Women in the Church

Bikinis, Sepulchres & Bathing Machines

Hey lovelies, I started this post several days ago and since then the brilliant and talented Rachel Held Evans has chimed in with a fabulous post on this very topic titled: Modesty: I Don’t Think it Means What You Think it Means. You should read it too even though I am going to quote it a couple times. 🙂

Bikini Girls from a Mosaic found at Villa Romana del Casale a 4th century Italian villa.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:20-23, ESV)

Putting on regulations that look and sound good because they make us feel like we are safe from ourselves DO NOT WORK. They are of no value when it comes to stopping the indulgence of the flesh. You want to know why lovelies? Because keeping the “rules” doesn’t change your heart. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, that is just a whited sepulchre: Pretty and clean but full of death.

Summer is upon us kiddos and you know what that has meant (at least in my Facebook feed)? A plethora of articles from my well meaning Christian friends that tell me what I can and cannot wear at the beach or even in my own swimming pool if I am going to claim to be a proper Christian lady. Bikinis are taboo my friends and not just for me but also for my 10 year old daughter if I don’t want her to grow up to be some sort of floozie. The logic goes, men are visual creatures, they can’t help themselves. They are unable, you see, to overcome their biology. They are weak and they need me to cover up so they won’t think about having sex with me and in so doing commit adultery in their heart.  So if indeed I am a kind and loving person I will help them out by wearing a one piece. Oh wait but not any one piece, that can’t be too revealing either. Perhaps a cover up over it. But why stop there? Bathing suits are form fitting. Maybe they should be looser. Maybe I should just wear board shorts and a t-shirt. But wait, not if the shorts are too short.  Maybe we should go back to some of the old suits or even bathing machines? Where does it end? Where is the line between too sexy and just sexy enough? Because the same folks who tell me there are rules about me wearing a bikini also tell me there are rules about not “letting myself go” and making sure I am still sexy enough for my husband. Sigh. It is exhausting.

Side note: I have friends who say, just ask any man he can tell you where the line is. Well, I’ve got news for you lovelies, every man has a different line.

Several of the articles I have read quote a Princeton study that says,

“Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up.”

Men were also more likely to associate images of sexualized women with first-person action verbs such as “I push, I grasp, I handle,” said lead researcher Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University.

[You don’t want to be seen as a mere tool to be used do you? is the question that comes next. But wait we will get to that later.]

Tamara Smith-Dyer (Full-time data analyst at the University of Pennsylvania and Cabrini sociology professor) asserts that the sample in this study is very biased. “Including 21 undergraduate males from Princeton does not provide a representative sample of the population. For example, the age is limited. Race and socioeconomic status will be skewed in this sample as well.”

“The sample size, 21, is very small. While the scientific community typically holds a minimum acceptable sample size to be 30, which is more than the current study’s sample size, statisticians including myself know that even 30 is very limited and samples should be much larger than this when possible in order to prevent ‘false positive’ study results,” Dyer said.

Not only that, the Christian “anti bikini” articles that I read liked pointing out that, “the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person’s thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women” however this statement is out of context and is also misleading. When performing the study “the participants, 21 heterosexual male undergraduates at Princeton, took questionnaires to determine whether they harbor “benevolent” sexism, which includes the belief that a woman’s place is in the home, or hostile sexism, a more adversarial viewpoint which includes the belief that women attempt to dominate men.”  The study goes on to state that for “the men who scored highest on hostile sexism, the part of the brain associated with analyzing another person’s thoughts, feelings and intentions was inactive while viewing scantily clad women.” One analyst put it this way, “those who viewed women as controlling and invaders of male space—didn’t show brain activity that indicates they saw the women in bikinis as humans with thoughts and intentions.” Do you see the difference that one little fact that these were the men who held the most sexist attitudes prior to the study makes? So now these are not all 21 young men who took part but only those of the 21 who scored highest for hostile sexism.

SO… of the 21 college men those who had the most aggressive sexist attitudes did not see women in bikinis as having thoughts and intentions. Hmmm. It seems to me they thought that before seeing them in bikinis.

It would seem to me that the way we teach our boys to think about women has a bigger effect on whether men see them as objects than what they have on. Don’t get me wrong, I am not naive, I know men will look at women in bikinis and find them sexually attractive. They will also look at women in shorts, skirts, pants, blouses, dresses and for some even shapeless denim jumpers and find them sexually attractive. As RHE stated in the post linked above,

The truth is, a man can choose to objectify a woman whether she’s wearing a bikini or a burqa. We don’t stop lust by covering up the female form; we stop lust by teaching men to treat women as human beings worthy of respect.

Contrary to what some think I personally do not believe the mere biological, chemical and psychological processes involved in sexual attraction are in and of themselves sinful.

I am the mother of one middle school aged son and one middle school aged daughter. My daughter wears a bikini. The other day we had a conversation about this topic. I assured my daughter that if someone looks at her and is sexually attracted to her she is not sinning. I assured my son of the same. I also assured them that if they were sexually attracted to someone they were not sinning. Sin enters the picture between our ears and in our hearts when we choose to objectify that person and look at them as something to be possessed. I will quote Rachel again here,

It is important here to make a distinction between attraction and lust. Attraction is a natural biological response to beauty; lust obsesses on that attraction until it grows into a sense of ownership, a drive to conquer and claim. When Jesus warns that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he uses the same word found in the Ten Commandments to refer to a person who “covets” his neighbor’s property. Lust takes attraction and turns it into the coveting of a woman’s body as though it were property. And men are responsible for their own thoughts and actions when this happens; they don’t get to blame it on what a woman is wearing.

