesser is harmful to women.  It exposes them to ways of being treated that are only appropriate for inferiors.  It leaves them perpetually in a state of dependence from which they can never escape.  In a very real sense, it renders them less human than men.

But to restrict women even though they are not lesser, is to restrict them without good reason.  And this, too, is harmful to women.  It says, "It doesn't matter how skilled or gifted you are.  It doesn't matter if you'd be better at this task than 99% of all the men in your church.  You are forbidden anyway."  And this leaves women in a perpetual state of living with injustice and arbitrary, senseless rules.

Jesus said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  He said, "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free."  And He said, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."  And these words, most will agree, represent the overarching message of the New Covenant.

Surely, if a text pulled from the Bible to support a certain doctrine, results in something contradictory to these truths, there is something wrong with the way we're reading that proof-text?

Even if it seems completely "clear"?

How much of a "truth" can it be if it does to a woman what a man would not wish done to him?  If it puts her in bondage rather than setting her free?  Or if it makes the Father look totally unlike the Jesus who championed the woman caught in adultery, who spoke as an equal to the Samaritan woman at the well, who told Martha that her sister's choice to join the men in training for discipleship was a better thing than women's traditional labors?  The Jesus who, resurrected, appeared first to women and sent them to preach to the men?

In Matthew 23:23 Jesus found fault with a myopic view of the Bible that focuses on "tithing mint, dill and cumin" but neglects "justice, mercy and faith."  It's true that Jesus didn't tell the teachers of the law to stop tithing-- but what might He have said if tithing, as practiced, were actually against justice, mercy or faith?  Should the practice of a "clear" passage of scripture result in active violation of justice or mercy?

Surely not.

And yet isn't this what "Women can't, women must not" actually does?

This is why sometimes I want to cry when groups of commenters on the Internet rush to uphold "the Bible," when what they're really upholding is, "what the Bible looks to me like it's saying, and I know I can't be wrong."

I want to cry because it's easier to say, "women can't, women must not" than "maybe we've missed it."

I know that those who believe the Bible restricts women usually don't think about it this way.  In their minds, it's God's will, and if it's God's will, it must be good.  I know it's hard to question what looks like clear scripture.  And I know there's pressure from other Christians not to question, so as not to come under suspicion of not being "one of us."

And I know some women don't mind being restricted.  I know some women are happy to be under male authority and to live with "I can't; I must not."  But I can't help wondering if they'd be even happier if they ever came to truly believe they could follow Jesus and love God without these requirements.  That they are free to let men lead if and when that works for them (and for the men), but there is no law telling them this is the only way.

But the way I see it, there's something wrong with the way we look at the Bible, when we read a small set of texts in ways that jar with its overarching truths.  There's something wrong with holding the nature or treatment of women, or the character of God, hostage to a verse.

There's something wrong with righteously standing on obedience to the Bible while treating fellow human beings less than righteously.

And there's something wrong with clinging to the confidence that we're so very right in doing wrong.

Boys Playing with Dolls! Oh No!

The Center for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood  (CBMW) has come out this week against an episode on Sesame Street called Baby Bear's Baby Doll.  The episode summary reads as follows:

Baby Bear and Curly Bear are playing with dolls, and Telly comes by with his bulldozer. But Baby Bear's embarrassed to be playing with dolls, so he tells Telly that the doll is Curly's.

Playing with a bulldozer, action figures, and a ball all get too rough for Baby Bear, with his doll around and all. Finally, Baby Bear slips and says that the doll is his. Then he runs off, embarrassed.

Gordon explains there's no reason things have to be just for girls or just for boys, and playing with dolls is great practice for Baby Bear when he becomes a daddy. And just as Baby Bear is about to tell Telly the whole truth…he finds Telly playing with the doll!

(For a more detailed synopsis, see Muppet Wikia.com.)


CBMW sees something insidious in this.  As they put it:

This episode, “Baby Bear’s Baby Doll,” is subtly but directly overturning long-held conceptions of manhood and boyhood. Boys can play with dolls; there’s no reason they can’t do exactly what girls do.

The boundaries between the sexes are fluid. Behind this teaching is of course the view that there really aren’t what we call “gender roles” given us as a fact of our existence. Gender is a construct, to use academic language; it’s the differentiated vision of boys and girls our society has historically bought into, but there’s nothing fixed or unchanging behind it. We’re free in this modern and enlightened age to blur the boundaries, and to raise boys and girls in essentially the same ways, without specific training of any kind for distinct manhood or womanhood.

