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Learning the Words

Theology

learning the words: self-esteem

Today’s guest post is from Rachel. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

A boy, about two years old, realized that his parents had left the house. It was a big house, so he wasn’t sure. He ran from room to room sobbing and bellowing out his fear, anger and frustration. I followed him to make sure he was safe, knowing that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had searched the whole house– he would keep crying with the abandon of a two-year-old until he got tired of it or was distracted. I’d seen it before. His crying didn’t offend me. My frustration was that his parents left without telling him so they could avoid dealing with this scene.

That day an adult who was respected in the Christian community I lived in also watched this scene unfolding. He made a comment about this little boy being “bad.” Although I was just a teenager I challenged this idea. He was just upset. How could that be bad? And the answer was only surprising in that it was applied to this particular situation. It was an argument I was very familiar with: we are all bad. Born with sin. Separated from God and incapable of pleasing Him. In short, on our own, we are worthless. Apparently, even a two-year-old who threw a fit when his needs weren’t met was evidence of this.

It was, I think, a fairly “mainstream” evangelical community, made up of members of a number of different denominations from a number of countries. They were missionaries – people who had fairly extensive training in biblical interpretation and who had committed their lives to reaching the “lost.” Although they tended to share the general evangelical suspicion of secular psychology, they generally had not written it off completely.

But the term “self-esteem” was sometimes criticized. Phrases like “We shouldn’t have self-esteem, we should have God-esteem” rattle around in my memory. When a counselor asked my teenaged self why I had poor self-esteem I was confused. Was there any other kind?

Whenever I hear someone criticize the concept of self-esteem I think: “Everyone has self-esteem. It has to do with our understanding of who we are. It just refers to the idea a person has about what they are worth. Healthy self-esteem is a realistic sense of worth. Unhealthy self-esteem is an unrealistic sense.” It doesn’t mean being proud or having an inflated sense of our abilities.

For a while it seemed pretty simple to me. As Christians, why shouldn’t we have not only a realistic sense of our worth, but even a positive one? After all, God thought that we were valuable enough to die for. He wanted to have a relationship with us. He made us his children. Lists of our identity in Christ just confirmed this idea to me.

But in spite (or because) of this complicated dance of “I no worth on my own but I great worth with God” I realize that I have spent most of my life feeling that I am falling short. Whatever God might think I’m worth, the “me” I deal with every day is still a raging two-year-old demanding to have my needs met. There is still a gray-haired man standing by declaring that I am bad. Maybe if I were healthier, more athletic, less emotional, more organized, or spent more time reading my Bible I would feel more worthy. Maybe I would actually be able to see myself the way that I have been taught that God sees me.

Or is the problem that this is a really muddled way of seeing the self? Do we really know ourselves in relation to how God sees us? Can that really be part of our everyday consciousness? My pastor, a wonderful man, often starts out his sermons saying, “I have nothing worthwhile to say. But I hope that God will speak through me.” This bothers me a little, since he is a man with skills and abilities. I feel that he should take some credit for the work he has done and the thoughts he has assembled.

For some people, maybe it’s all about being filled up and directed by God. But for me I suspect that there’s the spiritual reality I’ve been taught about, and then the physical reality I know from experience. The one where people evaluate me and give me grades. The one where I don’t keep my house clean and last autumn’s leaves are in the process of killing this spring’s grass… But I know that I’m a good cook. That I’m good at having empathy for people. I think I’m good at listening to my children. I desperately want to be good at helping them have a healthy sense of who they are.

So I don’t know what to do with the “We are all worthless sinners without the grace of God” mentality. I guess I start by saying that Jesus died for us before we made the decision, so our worth is not based on whether we get that part right. Because I look at my beautiful baby and I know that he is so much. That even if he never believes right or does right he is worth everything I pour into him. And I hear my five-year-old say “I’m really good at tracing” and I want him to hold on to that satisfaction. I want him to be comfortable with who he is – to feel that he is enough. I want him to know that striving is good, but it doesn’t give us worth. I want them both to know that having needs doesn’t make them bad.

I want self-esteem for my children to be about something other than fighting the sense that at their very core they are worthless sinners. Or even fighting to hold on to the idea that they are loved by God. I want them to have a sense of just themselves. I want them to stretch out in their skins and know that it’s acceptable for them to scream out their rage, to dance out their joys and to rest when they are done playing. I want self-esteem to be about knowing that they have a place in the world that they don’t have to earn. I want them to know they have a value they don’t have to prove.