I promised you I would get back to the tool thing so here we go…this part of the study was actually done on both male and female undergraduates and suggested that men are more likely than women to link women wearing bikinis with first person action verbs such as “push,” “handle” and “grab.” However when the men looked at fully clothed women they associated them with the third person forms such as she “pushes,” “handles” and “grabs.” The researches felt this implied that the men viewed women who were fully clothed as in control of their own actions. I just think well, duh. It is kind of obvious that heterosexual men would be more likely than women to see a woman in a bikini and think push, handle grab than they are to think those words about a woman in say a business suit. I don’t think this implies a dang thing about their motives or whether they will choose to sin or not.  Also, as far as I can tell in this portion of the study no questionnaire was given as to what sexist attitudes any of these men (or women for that matter) may or may not have had and so we do not get to know if there would be the same correlation as before with people’s preconceived attitudes about male and female roles/relationships and what they thought when presented with images of women in bikinis. I suspect there would be. Once again, just because one has a thought come to mind or a biological process kick in, does not mean that person, either the man who’s tool sector (see what I did there?) is kicking in or the woman in the bikini at the pool, is sinning. It just means they are attracted, they see something they want to touch. What seems to matter most (at least to me) is the attitudes they already brought to the table about the roles, relationships and motivations of men and women.

All that said, I think it is up to each woman whether she wears a bikini. Some women are comfortable in one and some are not. Here’s a fun little exercise. Let’s have a look at Romans 14 and how it might look in re to our current conversation…

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome her, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes she may wear anything, while the other wears only what is “modest”. Let not the one who wears a bikini despise the one who does not, and let not the one who does not wear a bikini pass judgment on the one who does, for God has welcomed her. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before her own master that she stands or falls. And she will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make her stand.

One person esteems one bathing suit as better than another, while another esteems all bathing suits alike. Each one should be fully convinced in her own mind. The one who does wears the bikini, wears it in honor of the Lord. The one who wears, wears in honor of the Lord, since she gives thanks to God, while the one who does not wear, does not wear in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to herself, and none of us dies to herself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your sister? Or you, why do you despise your sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,

“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”

So then each of us will give an account of herself to God.

So to all my Jesus loving women friends out there (yes you!) rock that suit, bikini or not for you are beautiful and it doesn’t matter if the whole world knows it. Being attractive is not a sin. Judging your sister is. Being attractive does not cause sin any more than being hungry causes gluttony.  And to all my Jesus following male friends out there. Sexual attraction is not sin. Treating a woman as less than you is. Admiring beauty is not sin. Treating a woman as something to be possessed is.

BONUS CONTENT…

Hey, I just thought of this on my laundry folding break…

We don’t say:
The chef caused me to be a glutton, they are sinning by making the plates look so beautiful and the food taste so good.
They should have to make it less delicious and less appetizing so I won’t over eat.
The car manufacturer caused me to envy, they are sinning by making the cars too fast and stunning to look at. They should design uglier cars so I won’t envy.
The clothing store caused me to shoplift, they are sinning by setting the price higher than I can pay. They should lower their prices so I don’t steal.
He was working with his shirt off, he is sinning by being out where women can see him. He should put a shirt on so women don’t lust after him.

We do say:
Her dress is too short (or she is wearing a bikini), she is sinning by being too sexy. She should wear a longer skirt so men don’t sin.They did something I find annoying, they are sinning by causing me to get angry. They should stop doing that so I don’t lose my temper.

I wonder why this is? I guess that is fodder for another post.

 

 

 

Love is not silent.


martin_luther_words_enemies

I was asked this weekend why I felt I needed to be an advocate for the homosexual community. Why me? I am not a lesbian after all. I have no close gay relatives.  Why do I feel like I need to be the one who speaks out about worship equality (Yes, I made that up and remember you heard it here first) and marriage equality. 

[Since I just made up a term I suppose I should define it for you. Here we go. Worship equality is the radical notion that God created us equal, that we each bear in us the image of God, and that we can and should all (regardless of gender or orientation) be welcomed to worship him with all our heart, soul mind and strength and that we should be encouraged to love people (our neighbors), all people as we love ourselves. This encompasses the radical notion that women are people and are equal in every way to men (notice equal DOES NOT SAY the same in every way, I am not the same as my husband just as I am not the same as any woman) and also that our LGBT brothers and sisters are equal to their straight counterparts in the eyes of God and therefore in our own.]