You can’t make this stuff up. We’re seeing our culture undo itself at the very foundations. [Emphasis added.]

"Undo itself at the very foundations"?  Really?  Is making sure boys do "boy" things and girls do "girl" things part of the essential framework of society?  And is playing with dolls really only a "girl" thing?  CBMW thinks so. According to the article:

I’m not encouraging you to spaz about “Baby Bear’s Baby Doll.” I don’t think the world is ending as a result of this episode. I actually think that this show is silly, and worth laughing at, because the God-encoded truth about sexuality and gender is obvious, and boys playing with dolls is foolish.

In other words, the Sesame Street episode in and of itself is not the problem, but encouraging little boys who want to play with dolls that this is ok, is teaching them foolishness and dangerously "blurring the boundaries."  Our society, according to CBMW, is trying hard to do this, but ultimately it won't work because it's hard-wired into boys not to do "girl" things.

 CBMW does have a point that boys and girls are different.  Atlantic.com's article "You Can Give a Boy a Doll but You Can't Make Him Play With It" points out:

[B]oys and girls, on average, do not have identical interests, propensities, or needs. Twenty years ago, Hasbro, a major American toy manufacturing company, tested a playhouse it hoped to market to both boys and girls. It soon emerged that girls and boys did not interact with the structure in the same way. The girls dressed the dolls, kissed them, and played house. The boys catapulted the toy baby carriage from the roof. A Hasbro manager came up with a novel explanation: "Boys and girls are different."

They are different, and nothing short of radical and sustained behavior modification could significantly change their elemental play preferences. . . . The female preference for nurturing play and the male propensity for rough-and-tumble hold cross-culturally.

But in spite of this, it does seem that boys, especially very young boys, do like to play with baby dolls, and in a very nurturing way.  My own son, when he was two and three years old, would put a doll on his shoulders and carry it just as his own daddy carried him.  That my experience with him is not uncommon is testified to by moms and preschool teachers on Baby Center:

"As a pre-school teacher I can tell you boys play with dolls. Their parents may not know but they do when they are given free choice of playthings in a school/daycare setting."

"My son is almost two and has cuddled every stuffed animal in this house. He was always nurturing them and loving on them, so I decided to get him a cabbage patch kid that kind of resembled him. It is a male doll and he knows that is his "baby". He will ask for "Baby" when he has left him in another room. He will push his baby around the house in a stroller, wrap it in a baby blanket, and even put him to bed."

"I grew up with five older brothers and every one of them had a doll to play with at one time or another. As they get older their "doll" becomes an "action figure" and they use them to play cowboys or astronaut or soldier."

And of course, this last brings out another issue.  Even older boys in America have actually been playing with dolls for centuries.  There were tin soldiers as long ago as the eighteenth century.  There have been action figures since the late 1950s.  In the mid-1960s Johnny West and Jane West and a host of other male and female dolls were designed for brothers and sisters to be able to play with together. And of course the 1970s saw a surge in comic book and movie figures of all kinds. 

And though boys and girls are different in the way they play with these figures, the Atlantic.com article also points out the similarities:

Nearly 30 years ago, Vivian Gussin Paley, a beloved kindergarten teacher at the Chicago Laboratory Schools and winner of a MacArthur "genius" award, published a classic book on children's play entitled Boys & Girls: Superheroes in the Doll Corner. Paley wondered if girls are missing out by not partaking in boys' superhero play, but her observations of the "doll corner" allayed her doubts. Girls, she learned, are interested in their own kind of domination. Boys' imaginative play involves a lot of conflict and imaginary violence; girls' play, on the other hand, seems to be much gentler and more peaceful. But as Paley looked more carefully, she noticed that the girls' fantasies were just as exciting and intense as the boys—though different. There were full of conflict, pesky characters and imaginary power struggles. "Mothers and princesses are as powerful as any superheroes the boys can devise."

This dovetails with my own memories of childhood play.  Our Barbie dolls didn't just go shopping and try on clothes; they drove around in their Malibu van and had adventures.  And we played with many other kinds of human figures, too.  In fact, if one were to focus on the similarities between boys' and girls' imaginative play, rather than always looking at the differences, I think it would be found that boys and girls have a lot in common. 