April 15, 2014 by SamanthaField

Theology

learning the words: selfish

Today’s guest post is from Cassidy, who dissects different ideas embedded in Christian fundamentalist culture at Roll to Disbelieve. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

I grew up Catholic, and there’s not a word more hated and feared in Catholicism as much as these two syllables: “selfish.” Every story I ever heard as a child drilled down on “selflessness” and “sacrifice,” especially for women. Every family value centered on sacrificing my own needs to advance the whole. I didn’t even question this virtue.

I converted to Protestantism in my teens, working my way through denominations till I reached fundamentalism, and in fundamentalism I learned entirely new reasons to hate and fear selfishness. The rigid gender roles and bizarre hierarchical system I was taught depended upon ignoring my own needs to meet the needs of those around me– especially my husband. This image of “selflessness” dominated what women in my church were taught– always, always, we were to give way to others. This was how we were told we could serve our god, and how we would build happy homes and marriages. That it felt so distinctly abusive and did not seem to be working in our home lives the way we’d been promised it would? That was our fault too. We just needed to be less selfish.

Even after leaving my husband and Christianity, “selfish” was still a word I feared. I couldn’t just want something for myself, I had to be able to justify it. I couldn’t even say “no” unless I had a really good excuse. I couldn’t just not want to have kids. I had to have some very good excuse for not wanting kids–to “purchase” my right to not have children with how much I was contributing to society and how much I really loved children deep down. I couldn’t even just not be a Christian–most Christians seem to think that ex-Christians left because of “selfishness,” and I’ve certainly been accused of it more times than I can count.

You can probably guess that even after leaving the religion, my relationships were in shambles. I lacked any concept of boundaries. As a Christian I’d been taught that couples were “one flesh,” so boundaries were considered quite selfish. That’s some hard indoctrination to lose! My next partner, who wasn’t even a Christian, quickly discovered that accusations of selfishness worked marvelously well to keep me in line.

One day I realized that these accusations of “selfishness” he was always lobbing at me were over perfectly reasonable needs. I was “selfish” to refuse to give him more drug and booze money, or to refuse to do all the housework and work full-time besides, or to demand respect and courtesy. I was so very, very selfish.

I began to look back at all the other times I’d been accused of selfishness. Without hardly any exceptions, these accusations were hurled over similar concerns. It wasn’t “selfish” to not want kids. It was what I needed to do with my life to be an authentic and happy person. It wasn’t “selfish” to want to study what I studied in school, or to get a divorce from my overbearing, stalking, abusive preacher ex-husband, or to demand my partner share equally in the housework if we were both working full-time, or to leave a religion that had proven downright toxic to my mental and emotional health.

I began to see these accusations of selfishness in a much larger context–in the context of “what makes accusers really uncomfortable with what my refusal means.” I began to realize that it was the people who lobbed these accusations that stood to gain by my acquiescence. I began to notice that these accusations often got flung in absence of what was good for me as a person, but that they were often the things that would allow the accusers to maintain their dominance. It seemed a little odd that these accusations seemed to be used in a way that strong-armed me–that once someone had said the magic S-word, all discussion stopped. But wouldn’t it seem like the folks who are getting their way are really the selfish ones in these situations? Who’s really selfish, the person being cowed and forced into line, or the person who gets to declare by fiat who is and isn’t selfish, who gets to make another person’s most private decisions?

I began to realize that the decisions they labeled “selfish” were decisions that challenged my accusers on a number of levels. Thus, I had to be silenced.

I still remember the day I realized I didn’t have to “purchase” my personal decisions or convince anybody of their validity. I didn’t have to talk someone into accepting my personal decisions. That day, I learned to separate out my needs from those of my group. I remember realizing that it was hugely suspicious that what my accusers thought was “selfish” was really just me doing or saying something that made their privilege look too obvious or too negative.

The journey began with a single step: the first “no.” The first refusal. The first insistence on boundaries… and it got easier every time. Now, it’s second nature.