My friend also asked me what exactly it is that I am advocating and how I could be for marriage equality both in the public sector and as a Christian when (as he said) the Bible clearly calls all gay sex sin. My answer is simple. Politically, I am for marriage equality because anything else violates the equal protection clause. As an American and as a Christian I believe in an individual’s freedom and therefore I will not support legislation against marriage equality (indeed I will advocate for it to be overturned). Also, when people want to make laws against something purely because they believe it is biblical or Christian  I always ask, who’s version of the Bible shall we base the laws on? May I wear pants? May I drink alcohol? May I dance? May I eat shell fish? Of course the answer is really always (when you get down to brass tacks) the version of Christianity that person espouses (things really get sticky if you ask if people of other faith traditions, should they become the majority, start making Christians follow Sharia?). This is America. We are not truly free, unless we are all free. I would like to humbly suggest we remember that our forefathers and mothers wanted religious freedom. They did NOT want the government to tell them which religion to practice or how to practice it. You are free to believe what you will. You are just not free to force others to live by your convictions (incidentally this means they also are not free to force you to practice theirs.

As far as the Christian side goes. My answer is also simple. I believe that all the “so called” clobber passages (if they are even talking about homosexual relations) can be categorized in one of three ways or a combination thereof: idol worship, prostitution and/or pedophilia. I have already done extensive writing on all of these passages in my Homosexuality & God series from last year. I hope you will take a few minutes out to read these as it may, at the minimum, give you some food for thought. (I have come back and put this in bold because I have people asking my scriptural basis for my statements and I realized they were missing this link as they read. I hope this helps.)

Now my friend is like many Christians I know personally. He falls into the camp that says we should always love everyone God puts into our lives as completely as possible as God has equipped us gay or straight. He knows many LGBT people both privately and professionally and he treats them all with dignity and respect. He does however believe (at least currently) that the act of homosexual sex, no matter the context, is always sin. He also understands that he and I differ on this point. What he doesn’t get is why I feel the need to be an advocate. He wonders what it is that makes me write these posts and to have conversations in which I try to persuade people to my perspective. I will tell you what I told him. What if there were no advocates? Nothing would change. Without William Wilberforce or someone like him there would still be slave ships sailing legally, families being split apart and human beings who bear the very image of God being sold at auction to the highest bidder. LEGALLY. Without advocates, from outside an oppressed group it is much easier for the status quo to roll on decade after decade and century after century. Why do I advocate? How can I not? How can I be silent? Martin Luther King Jr. said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”  Throughout history everyday people have stood up and cried out,

“THIS MUST STOP!”

William Wilberforce, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Harvey Milk, Oscar Schindler:  You can still hear them if you listen closely. Their voices can still be heard in every human heart that cries out for freedom and justice. Bob Dylan has an amazing song called What Good Am I in which he says, “If I shut myself off, so I can’t hear you cry…What good Am I?” What good Am I indeed? How can it be love if I stand silent when I could have spoken?

So today again I raise my voice and join their sad and beautiful and victorious song. Their song that still plays on

So today I say to gender inequality, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to marriage inequality, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to bullying, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to use of words like, “fag”, “retard” and “slut” to insult people and dehumanize them, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to female genital mutilation, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to the killing of babies just for being female, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to rape culture, “THIS MUST STOP!”

I say to human trafficking, “THIS MUST STOP!”

Why do I speak, because silence is deadly.

Margaret Cho said in her poignant response to Michelle Shocked’s tirade, “…the effect of someone saying “God hates fags” can never be underestimated either. It’s a license to kill. It’s a death sentence, It’s not funny. It’s not OK…there is this idea that it is OK to kill us, that it doesn’t matter if we die.” You see, when people are dehumanized (women, LGBT or otherwise); when people believe that someone is hated by an “all loving God” then it becomes okay for them to be spat on, beaten, bullied and even killed.

I simply must not be silent. I cannot stop. I am not naïve. I know there is only so much I can do with my little soapbox. But it is WHAT I CAN DO. And so I do it. I stand with Jennifer Knapp when she said in her article today entitled, Acknowledging Faith Voices Crucial for LGBT Civil Rights,

“…now we recognize that silence is too easily confused with consent for injustice.”

And I will tell you this, when I receive a letter that says, I was rejected by my church and my parents I thought God rejected me too. I thought I was disqualified from having a relationship with God. I was told God hates me. Because of you, I now know that God does love me and that he still wants me;  how can I stop?

This is what I was made to do. I don’t know what else to do on this day but stand on the side of love and tell you that God has gay children and he loves them. And to hatred and bigotry I say, “This MUST stop!”

Before The Supreme Court Considers Gay Marriage, An American Change Of Heart

INTERVIEW: Rob Bell on Why He Supports Gay Marriage

Acknowledging Faith Voices Crucial for LGBT Civil Rights by Jennifer Knapp

http://godlessliberals.com/Pix/liz-feldman-gay-lunch.html

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” – Rachel Held Evans

Is abolition “biblical”? – Rachel Held Evans

FROM MY BLOG:

Coming Out of the Church Closet: Bethany’s Story

Pray Away the Gay

Who Can Withhold the Water?

The True Magic Kingdom

WHAT IS TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE ANYWAY?

https://wordofawoman.com/page/2/?s=homosexuality

Good Stuff for Spring Break

beach-readsI know. I know. I have been M.I.A. for waaaay to long. I sadly have not had time for writing but I have had time for reading. Here are some I think are worth reading from the last few weeks to see you through the Spring Break holiday.