In any event, I doubt if CBMW has any problem with action figures, even though there was some anxiety about them being appropriate for boys in earlier decades. (I have heard from quite a number of older guys that when they were growing up, their fathers wouldn't let them play with the new action figures such as GI Joe, because they were dolls.  Here's an example that someone posted on an Internet forum).  But hardly anyone today minds boys playing with dolls, as long as they are "action figures."  

So maybe the problem CBMW is having is when little boys care for and nurture baby dolls.  Maybe boys shouldn't play-act infant and child care because unlike girls, boys are never going to grow up to take care of infants of their own.

Oh.  Wait a minute. . . 

Given CMBW's foundational stance that men should aspire to be fathers in order to reflect the very nature of God, it's odd that this group would be so against the idea of little boys playing daddy. What gender confusion, exactly, is supposed to be going on here?   Is it that CBMW doesn't believe boys should play-act in imitation of their daddies?  Or is it that CBMW doesn't believe daddies should hold their babies, diaper them, feed them, put them to bed?  Given its endorsement of a book on manliness that includes these skills as part of fatherhood:

Highlighting skills ranging from treating snake bites to changing diapers, the book argues that “manliness doesn’t need to be reinvented. The art of manliness just needs to be rediscovered”

[Emphasis added.]

-- it appears that this is not the case. 

In short, given CMBW's position that boys should learn to be good fathers, this insistence that permitting boys to play with dolls is part of the culture undoing itself at the very foundations, is self-contradictory even within their own mindset.

And then there's the fact that nowhere in the Bible is any of this actually addressed.  As Marg at a trackback on her New Life blog states:

[CBMW] emphasizes the difference between Adam and Eve when, according to Scripture, the first man actually emphasized the similarities, “The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23.)

Everyone knows that men and women have some differences, but men and women share many more things in common.

There is actually nothing about play-care for a baby doll that contradicts what CBMW itself calls "specific training . . .for distinct manhood."  Except, of course, that traditionally in Western culture, infant care has been denigrated as "women's work," and thus beneath men-- and thus, traditionally, playing with dolls has been considered training for future mommies only, and never for future daddies.  CBMW has said it is against the denigration of women's traditional roles as being inferior to those of men-- but by insisting that a boy caring for a doll as a mother (and traditionally, not a father) cares for an infant is destructive to society, they are in fact supporting that whole mindset. 

What was it Jesus said about teaching instead of God's word, the traditions of men?  (Mark 7:7.)  Would Jesus tell men they shouldn't diaper and feed and comfort their infant sons and daughters-- He who said "Suffer the little children to come to Me"?  He who gave us the example of washing His disciples' feet?   Would He call it "unmanly" for a man to take care of a child's needs?  And if He wouldn't-- would He object to a little child, boy or girl, playacting at the same? 

Let me put my position in a nutshell.  I don't agree with CBMW on gender roles.  I'm an egalitarian.  I think God put daddies and mommies together in charge of their children, to help them grow into full adults.  Grown daddies don't get to be more adult than grown mommies through perpetual authority over the mommies and the kids together.  But as an egalitarian (despite what complementarians claim), I don't think mommies and daddies, boys and girls, are exactly the same, or that the differences shouldn't be celebrated.  However, it does mean I think we need to combat the mentality that a boy playing with a doll is somehow destructive to himself or society.

CMBW believes that the Sesame Street episode was silly.  But I think what's silly is believing that the foundations of society are going to crumble if we tell a little boy it's ok to put his baby-doll daughter to bed. 

Don't Blame Beauty and the Beast

I've read about this in several places on the Internet-- that the well-known fairy-tale story "Beauty and the Beast" is nothing more than a justification for women to stay with abusive men.  As the blogger on Not Language But a Map puts it in her narrative about being shown the Disney film version by a college professor:

She laid it out for us fairly neatly, because—and again, I say this as someone who loves this film—the movie Beauty and the Beast is a fairly cut-and-dried abuse-apologist narrative. It is quite literally a movie about a woman who takes a ~wild beast~ and tames him with her love. It is a movie that says, “Here is a man who is literally a beast, and here is a woman who shows him love despite that! And lo, her love changes him. Her love makes him better. Her love saves him. Her love—quite literally—transforms him from the dangerous and abusive personality he is at the beginning of the film into someone else entirely.” In short, it is a movie that says, “If you love your abuser enough, they’ll stop being abusive. You just need to love them more. It’s your job to love them, to fix them, to change them.” Which is, of course, a terrible and dangerous and very pervasive lie.