I know now that “selfishness”—as defined by fundamentalists– is actually a healthy trait. I do not fear it or the accusation of it. I know that each one of us must balance our own needs with that of society and decide what we need for ourselves to be healthy and happy–and that it’s not “selfish” at all to make those sorts of decisions. I’ve learned how to separate out “stuff that impacts others and thus deserves consideration” and “stuff that doesn’t impact anybody but me and therefore it doesn’t matter what others think of my decision either way.”

I know that it’s okay to do things for myself. I know it’s fine to say “no” if acquiescing would make me feel overextended. I know that boundaries are a very healthy thing in relationships and that over-enmeshment (and the contempt that it breeds) is the real enemy. I know that sometimes we have to limit what we give of ourselves so we can maintain our sanity. If group unity depends upon me being abused or feeling over-extended or harmed, then maybe the group is the problem–not me.

February 19, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

learning the words: working mother

Joan from Mad Men

Today’s guest post is from Katy. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

I’m the oldest of five children and we were all homeschooled (K-12). During my junior high and high school years, my family attended a church on the divide of fundamentalism and conservative. Fortunately, my parents have always placed an extremely high priority on education. My mother was the first person in her family to attend college and my father is a second-generation Ph.D. scientist. They were extremely clear that all their children were expected to get at least a bachelor’s degree before getting married. (I think they watched several families break up because the woman wanted to “find herself” and they were determined that none of their children, especially their four daughters, would get married too early.)

As I grew up, I learned that women who continued working after having kids were “selfish” and weren’t making choices that were “best for her family”. It did worry me because I have always been very career minded and I didn’t want to go through all the education and just work a few years before having children. But my mother would use her mantara “an education is never wasted” and tell me that maybe I would raise a child (a son, of course) who would change the world.

This never came to a crisis point because I never meet anyone that I was interested in who was also interested in me. (I think I may have frighten them since I could out think and out reason most of them.) I graduated toward the top of my class with a bachelors in physics and mathematics. I went to graduate school in physics and graduated five years later with my Ph.D. in theoretical physics (just as planned). Then I got my dream job: teaching physics at a small liberal-arts college.

Along the way, I dealt with depression. Fortunately my parents were very supportive and got me into counseling and a doctor’s office less than a week after they figured out what was going on.

Since then my depression has come and gone and come and gone several times. It’s always worse when I had unstructured work time. (E.g. after I finished my classes in grad school and was working on my thesis.) After I got my job, the academic year would be incredibly productive and then breaks were awful, I couldn’t get anything done, I would spend days just sitting on the sofa. So I started returning to my parent’s home to spend the summer with them and my younger siblings still at home. These summers were significantly more productive than being on my own.

I think I might be the only person on campus who actively loathes long breaks. I love spring break, but the four weeks between semesters and the endless summer months are far too long for me.

A few years into my job, I realized that even if I had kids someday in the future, I could never quit my job and become a full-time at-home mother. I would become depressed in a matter of months. And that, being depressed all the time, that would destroy my future family. The only way I could be healthy (essential for a having a healthy family) was to keep working.

Embarrassed, I talked with my mom about it. She agreed with me! Staying home was not an viable option for me and that a mother working full-time was the best thing for some families.

This past week, I was at home visiting (winter break — four long weeks without school). As is tradition, I went to lunch with my dad. We talked mostly about my boyfriend (my first! Of course, he’s fantastic, I have very good taste.). But one thing he said in passing was that he and my mom had already decided (between the two of them) that I should be a working mom — it was the best thing for me and my future family. It was very comforting to know that my conclusions are the same as two of the people who know me best. (I tend to see my parents as free advice — some people pay millions for personal advice. I listen and then decide what I want to do.)

I’m claiming “working mother” as my word. It will be my way of raising healthy kids which would be impossible if I stayed at home full-time.

Note: if you or anyone you know is struggling with depression, there is help. Depression is an illness and you can get better. Like most illnesses, depression will not resolve on it’s own, you need professional care from experienced doctors and counselors. Please do not delay, make an appointment to see your doctor immediately and ask him/her for a recommendation for a counselor.

If you have a loved one struggling with depression, I can recommend that you read Brooke Shields’ book on her experience with postpartum depression. After my mom read it, she began talking in ways that I understood and was incredibly encouraging to me. This book changed my life and I’ve never even read it (I have no desire to relive the dark times).