Enjoy my lovelies. I’ll see you on the other side.

Will Evangelicalism Last

For one thing “Truth” is not rational abstraction — a concept, doctrine, or idea you can write down — especially not one which you conveniently have right and everyone else conveniently has wrong. Truth-as-a-rational-abstraction constitutes a denial of the incarnation (and big chunks of the New Testament). Doctrines and theologies can point to the truth but they are not themselves the Truth. The Truth has been revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ. Truth is a person. Jesus is the Truth.

How Being a Pastor Changed My Thinking on Homosexuality

Several things clicked at once: These guys had burdens placed upon them by others(people like me) that had nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus said his interpretation of religious Law, his yoke, was easy and his burden light (11:38). His opponents, the religious leaders, accused him of abolishing the Law (5:17) and ignoring their pet scriptures about holiness and who was “in” and who was “out.” The fundamentalists of Jesus’ day were threatened by his message of an easy yoke, and they made his followers out to be “abolishers of the law.” In response, Jesus  commanded his followers to out-love, out-pray, and out-give his detractors (5:21-7:27).

Is Abolition Biblical?

I wanted to share these initial thoughts because I think it’s important to remind ourselves now and then that we’ve been wrong before, and that sometimes it’s not about the number of proof texts we can line up or about the most simplistic reading of the text, but rather some deep, intrinsic sense of right and wrong, some movement of the Spirit, that points us toward truth and to a better understanding of what Scripture really says. 

But That’s What the Bible Says

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.

How Sesame Street is Undermining Biblical Values

I know, you might think I’m overreacting, but the Bible is very clear on the role of bears in human relationships. They are meant to be voracious killing machines. I mean, the ONE COMMAND God gives specifically to bears is to “Arise and devour much flesh.” This attempt to anthropomorphize and humanize bears strikes at the heart of everything the gospel teaches about bears.

Feminism and Me: When I cannot cook but I am still a person

The first time I began to wonder if perhaps the evangelical narrative of gender roles I’d absorbed needed a little tweaking, I was 19 years old and finishing my first year of bible college, and I was in love with him. I sometimes like to think that he was in love with me too (a story for another day), but only to the extent that a heart as superficial as his could possibly be. One morning after a particularly intense cup of coffee the night before, I woke up to a novel in my inbox which basically boiled down to “I like you but you are unsuitable because you are initiatory in your relationships with men and also you cannot clean or cook.”

Jesus is my favorite feminist.

Not only in the message,
but in the messenger.

He chose her.

He commissioned her.

He gave her the privilege of delivering the very first Resurrection sermon.

To a room full of men.

CHASE AND THE ONION MAN

You and I, we have a lot of love to share. Maybe that man doesn’t have much. Maybe we offered him some today. People who behave badly still need love.

The Bible Isn’t The History You Think It Is

The situation not unlike a modern newspaper, which combines news with opinion, puzzles, comics, etc. The news can be accurate even if the comics are not. The same is true for the different parts of the Bible.

I stopped guarding my heart ten years ago.

All relationships invite our hearts to walk through disappointment and joy, the more intimate the relationship, the greater the capacity for both those things.

The Irony of Christian Celebrity

What if a desire to “make an impact” is just a form of grasping for immortality?

What if a quest for influence is actually another way of chasing fame?

What if efforts to “expand the Kingdom” are really monuments to our entrepreneurial skills?

What if, in the name of building platforms to proclaim the Gospel, we have elevated people into Christian celebrities?

What if we’ve added God to an already crowded house of idols—the idols of fame and success?

 

Without feminism… (And a nod to Ms. Stiles)

Today I met a car salesman named Chris who grew up as the child of a single mother. We talked about a lot of things in the downtime of “doing a deal”. We talked politics, religion, marriage equality and feminism. I love meeting men who celebrate and even champion equality. So, good job Ms. Stiles. You raised one of the good ones. In your honor here is my list of things we would lose we’re it not for women like you and men like your son.

Without Feminism you lose…

Your property

Your right to vote

Your autonomy

Your right to decide where, when and whom  you marry

Your bank account

Your right to inherit

Your right not to be abused

Your right to drive

Your right to leave home with out a male family member

Your right to wear what you wish

Your right to education

Your right to choose when or whether you become a parent

Your right to travel without permission

Your right to choose where and when you have sex

And so much more.

Stop (and dance) in the Name of Love

What is this all about you ask?

The ONE BILLION RISING campaign began as a call to action based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than ONE BILLION WOMEN AND GIRLS. On 14 February 2013, V-Day’s 15th anniversary, activists, writers, thinkers, celebrities and women and men across the world will come together to express their outrage, strike, dance, and RISE in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women.

A global strike
An invitation to dance
A call to men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends
An act of solidarity, demonstrating to women the commonality of their struggles and their power in numbers
A refusal to accept violence against women and girls as a given
A new time and a new way of being

Today women and men all over the world will rise and dance to show their solidarity with women around the world in their struggle to end gender based violence.

I just found out about this movement today so instead of attending a planned event I would like to dance with you my lovelies, right here. Right now.

Play the video and let’s dance.

Let’s dance and show the world that women are not possessions, women are not objects to be used, women are not less than.

This is my dance.