There was, naturally, backlash from the room. We’d all loved this movie since we were children, and none of us wanted to see it the way she was showing it to us. None of us wanted to have to acknowledge what she was saying, both because it made something we loved feel less worthy of loving and because it made us feel shitty for not having recognized it ourselves. Eventually, one girl raised her hand and said, “Okay, I see what you’re saying, but come on. We’re all adults here; it’s not like anybody is watching this and taking it seriously, or thinking that, like, the Beast is a good boyfriend model or whatever! I mean, for god’s sake, it’s a kid’s movie.”

My professor rounded on her heel, pointed a finger at the girl, and said, “Exactly.” Just like that, the room went silent.

The same idea is repeated in The Normalization of Partner Violence in Beauty and the Beast:

This clip brings to light the normalization and romanticization of partner abuse in Beauty and the Beast. As scholars in the documentary argue, the film teaches girls that a woman should be patient and supportive of her abusive partner in order to help him change his behavior (i.e., transform into a prince). Such messages are harmful when, in reality, women and girls should be encouraged to leave abusive relationships and seek help if their partner is mean, violent, and coercive. After screening the clip, instructors might ask some of the following questions: What are the types of partner abuse we see in this clip? How does Disney sugarcoat the Beast’s abuse as “just a short temper?” How might these messages about the normalization and romanticization of partner abuse be dangerous to children? The clip is a great segue into a broader discussion of how femininity is represented in Disney films. What desirable feminine qualities are associated with princesses (e.g., beauty, helplessness, passivity, etc)?

I can see the point they are making, but I think some of the assumptions they are taking for granted ought to be examined more closely.  Is this really essentially a story about a woman who redeems an abuser with her love?  Is it really a message to the abused that they should put up with abuse? For one thing, the Disney version was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, which I think is a pretty good indication that there might be some fairly deep, important themes going on in it.  And of course there is also the original fairy tale, which originally arose out of the oral folktale tradition and has been retold in many incarnations.  One of my favorite fantasy authors, Robin McKinley, has written two novels which are direct retellings of this story, and many others which are inspired by it.  As she puts it:

I’ve read every version of B&B I can lay hands on, but my Beauty and the Beast is a part of me, like an arm or a leg. Or like the ground a rose-bush is planted in: I can’t do without it, it nourishes me. I used to say—truthfully—that I was jealous of readers who ‘went’ to BEAUTY as an escape from boring ordinary life, because by writing the story I’d exorcised the BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in my head. It grew back. Then I wrote ROSE DAUGHTER. This time there wasn’t any nonsense about exorcism. My Beauty and the Beast is still in the back of my mind or the bottom of my heart, full of roses and romance. If I’m very, very, very, very, very lucky I may get to write it a third time. Or a sixth or a sixtieth. Most of my stories are more or less versions of Beauty and the Beast. In the afterword to ROSE I say that someone has declared that each author has only one story, it’s how they retell it. Yes. Mine is Beauty and the Beast.

[Emphases in original.]

Ms. McKinley obviously feels that there is something very special about this tale, just as a tale.  I have always felt so, too-- and though I can see the concern about the Beast's behavior in the movie, and I think it's a very valid concern, I would hate to see this story censored point-blank from our culture or forbidden to our children.  Maybe there are good reasons why people love this movie and this fairy tale.  Maybe there are reasons why kids love it-- and not just because they're too innocent to see the "real" message. 

Beauty and the Beast, in its essence, is a story against prejudice.  It's a story about looking past the surface of things and seeing the value underneath. And it would be such a pity if people could not apply that very principle to the story itself, and could not look past the apparent justification of domestic violence which is on the surface, to the message which is deeper, and which is the reason, I think, why this story has always resonated so with its audiences.  

Laura Beres of the University of Toronto takes a more nuanced approach to the domestic violence issue in her 1999 paper Beauty and the Beast: the Romanticization of Abuse in Popular Culture.  She does say:

[I]n [stories such as] Beauty and the Beast, the hero is initially controlling and distant, if not blatantly abusive, and has been hurt in his past by a woman, or women, which has contributed to his distant and unloving manner. By being loved by the heroine, he can heal from his past experiences and become the perfect partner for her.

but she also adds :

I think I have been clear, but want to reiterate before examining texts that I am considering the possible meanings which could be taken from these texts by women who are attempting to make sense of their context of living with an abusive partner. I am not assuming that anyone else would take these same meanings.