January 21, 2014 by SamanthaField

Theology

learning the words: conviction

Today’s guest post is from Carol. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

“It’s going to be especially hard on her, because she has convictions.”

My mom was talking about my 11-year-old niece, who was about to start attending public middle school. I had to bite my tongue and change the subject. Did she think that I did not have the same “convictions” at that age? To her, my becoming a liberal and dropping out of our Southern Baptist church must’ve seemed like I just…didn’t believe hard enough in the things that I had been taught. I wasn’t strong enough.

To my mom, my niece is not like the other kids her age, who are being deluded and probably have divorced parents who drink alcohol at home. And she’s especially not like those godless public school teachers who insist on exposing her to evolution and alternate December holidays. And she’s not like me, who wavered, and then left the faith.

Just like I did when I was her age, my niece firmly believes in Southern Baptist teachings: biblical literalism, creationism, the importance of accepting Jesus as “your personal Lord and Savior,” and all the rest. And why wouldn’t she? Everyone she loves and trusts has told her how important it is, and she sincerely wants to do what’s right.

But to my mom, the development of your convictions should stop there.

~~~~~~~~~~

After this conversation, it struck me that I hadn’t heard–much less spoken–the word “convictions” in years. I want less to reclaim the word itself than to banish it from my vocabulary altogether, and replace it with something more meaningful.

“Convictions” was a character trait to be admired in the world I came from: it meant that you stood up for what you believed and yelled loudly for your team. But most importantly, if you have convictions, you stick to them, no matter what arguments you might hear against them. There is, of course, a very dark side to that, because it doesn’t allow any room for questions or growth.

For me, changing my beliefs was one of the hardest things I’ve done and took strength and perseverance. It did not mean caving to a powerful argument from someone else. Instead, it meant allowing myself to examine my beliefs and change them to something I thought was better. This was in opposition to the pressure to remain exactly like I was at age 11, when my “convictions” were just right.

Ironically, leaving my family’s faith meant staying true to my real convictions more than standing still would have. Once I started questioning and being honest with myself, my only other choices were to live in denial, or hypocritically play a part that I no longer agreed with.

~~~~~~~~~~

Everyone has convictions, or deeply held beliefs. My niece isn’t unique among her peers in that respect. What is different in her case, however, is how those convictions are viewed.

“Convictions” should not mean a dogma that is handed down. And standing strong in your convictions should not mean stubborn refusal to change or listen to other points of view.

It goes without saying that we should try to do what we believe is beneficial and promote ideas we think are good. But we should also accept that those beliefs can–and should–develop. Our dogma should not be more important than our actual, continually developing, convictions.

January 20, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

learning the words: godly woman

Today’s guest post is from Artemis. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

Growing up in a conservative homeschool family that religiously used the ATI/Bill Gothard curriculum and were heavily involved in our conservative home church, I came in contact with this term “a godly woman,” on a constant basis. Whether it was sermon on Sunday, a book that my mom found at the local homeschool book fair and assigned as part of my school curriculum, or a side comment from a peer, I acquired a huge foundation for this term. And I became very familiar with fear that accompanies this mindset.

What was a godly woman anyway? The numerous scriptures, pamphlets, and books I soaked up on this topic all followed one basic pattern. A specific set of criteria to attain to be a godly woman and of course a KVJ scripture to accompany each set of criteria.

A Godly Woman:

Seeks God first – Matthew 6:33-34
Shows true beauty – Proverbs 31:30, 1 Timothy 2:9-10
Always speaks love and truth –Proverbs 31:26
Stays humble – Isaiah 66:2, Phillippians 2:3-5
Serves the Lord – John 12:25-26, Colossians 3:23

As a young girl who desperately wanted to mysteriously attract the Mr. Right, I bought into all of these lies. So what did being a godly girl look like for me?

Dress codes

Dress codes were enforced by my church, my homeschool group, and my parents, because godly girls always dress modestly. My mom, sister, and I made our own clothing, and we followed the dress law down to the last rules. We shopped around until we found fabric that was a small, appropriate print made up of a fabric content that would not cling to our skin. These dresses had necklines that covered my collarbone, sleeves that came to my elbow, very full skirts that came to my ankles, and a double layered bodice (to ensure none of my curves were visible in any way). My wardrobe consisted of two to three church dresses, a few casual dresses, and a handful of play dresses. They were accompanied by a simple pair of sandals in the summer or a pair of plain, black closed toe shoes in the winter.