This is your dance.

This is the dance of every woman and every man who loves women.

As the song says lovelies,

We dance cause we love

Dance cause we dream

Dance cause we’ve had enough

Dance to stop the screams

Dance to break the rules

Dance to stop the pain

Dance to turn it upside down

Its time to break the chain,

oh yeah

Break the Chain

Today is Valentine’s Day. A day to love and be loved. A day to celebrate all that love is and all that love does. Today we will give gifts in the name of love, we will send messages to the ones we love. And today my lovelies we will stop in the name of love to dance on behalf of love.

Today may we be one step closer to stop(ping the violence) in the name of love.

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Mad Men (and Women) of Christianity


image
I know we are way behind but my husband and I just started watching Mad Men from the beginning on Netflix. Last night after watching the second episode, Kent turned to me and said, “Do you know why I like this show? Besides the great acting, writing and to-the-t period stuff?”
“No,” I said, “What?”
“This show is a perfect illustration of what people mean when they say they want to go back to the good old days. It’s how guys like Driscoll and Piper wish it was.”

I have been thinking about this ever since he said it last night.
At the time my mind immediately went to another blog written by Ben Ponder, editor-at-large for mediarostra.com which I read a while back. In it Mr. Ponder asserts that,

“Family” is the euphemistic code du jour for “Evangelical Christian.” “Focus on the Evangelical Christian” and the “American Evangelical Christian Association” didn’t have the same zing to them as their familiar twins. The watchword for these organizations is the preservation of “traditional family values,” which are, in a nutshell, white American family values from a period of 1939 to 1964. The family values constituency longs for a return to the virginal time before the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, John Lennon, and Rock Hudson made the world a more complicated place.
When I read the Bible, I get the distinct sense that Jesus wasn’t interested in saving the nuclear family from a windy onslaught of liberal opinions. I rather get the impression that he was concerned with diving headfirst into the unvarnished messiness of the human condition and saving us—as individuals, as families, as communities, as people—from our own unhinged self-absorption and festering lovelessness.

I also remembered a scene from Modern Family which I told you all about in The Will of the People. The scene takes place between Jay and Gloria.

“Jay: This weekend we’re going up to Pebble Beach. I’m gonna meet a bunch of guys I played high school football with. Man, those were the good old days.
Gloria: Yeah, unless you were a woman, black, Hispanic, or gay.
Jay: But if you were a straight white football player you couldn’t have a bad day.”

I am sure most of the folks nostalgic for a time gone by prefer to think of it like Leave It to Beaver where everything is clean and sanitized and the worst you have to worry about is Eddie Haskel and his mischievous ways. Mad Men is a more unvarnished look back that doesn’t gloss over the messiness of life. Honestly lovelies, neither is a perfect picture. They are both fiction. However we are talking about a real period of American life that is often pointed to by christians in general and evangelicals in particular, as a time when things were simpler, better and frankly closer to what God intended. After all, the marriages and families I see in the Bible look just like the Cunningham’s on Happy Days. 😉

Personally, I have no desire to go back to the way things were.

Christian Piatt wrote a great article about a year ago titled: GOP Nostalgia? Only Christian White Men were Better Off Back Then in which he said in part,

The fact is that, unless you’re a white, Christian, straight male, there’s little to look back to and say “yeah, I was better off back then.”… To call for a return to the good old days is, in some ways, a marginalization of those for whom history has meant progress. For the majority of Americans today, turning back the clock means losing ground, acceding power or opportunity and returning to a time of greater imbalance and division.”

Sadly, the church, whom I love seems to be stuck in a nostalgic longing that is really nothing more than a mirage. It offers the illusion of a cold drink of water but for many they find only a mouthful of sand and the scorching wind of shame. Heck even some of us raised in the church who know how beautiful and life-giving our communities truly can be, all to often have found our mouths filled with sand rather than the cool and refreshing living water.

Those who feel their privilege slipping away continue to grasp at an unhealthy nostalgia responsible for keeping the church on the wrong side of history way to often. It is what makes and has made people justify slavery and segregation or oppose women’s suffrage, a woman’s right to own property, interracial marriage, women in church leadership and gay marriage. (Even when people believe they are excluding people because of unrepentant sin I still call B.S. as we often hold the door open with a big smile for people who continue to stumble when it comes to gluttony, lust, gossip and lying while slamming the door in the face of homosexuals under the guise of “unrepentance”.) When people perceive their place of privilege is slipping away, rather than rejoicing that others will share in the freedom and forgiveness which they have enjoyed, often defend and set up barriers that push people further away from Jesus. Once again, someone else addresses this issue of priviledge much better than I can. I encourage you to read The Distress of the Priviledged by Doug Muder. He explains it like this:

As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

Then this morning as lady luck or Sarah Bessey would have it, I woke up to a post which exposes another facet of the mirage with a fierce and brave vulnerability. In Which I am Damaged Goods is a post way too many of us could have written. Sarah shares a time when she was served the sand of shame and judgement rather than the living water of love and forgiveness. She was taught that because she was a woman who had been sexually active she was damaged beyond repair and that she should be thankful if there was a christian man out there who would have her as a wife. While this may seem at first blush unrelated to a nostalgia for an earlier time, rest assured, it is. It is nostalgia for a time when a girl who gets pregnant (not the boy of course) would be sent away “to camp” for the summer or a divorcee would automatically be viewed as desperate, a home wrecker or “hot to trot”. “Oh Myyyyy,” as George Takai would say. With just a few google searches you can find church leader after church leader (including women) who will state unequivocally or simply subtly imply that women’s sexuality and/or women in general are something to be feared, suppressed and even demonized. Tertullian went as far as describing woman as the root of all evil. This is yet another mirage of sinking sand that brings death, shame and bondage rather than life, reconciliation and freedom. A current hotly debated question in the church is, “Why are young people leaving in droves?” Perhaps it is partly because they are tired of receiving a glass of sand when they are begging for water.