Perhaps one of the reasons many people tend not to see normalization of domestic violence as a message of the fairy tale or movie unless someone points it out to them, is because this is essentially, fundamentally, not what this story is about.  I think it is a potentially dangerous inference which it is possible to see-- and that, particularly for women and children who have lived with domestic violence as if it were a normal occurrence, this inference ought to be pointed out as not a healthy message to take from the story.  But to see it as the message of this story, and to jettison the story accordingly, could mean missing out on some very positive impacts that the story is capable of imparting.

Here's a portion of one version of the original fairy tale, in which the Beast gives Beauty's father hospitality but turns on him for stealing a rose from the garden, sparing his life in return for Beauty being brought to his castle:

In the beginning, Beauty was frightened of the Beast, and shuddered at the sight of it. Then she found that, in spite of the monster's awful head, her horror of it was gradually fading as time went by. She had one of the finest rooms in the Castle, and sat for hours, embroidering in front of the fire. And the Beast would sit, for hours on end, only a short distance away, silently gazing at her. Then it started to say a few kind words, till in the end, Beauty was amazed to discover that she was actually enjoying its conversation. The days passed, and Beauty and the Beast became good friends. . .

"If you swear that you will return here in seven days time, I'll let you go and visit your father!" Beauty threw herself at the Beast's feet in delight. . .

Beauty was happy at last. However, she had failed to notice that seven days had gone by.

Then one night she woke from a terrible nightmare. She had dreamt that the Beast was dying and calling for her, twisting in agony.

"Come back! Come back to me!" it was pleading. The solem [sic] promise she had made drove her to leave home immediately.

"Hurry! Hurry, good horse!" she said, whipping her steed onwards towards the castle, afraid that she might arrive too late. She rushed up the stairs, calling, but there was no reply. Her heart in her mouth, Beauty ran into the garden and there crouched the Beast, its eyes shut, as though dead. Beauty threw herself at it and hugged it tightly.

"Don't die! Don't die! I'll marry you . . ." At these words, a miracle took place. The Beast's ugly snout turned magically into the face of a handsome young man.

"How I've been longing for this moment!" he said. "I was suffering in silence, and couldn't tell my frightful secret. An evil witch turned me into a monster and only the love of a maiden willing to accept me as I was, could transform me back into my real self. My dearest! I'll be so happy if you'll marry me . . ."

According to the SurLaLune Fairy Tales website, this story is related to the Greek "Cupid and Psyche" myth and to other tales where a young woman who is forced to marry does not recognize the true nature of her husband.  The original idea behind these tales may have been to encourage girls who entered arranged marriages with older men to look beyond appearances and learn to appreciate their husbands for who they were.  This, of course, is hardly an ideal for marriage, and it is a very good thing that women are free today to choose their own partners.  But one thing that seems to be in common in most of these original stories is that the Beast is uniformly gentle with Beauty; that he never offers her violence or abuse either verbally or physically, except to require her to stay with him (which he then relents of).  The idea is not that by choosing to love a vicious creature, Beauty changes him to a gentle one.  Rather, by being willing to see him as gentle and kind as he really is despite his outward appearance, Beauty releases the Beast to become outwardly as beautiful as he has been inwardly all along.  Thus the story is about overcoming prejudice and looking past the surface to see the real human being beneath.

Robin McKinley's versions focus on this aspect, with the twist that both her Beauty characters and her Beast characters need to learn to appreciate the other.  What she calls "my Beauty and the Beast" is thus about how two beings (and sometimes, by implication, two societies) who are strange to one another, learn to see past their differences.

It's true that the Disney version changes the original tale quite a bit.  But I think seeing it as a story where a woman chooses to love an abuser and thus turns him around, misses the points the Disney authors were trying to make.  That they did succeed at some level in making these points is testified to by the Academy Award nomination.  There are actually some very important and valuable themes of this movie which I think audiences picked up on, while they tended to miss the whole "normalization of domestic violence" dynamic.

First-- and it's somewhat ironic that those who wish to champion women seem to miss this-- the Disney story actually begins with a woman pronouncing judgment, and the story is all about the unfolding repercussions of the enchantress's curse.  Isn't it a distortion of the story to ignore that first female catalyst character? The woman at the beginning of the story is the archetypical "wise woman" of the fairy tale tradition. Her judgment is wise and sound, and it is the reason for the whole rest of the plot.