Behavior

As a godly woman in the making, I was not allowed to talk with guys for more than a short conversation within ear shot of my peers. In fact, if a girl initiated conversation with a guy at church for more than one or two weeks in a row, she was automatically put on the radar and the words slut and ungodly were thrown around when speaking about her. It was best if I waited and let the guys initiate the conversations so that way I would be off the hook and allow them to rise to their calling by being godly leaders (whatever that means). Because of these behavior expectations, it also meant I used a very soft voice whenever I was speaking, that I constantly dropped my eyes whenever a guy looked at me or attempted to engage me in conversation, and that I stifled my laugh.

Relationships

Relationships with a girl’s parents and siblings were of utmost importance. Why? Because a godly girl grew up to be a godly, stay at home mother and wife. End of story. A few relationships with female peers were acceptable, but not required. I clearly remember how I was willing to do anything and everything to ensure all five of my younger brothers were ready on time for church on Sunday. At the time I didn’t understand why I was always on cloud nine when getting ready for church or so upset when we were late. I now understand; it was my one and only social interaction with those outside of my family each week. Relationships are necessary and having limited social events each week set me up for a lot of unhealthy expectations and poor social skills.

The summer I was 15, my world came crashing down. My parents discontinued our membership at that church. We left the church that constructed my entire belief system, my entire social circle, my entire religion, my entire life. I say left, but that fails to adequately describe the deep shame, ostracization, and rejection that composed this leaving. The following years were very confusing as I found myself personifying the woman that I had been warned about throughout my entire childhood and teen years. I graduated from high school on time and began thinking about future plans for my life. I spent time volunteering with an after school program in the inner city, fundraising and going on an international mission trip, working at a private preschool and a bookstore, and finally I began my undergrad degree. I worked outside the home, I traveled, I made my own income, I made friendships with those whose beliefs did not match mine, I began developing friendships with guys for the heck of it, I began pursuing higher education and I loved all of it.

What does a godly woman look like to me now?

I believe the godly woman is a myth, a myth created to manipulate girls and women into pursuing something they can never attain. I believe we are all at different stages of life, we all have different experiences, and we are all in different places with our beliefs about God, but none of this dictates whether we are a godly woman. I no longer believe in the existence of the godly woman. I believe in the existence of true women, because a true woman will listen to her heart and follow it. I believe a true woman will open her heart and share what is taking place whether it is happiness, sadness, frustration, or anger. I believe that true woman celebrate life with each other, instead of engaging in shaming when we fail to meet each other’s preconceived expectations. I believe a true woman will be willing to take risks and pursue what she wants. I believe a true woman will follow her heart, even if it goes against what her parents taught her, even if it is very different from what she was raised with, even if it doesn’t seem to be the safest answer. I believe that a true woman will continually further her knowledge through higher education, travel, and relationships.

And I believe all true women are beautiful, because we are all in this process of listening to our heart, sharing our heart, and learning believing our heart. Essentially this means we are opening up and shinning the beautiful women we were always meant to be.

January 15, 2014 by SamanthaField

Theology

learning the words: beauty

Today’s guest post is from Boze Herrington, who blogs about art, poetry, fantasy, religion, and popular culture at The Talking Llama. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

“Boze, why are you reading Shakespeare when you should be preparing for the end times?”

In the cult I was a part of in college, statements like this were often used as a way of attacking the spiritual maturity of believers who were “distracted” by culture or beauty. We believed that when Jesus returned to the earth in the next couple of decades, he would preside over the largest book burnings and CD burnings the world had ever seen. Any songs, movies, or novels deemed insufficiently Christian would be purged from the shelves of the libraries and scrubbed from the memories of the faithful, forever.

Unfortunately this mindset is typical of the thinking of many American Evangelicals. Things are not good in themselves but only to the extent that they directly portray Jesus.

For example, someone might engage in corporal acts of mercy such as feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, and battling human trafficking. But unless this person is a born-again believer who presents the Gospel while doing it, it’s a “false justice,” a counterfeit justice, and a forerunner of the Antichrist’s end-times humanitarian movement. “If it’s not Jesus,” I’ve been told, “it’s not justice.”