Please lovelies, let us remember this, Jesus came not to condemn (John 3:17) but to bring freedom and forgiveness.

This of course is just one example. The non-drinkers exclude the drinkers, the men exclude the women, the heterosexuals exclude the LGBT community, the races exclude each other, the hits just keep on coming and love loses –or so it seems. As a friend of mine (I can’t remember who, if it is you send me a note so I can give you credit) said in a Facebook post this week, many in the church upon arriving at the banquet to which they themselves were uninvited have set themselves up as doorkeepers, judging who is and who is not worthy to enter. Do they not see the irony? None of us were invited –yet we got to come in. And now here they sit callously turning away those whom Jesus would let in. Let that not be me. I say swing wide the doors; Come in. Taste and see that He is good.

As always my lovelies, I remain hopeful. Behold, Jesus is making all things new. He is NOT making all things the way they used to be. He is making all things NEW! Make no mistake, love will win. Look around. There are more and more people who shout and whisper and sing, “Come in! Come in! All are welcome. There is enough living water for us all.

LORD JESUS, May my judgements never push people away from you. Please show mercy to those who having already received grace for themselves would push away others whom you came for. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. AMEN.

——————————

As we were driving home I was reminded of the song Pieces of You by Jewel.  It drove home the point that we are all connected. When we exclude, shame and hurt each other we cut off our nose to spite our face. Any damage we do to each other, we do to ourselves.

She’s an ugly girl, does it make you want to kill her?
She’s an ugly girl, do you want to kick in her face?
She’s an ugly girl, she doesn’t pose a threat.
She’s an ugly girl, does she make you feel safe?
Ugly girl, ugly girl, do you hate her
‘Cause she’s pieces of you.

She’s a pretty girl, does she make you think nasty thoughts?
She’s a pretty girl, do you want to tie her down?
She’s a pretty girl, do you call her a bitch?
She’s a pretty girl, did she sleep with your whole town?
Pretty girl, pretty girl, do you hate her
‘Cause she’s pieces of you.

You say he’s a faggot, does it make you want to hurt him?
You say he’s a faggot, do you want to bash in his brain?
You say he’s a faggot, does he make you sick to our stomach?
You say he’s a faggot, are you afraid you’re just the same?
Faggot, Faggot, do you hate him
‘Cause he’s pieces of you?

You say he’s a Jew, does it mean that he’s tight?
You say he’s a Jew, do you want to hurt his kids tonight?
You say he’s a Jew, he’ll never wear that funny hat again.
You say he’s a Jew, as though being born were a sin.
Oh Jew, oh Jew, do you hate him
‘Cause he’s pieces of you.

365: looking forward to 2013

mapWell, I did it. A whole year of blogging. It has been quite a ride let me tell you. 2012 was at once an amazing year of greatness and a year of painful loss; for example this year I celebrated 25 years of marriage to my amazing best friend and this year we buried his Dad.  What a dichotomy.

As you may or may not have noticed (I like to think that at least some of you noticed) I have not done much writing in the last several weeks. Believe me it hasn’t been for lack of material or ideas but rather because life has been a bit on the full side. It is funny and I never would have believed I would say this before starting this blog on a complete whim…but I missed writing. A LOT.

I would like to close out the year by saying thank you to all of you who have read and commented, subscribed and shared and liked my Facebook page. You have turned what was a little spark of an idea into something beyond what I would have imagined. Because of you the site has reached 32,945 page views and has been seen in 152 countries! Holy crap!!

You have also made 794 comments and shared my page 348 times. Thank you.

This year I wrote 110 posts covering politics, religion, sexuality, equality, art, science, poetry and lots of personal stuff.

Here are your top 20 posts by number of page views:

  1. God and Homosexuality: Parts 6 and 7 – Pornoi, Arsenokoitai and Malakoi
  2. Pray Away the Gay?
  3. What is Traditional Marriage Anyway?
  4. God and Homosexuality: Part 1
  5. So She Did. A Word of Encouragement to Women…and Men.
  6. God and Homsexuality: Part 4 – “Eunuchs Who Have Been So From Birth”
  7. Why I Love Being a Woman
  8. Why Do Christians Curse the Silence?
  9. Dear John Piper, Would You Like a Ride on my Toboggan?
  10. Today My Daughter’s World Changed and It Broke My Heart
  11. If all are Martha Stewart where is Amelia Earhart?
  12. Sometimes I Grow Weary of the Fight
  13. Homosexuality and God: Conclusion
  14. Memes the Word.
  15. Raped Too Much?
  16. Boys Will Be Boys?
  17. The Closest Friends I’ve Never Met and an Unladylike Manifesto
  18. I Choose Chow Fun’s
  19. Your Existence Gives me Hope
  20. Why I’m Voting for President Obama  (a guest post by my awesome husband)

I am also going to include here some links for posts you may have missed that I think you may want to revisit (as they say on American Idol, “In no particular order.”).