The Beast is cursed. This is extremely important, and if this element is not understood as a crucial part of the story, the message of the story becomes disrupted.  The point is that the Beast is a beast. Literally, a beast-- and he has been turned into a beast as part of a judgment for his sins.  I believe it's very important not to let our modern, rationalistic mindset blind us to the central role that the supernatural plays in this tale.  In a very real sense, the original fairy tale was not about the Beast-- it was about Beauty, and what she learns about the difference between outward perception and the inner nature.  But the Disney version begins by focusing not on Beauty, but on the Beast-- and thus adds a whole new element to the the tale of overcoming prejudice.  In Disney's hands it becomes a tale of judgment, repentance and redemption.

The magic element in this story is the spell of judgment performed by the enchantress at the beginning. She sees that the young man is a beast and turns him into what he really is, in order for him to eventually see himself for who he is, which is necessary for him to take responsibility. If you take the magic element out of this story, it turns into something else-- and that something else is normalization of domestic violence. Putting it in purely human, natural terms means the story is no longer "Beauty and the Beast." It's "Beauty and the abusive man." And as "Beauty and the abusive man" it doesn't and cannot work-- because the essential theme of supernatural judgment, repentance and redemption are lost.

This theme is brought out even more clearly by the addition of Gaston to the movie version.  There was no Gaston-type character in the original fairy tale at all.  But he is there in the Disney version as a foil for the Beast, to help make the point about what the Beast is really all about.  Gaston is everything the Beast is not.  He is outwardly handsome, while the Beast is outwardly ugly.  He is confident and superficially (if arrogantly) charming-- while the Beast is surly and, let's face it, bestial.  And it is Gaston who shows us that the Beast is not actually the real abuser in this version.

The fact is that both the Beast and Gaston act abusively towards Belle.  The Beast imprisons her in a castle, roars at her and attempts to deny her food.  But Gaston stalks her, refuses to accept her plain "no" as a "no," and finally attempts to marry her against her will.  The Beast acts as he does towards Belle because the animal nature has taken him over. Gaston has no such excuse.

Belle, by her presence, shows the Beast what it is to be human again.  I think it's also important to note that Belle does not actually accept the Beast's abusive treatment of her.  She locks herself in her room at first,  and then flees.  When he rescues her, she tells him straight out that he should not have treated her that way.  She does not begin to accept him until he begins to show signs of becoming acceptable.  No woman should ever put up with such treatment from a man. But the Beast is not a man.  He has, through the wise woman's curse, become a beast-- and as a beast, the rules regarding him are different. He needs to see Belle's reaction to his beastly behavior, in order to see himself as the beast he is.  He needs to watch Belle be human, to learn what it means to be human.

In the end, the Beast shows that he has indeed learned how to be human, by turning away from killing Gaston even though it means his own death. Gaston, secure in his supposed humanity, learns nothing, and by his beastly behavior shows that he is spiritually the real beast.

I really can't see the Beast as an abuser who gets redeemed by a true woman's love-- because it's not her love that redeems him. It's his. The Beast redeems himself through learning how to love, arising out of self-awareness, acknowledgment of responsibility, and repentance.  He thus becomes inwardly a person once more: a person who can love and be loved-- and this is what breaks the curse and makes him outwardly the prince that he has finally truly become. 

Anyway, I think children watching the movie, because they still believe in magic, tend to "get" this more easily than adults.  Unless children are raised in violent homes, they really don't need to be told "it's not ok in real life for a man to treat a woman like this." They already know-- but they can't articulate it, so it's easy for experts to come along years later and explain what's wrong with the story that they never saw before. But maybe it's not that they didn't see it because no one told them. Maybe they didn't see it because that really wasn't what the story was about.

I'm not saying we should ignore the potential problem of what this movie could impart, particularly to those already in abusive situations, about domestic violence.  But I am saying that we should see the positive messages that this story-- in both its Disney and fairy-tale versions--- really does have to tell. We should combat the normalization of partner abuse wherever the temptation to see it as normal arises.  But I don't think the real message of this story, in either incarnation, is that domestic violence should be seen as normal or as something women should accept in the hope of changing the abuser.

We live in a world where women do receive messages that they should ignore their own needs, and even their own safety, and just be sweet.  We live in a world where women receive messages that abusers really don't mean it and should be lived with anyway.  We live in a world where abusers blame the abused and claim that they wouldn't act abusive if they were treated better.  And sometimes these messages get transmitted through popular stories, movies and memes.

And all of this stinks.  And it's wrong.  And it ought to be stopped.

But I don't think it's fair to blame Beauty and the Beast.  That's really not what the story, in its essence, is about.