Likewise with beauty. I’m an artist and a writer; I love beautiful things. But throughout my life I’ve been told that “God is not found in books and seminaries and museums,” that the music of Mozart and Beethoven is not honoring to Jesus, that I’m wasting my time looking for glimpses of God’s beauty in the material world when the fullness of his self-revelation is found in the Bible. And not being theologically empowered to deal with these accusations, I suffered for years with guilt and shame and self-condemnation, thinking I was a horrible person because I was fascinated with art, with culture, with the things of this world.

~~~~~~~~~~

“A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music, and nature,” said Pope Benedict, “can be dangerous.” For the vast majority of the world’s Christians who belong to one of the great sacramental traditions (Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox), the world is an enchanted place.

In the Catholic faith to which I belong now, we have what are called “the three Transcendentals.” The three Transcendentals are Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. These are the ultimate desires of all humanity, the qualities towards which all of us are striving whether we know it or not.

And here’s what’s remarkable about it. God is not only connected in some tangential way with each of these three things. He IS each of these three things. He’s more than good; he is Goodness itself. He’s more than true; he is Truth. He’s not merely beautiful; he is Beauty.

What this means, ultimately, is that whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is beautiful in the world or in human culture points to and reflects Jesus.

I can never fully convey the freedom I felt the first time it occurred to me that a song didn’t have to mention Jesus a certain number of times in order to honor him. The elegant lament of a French horn, the spirited clamor of castanets, the saxophone’s hopeless wail are all good in themselves because they reflect something in God’s heart, because Jesus is the incarnation of the reason by which the universe is woven and ordered, and music, good music, is inherently rational, and beautiful, and good.

“This is my Father’s world; he shines in all that’s fair.” And you don’t need to have a vision of the throne room up in heaven to see the splendor of God shining, for beauty isn’t some ethereal, abstract thing to be mentally apprehended; beauty is a tangible thing, a thing to be seen and tasted and savored, a thing of the body as well as the heart. Beauty himself has taken on flesh and lived among us. And in saving and sanctifying the world he has begun restoring it to its original goodness.

All my life I’ve been told that nothing matters except Jesus. The reality is that everything matters because of Jesus. And we see glimpses of his beauty in all that is good.

In the towering sobriety of high mountains,
In the playfulness and cunning of foxes and ‘possums,
In the shimmering vastness of dark waters,
In the splendor of fire and swiftness of wind,
In the elegiac phrasing of a novel by Fitzgerald,
In the radiant polyphony of a forty-piece motet,
In the infinite capacity for love and reflection expressed in a human face.

Like the bread and wine of the sacraments, through the Incarnation the whole world is now gloriously transformed into an icon of God.

November 4, 2013 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

learning the words: disorder

Today’s guest post is from one of my amazing readers, Airmid. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

Having grown up in a very conservative homeschooling family, I remember certain areas in which it was simply accepted that we were right and everyone else was dead wrong. It was an atmosphere that distrusted everything conventional. Education, medicine, nutrition, politics… we believed most people were wrong. Possibly it was deliberate, possibly they were all just deceived, but either way, the conventional wisdom could never be accepted.

One of the areas where I remember this being most strongly expressed was anything remotely related to psychology. Even Christian psychology was regarded with great suspicion, and not to be trusted because psychology itself could not be trusted. In fact, I remember seeing a commercial—a rarity in and of itself, because it meant the tv was on—for a Catholic hospital advertising a treatment for depression, and the response from my mother was “it’s so sad that they proclaim the name of Jesus but aren’t offering the true solution.”

Contributed to by a number of complicated factors including family tragedies, being very overweight, and probably a genetic predisposition on both sides, I experienced several severe episodes of depression as a teenager. One in particular, lasting a year and a half, is the time I refer to as living in a black hole.