Here is to the next year my lovelies and here’s to you. May it be our best year yet.

The Dark Stories

“Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the raped princess of David’s house, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah and Ruth…it is our responsibility to guard the dark stories for our own daughters, and when they are old enough, to hold their faces between our hands an make them promise to remember.” -Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

I am loving this book so far. Rachel’s point in this chapter is that not all (or maybe not any) of what is recorded (and not recorded) about Biblical womanhood looks like 1950s America and June Cleaver. Sometimes it is ugly and sometimes Biblical women were mistreated or killed in the name of serving God. That makes God sick to His stomach and that should make us sick to our stomachs as well. It is not God’s design for His daughters that they be held under the thumb of abuse and oppression in order for Him to receive glory. Not my God. Not my Jesus.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

The Spirit of The Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. Luke 4:18

Lists, Ambition and One Last Thing

Much has been made in the last week while I was away about a list of the Top 200 Church Bloggers posted by Kent Shaffer. There is also a cover story done by Christianity Today about 50 Women to Watch coming to news stands near you.

And while I do care that Mr Shaffer’s list was 93% white males, I do not care that word of a woman was no where to be found. I honestly don’t care about ever making his list. I also don’t care if Christianity today decides I belong on their list of women to watch even if I do love me some Rachel Held Evans. I appreciate them attempting to celebrate female followers of Jesus who they feel are making an impact, but I personally don’t care if I ever meet the criteria to make their list. For me having a women’s list that is separate from the men’s list is just more of the “our church lets women lead” mentality that Kathy Escobar wrote about recently. This may lead you to ask what I would do if I were ever to make a list such as this one. One way to react is the way Rachel Held Evans did this week in her post Is Ambition a Sin? She explained:

I weighed in a few times myself, thinking that, as one of just three women who made it to the Top 100, no one could accuse me of sour grapes. I even offered some tips regarding search engine optimization, design, posting schedule, and so on, hoping they might help some women whose content is great, but whose blogs might be blipping just under the radar. If we don’t like the list, I reasoned, let’s work to change it!

I agree on the one hand, working to change it is all well and good but in the end there is no doubt this is Mr. Shaffer’s list and he is free to choose whomever he wishes to be on it and it is no skin off my nose if he only decided to include baptists or pastors or  Chevy owners. I also understand, as he does, that his selection “approach is subjective and consequently flawed.”

So the question remains my lovelies, why don’t I care about making a “top Christian _______” list? The reason I don’t care has nothing to do with lack of ambition or feeling that it is unladylike to self-promote. On the contrary, I want to be an influential blogger period: Christian or not. I want to be the Mumford and Sons of blogging. I want my blog to be recognized because it is making the world a better and more beautiful place. I want it to be widely read because it connects on a deep level and maybe just maybe it reflects a spark of the divine and makes people long for more of that which calls us all to be better. This has never been about being influential with church people for me. This is about being influential with people. I believe with all my heart that God has given me words to speak that are worth hearing or I wouldn’t be here. This blog is and has always been about love; loving God and loving my neighbor; speaking out for freedom for the oppressed, and asking how we can see God’s kingdom come here and now in every corner of life. I want that message to go out to as many as humanly possible. And so…I write, because I have to, because I must, because I believe He wants me to or He wouldn’t have given me this heart, these words or this fracking awesome technology that allows us all to be more connected than ever.

Rachel Held Evans asked her readership how they felt about ambition yesterday and I am glad she asked. In Philippians 2 it says that we should “do nothing out of rivalry (some versions say selfish ambition) or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” It does not say, “Do nothing out of ambition,” but rather selfish ambition. That phrase implies that there is also unselfish ambition. Google defines ambition as:

am·bi·tion/amˈbiSHən/

Noun:
  1. A strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
  2. Desire and determination to achieve success.

I don’t know about you my lovelies, but that sounds like a good thing to me. As far as I can tell, I am supposed to love and reconcile as many as I can; I am attempting to achieve that through my writing (among many other avenues); Therefore, I continue to be determined and work hard to do what it takes to succeed, including promotion and branding to ensure that my blog is seen by as many people as possible. Make no mistake, no list can determine the value of what I do here on the blogosphere any more than being named employee of the month or father of the year makes it so. The value of Word of a Woman can only be determined by whether it stirs in you, my lovelies the desire to love God, to love your neighbor, to use your life, your talent and all you are to see the world made a better place.