Thing is, I have to assume it was depression then. Even though I had most of the symptoms and almost certainly would have met the criteria for a diagnosis, I don’t know what to call it because I was never allowed to look for help. The message I received, whether intentionally communicated or not, was “You chose this. Yes, tragedy may have happened and you had a right to be sad for awhile, but snap out of it and pull yourself together. Don’t you see the shame you’re causing us? You have no right to be depressed. You’re just angry at God.”

And to a certain extent they had a point. To a certain extent, I was choosing to hang on to the depression. To a certain extent I was angry at God. To a certain extent. I thought it was the only thing that made me me. Looking back, I have to wonder how your child believing depression was her identity and she had to hold onto it or lose herself was not cause for even more serious concern than simply depression in and of itself.

I want to go back to the thought “you have no right to be depressed.” I believed that. I believed I had no right to the name depression and no right to call it a disease outside myself. I believed that I was at fault for being depressed because I “chose” it. Because that was the message I had always received. ADHD and every other behavioral disorder out there? Maybe real. Some of them. Certainly over-diagnosed. Depression? Suck it up and look on the bright side. Anxiety? You’re not trusting God enough. All these disorders weren’t nearly as real as the world was making them out to be. They’re taking sins slapping a label of “disorder” on them, and suddenly the treatment isn’t discipline or prayer or trying harder and being less selfish, it’s just medication.

In some rare cases, there might be a valid point there, but all it ever did was hurt me. That mindset told me that I could never actually have a disorder. Whether it was intended or not, the message I got was that it was all my fault. Many years later, having been clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and still strongly suspicious of clinical depression as well, causing my college years to be their own version of hell, I had a conversation with my parents about the possibility of medication for treatment, since I was still a financially dependent college student. In response, my parents told me in the strongest terms imaginable that the idea was unthinkable and not only would they not support me, I would not be allowed in their house if I chose to take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication. They emphasized that accepting a diagnosis and seeking treatment would make the disorder me. Accepting the version of reality in which I was a person with depression and anxiety would make me identify with the disorders and they would become an inescapable fate.

And in that moment, I realized with utter clarity it was a lie.

Everything I had heard up to that point made the disorder my identity. The only thing to make it separate was naming it. A name set it apart. A name made it other and outside me. A name gave it an identity as something Not Me. And with a name, I could fight it.

Without a disorder, I was fighting an unknowable opponent in the dark. Or worse, fighting myself. With a disorder, strangely, I now have hope. Because something outside of me is something I can fight. Most of all, it’s something I can have hope of beating without destroying myself in the process.

October 28, 2013 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

learning the words: abuse

Tamara Rice is an editor and write and a frequently loud-mouthed advocate for victims of abuse within the church who blogs at Hopefully Known. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

trigger warning for child abuse, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse

Where I come from abuse was a term reserved for vicious violence. I’m not really sure why or how this protection around the word came to be, but I know that great care was taken to distinguish between parents who were abusive and parents who were merely … very bad parents. Between sexual boundaries being crossed in a way that was sexually abusive and in a way that was more … molestation. Between spiritual authority being misused in an evil way that was spiritually abusive and in a way that was simply … unfortunate. Abuse, in short, was reserved for what I now might put in the category of sadistic torment—the stuff they make horror films about.

Under these narrow definitions, abuse was rarely encountered in my growing up years (or so we thought), and maybe that was the whole point. Defined as such, abuse was kept at arm’s length, out of our circles. Abuse happened to people on the news and in salacious Stephen King novels, it didn’t happen to us, it didn’t happen in our fundamentalist Baptist church, it didn’t happen in the missionary community we were part of overseas.