One last thing…

Mr. Shaffer did publish a response to the female bloggers who objected about not being included called, Open Letter to Christian Women Blogs in which he attempted to explain the list at least in regards to the exclusion of more women’s blogs. Unfortunately, in my opinion he missed the point in his response post. I could go into all the details but that would be missing the point of my own post. 😉 I will just let you read it for yourselves and make your own decisions. I will however make one point. In her response post on the Her.meneutics site, Laura Ortberg Turner relays this discussion:

In an e-mail exchange with Shaffer, a Christianity Today editor inquired as to why Her.meneutics was not on the list. He responded in a way that is indicative of a false dichotomy between “church” and “ministry” within our larger church culture:

“It hasn’t been included because we’ve subjectively decided it doesn’t focus on ministry topics frequently enough. The value in our list (although flawed) is its relatively narrow scope of topical focus. You write good posts, but they tend to be focused more on sex, relationships, adoption, politics, etc. than they are on topics rooted in ministry.”

Mr. Shaffer, this is where you completely lose me. You said that Her.meneutics was not included because their posts “tend to be focused more on sex, relationships, adoption, politics, etc. rather “than they are on topics rooted in ministry.” Really? How are these not topics rooted in ministry? I know no human, male or female, who is not personally invested in relationships, sex, adoption and/or politics. I personally reject the notion that there are ministry and non ministry topics; that posts (or anything else) can be pigeonholed into exclusively secular or uniquely sacred. I would even go so far as to say that you cannot have a blog as a follower of Christ that isn’t about a ministry topic.

In the end however you view the lists, they are subject to the list makers and the criteria they set. So why worry about whether or not I am deemed worthy by Mr. Shaffer or Christianity Today or any other person or group of making their list? Seeing my blog on a list is not my ambition. Love and Liberty and Reconciliation…now those, those are my ambitions. If I happen to end up on some “top whatever list” some day, I will most likely file it away with my Miss Congeniality award from high school, my ADDY award and all my other atta’ girls. They’re nice and all, but in the end, they don’t mean much. What survives in the end isn’t the lists or the accolades but the love and I want to be known for as much of that as possible.

Her mouth said no, but she got pregnant anyway.

So as you may have heard this week Rep. Todd Akin had some truly mortifying things to say about rape.

” First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Mr. Akin speaks of punishing the rapist and not attacking the child, but what sir of the WOMAN? Shall we punish her as well? I find it telling that Mr.Akin chooses to focus on both the rapist and the baby but completely ignores the woman stuck in the middle. In fact, Mr. Akin’s entire statement here reduces the very real victims of rape to “the female body”. Perhaps he needs to read the article I read today by  on the Huffington Post about how an actual rape victims felt upon reading his statement.

“Rape is so isolating — it ruined my world for a long time,” Law, now 43, said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “If I had had to carry that rapist’s baby to term, quite honestly, I might have taken my life.”

Law said she couldn’t believe her eyes on Sunday when she read that Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri declare in an interview that pregnancy from “legitimate rape” is “really rare” because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

“First of all, what is legitimate rape?” she asked. “Whether it’s date rape, whether the woman was beaten to a pulp, whether it’s a 14 or 15-year old kid carrying her father’s child, it doesn’t matter. Having to deliver the baby of a rapist — that’s torture.”

Another rape survivor in Missouri was so incensed by Akin’s comment that she called into St. Louis television station KTVI to share her feelings. “It was like I had been slapped,” she told the anchor. “I heard that comment and I just began to shake. I was fit to be tied.”

The second question that comes to mind is, how exactly does Mr. Akin think that the woman’s body differentiates between rapist sperm and consensual sperm?  Seriously?!?  I certainly hope he wouldn’t suggest that most of the 35k+ women who are impregnated every year as a result of rape must have actually wanted it or they wouldn’t be pregnant. My guess is he would say that is preposterous; however, it is the logical conclusion of his statement.

I find it fascinating that a man who will never have to worry about carrying a child who is the product of rape is presuming to tell women who have been how they should feel and what they should do. Don’t get me wrong, men can be and are raped. “About 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime,” according to the National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, 1998.  The number for women increases to about 1 in 6. The crime is just as violent and shame inducing for a man as it is for a woman however; the man will never be faced with having to carry to term and deliver the child of their attacker. There are 435 voting members of the House of Representatives and 100 members of the Senate. If the statistics were the same for them as it were for the female population 79 of them would be victims of completed rape, 15 of them would be the victims of attempted rape and 4 of them would be pregnant by their attackers. If this were the case I seriously doubt we would be having the same discussion.

This whole thing brings to mind another post I wrote a few months ago called “Raped Too Much”. In which I discussed Liz Trotta’s comments about how women in the military should stop complaining about being “raped too much”.  Statements such as the ones made by Ms. Trotta and Mr. Akin continue to add to what is referred to as “rape culture”. In her book Shakesville, Melissa McEwan defined rape culture this way:

Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women’s daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.

Apparently now we must also worry about whether our body will betray us by not discerning the rape sperm from the consensual ones and allowing us to become pregnant. Or God forbid proving that a woman actually wanted to have sex with her attacker. The whole thing kind of gives new meaning to “her mouth said no but her [fill in the body part] said yes.”

Just for the record. I do believe in the sanctity of life. I am against late term and partial birth abortion except to save the life of the mother. I believe abortion should happen as rarely as possible. I do not believe people like Mr. Akin have any business criminalizing a woman who chooses not to carry and deliver the child of her rapist. How can that be justice?

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