~~~~~~~~~~

By the time I reached my 30s I had very little to do with the faith community of my childhood. I had married a man in ministry and had gone on to be part of churches and religious organizations where legalism was rare and the kind of fundamentalism I’d grown up with was rarer still. I got it out of my system and left it behind. And then in 2011, I got sucked back in.

I began to fight alongside several old friends to bring justice for the victims of a missionary from our childhood and to call into account the Baptist mission board who had been mishandling the pedophile’s exposure for over twenty years.

Even now, it’s hard to put this story into a few brief words. The pain is still thick at the back of my throat and the journey isn’t over. But from the moment I stepped back into that fundamentalist world, the term abuse grew to encompass so much more than violence. I grew to understand it in its fullness, as it was meant to be understood–as I wish I had understood it from a very young age.

The justice endeavor began as an effort to bring healing to a friend and her family who had been deeply wounded by the pedophile and mission board, but over time it became very clear that I suffered sexual abuse myself—something I had long pushed back and denied and reasoned away, despite it explaining decades of emotional instability. New information made it undeniable, and I had to face the things my mind had hidden. Then, as I fought for justice, I became the victim of spiritual and emotional abuse as well.

First came the e-mails and blog comments from total strangers calling me a tool of Satan and an enemy of the gospel. Verses were thrown at me—at us—and we, the victims,were admonished not to touch “God’s anointed.” The vile things that self-proclaimed Christians will say in anonymity is appalling. If self-righteous curses of “shame on you, you whore of Satan” could kill, I’d be dead from the anonymous e-mails of vitriol and hate I have read.

The harder we pushed for justice, the closer the abusers came. Now it wasn’t just strangers dishing out spiritual and emotional abuse on the internet, it was people we had called “aunts” and “uncles” in our youth. Verses, again, were thrown at us. We were reminded to forgive, reminded of the supposedly innocent family members who were embarrassed and hurt by the pedophile’s public exposure, but who—let’s face it—probably knew a certain amount but lived in denial all along. “What about them?” the emails would say. “You’re being evil and cruel. They don’t deserve this.” And they, the family, didn’t deserve it. That’s true. But neither did we, and neither did any other child.

False familial titles (the cult-like “aunt”/“uncle” monikers) and childhood nicknames were doled out in long e-mails, phone calls and voicemail messages from those whose were rightly being questioned. I stopped taking the calls, stopped listening to the messages, but not before a few left their mark. “This is your ‘Aunt’ ______. We’re hurting so much over all these accusations. We looove you, Tammy,” she said, her voice thick with emotion I couldn’t understand given we’d hardly known each other, hadn’t seen each other since I was fifteen, and she was using a name no one outside my family had called me in over two decades.

It was a poorly disguised attempt to guilt me into silence over a leadership “mistake” her husband had made. Her husband should have be shouting from the rooftops that he’d been wrong, done something criminal under the mandated reporting laws, done something morally shameful. But instead the wife was sent to sway me, to spare her and their grown children this sadness.

Her voicemail haunted me for weeks, not because she got to me, because she didn’t. It was because she had tried. Because she had invoked love and false familiarity and spiritual obligation in her desperation to silence me. I was shocked—utterly shocked—at the subtle insidiousness of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The misplaced resentment against us, against me, personally, grew to epic proportions when a friend exposed a second pedophile a few years later—and by misplaced resentment I mean more spiritual and emotional abuse. I mean using scripture wrongly and improperly, using relationships and pasts and church authority wrongly and improperly, I mean hurting and injuring by maltreatment, I mean the continuation of corrupt practices and customs, I mean language that condemns and vilifies unjustly and intemperately. I mean all of those things above that Webster’s and Farlex tell us are the definition of abuse. I suffered these things publicly and privately from the mission board, from people I barely knew, and from people I knew well.

At one point, a man who grew up on the same mission field as I did launched a Facebook page vilifying me. His page banner labeled me a fascist, but the reality was he didn’t even know me well enough to use my married name of almost twenty years. One by one, I watched as adults and former friends of my formative years overseas “liked” his page, all because they didn’t like men they admired being exposed for the havoc they had wreaked in the lives of young women who were now middle-aged and grown and no longer being silent.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, really, except that then this Facebook group started in on my faith, mocking me, using my words against me, twisting who I was. Knowing I shouldn’t read their bitter words that came from a narrow view of faith I didn’t even subscribe to, I read anyway, sickened that I had become the target of hate and abuse when there were pedophiles sleeping as free men.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The spiritual and emotional abuse of these years, and the time I spent coming to terms with my sexual abuse—it’s all left me battered.

I retreated for quite a while after the Facebook incident, and I’ve never made a full comeback to that particular justice effort. I wish so much that I could tell you that justice and truth won out. That doing the right thing and exposing sin (no, make that crimes) paid off. But it didn’t and it hasn’t. It has been the most painful exercise in futility of my life.

My consolation, however, is this: I know what abuse is now. Sexual. Spiritual. Emotional. And because I’ve learned the word I can call it what it is. I can give it a name. I can see it when it happens to me or in front of me. And I can cry and grieve and hurt, but then I can get up and walk away and find healing in a safer place. Because the word has lost its power now that my vocabulary has grown.

October 4, 2013 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

learning the words: even the ugly ones

Today’s guest post is from Dani Kelley, who writes about feminism, abuse, and recovery at Crooked Neighbor, Crooked Heart. Also, I’ve been so freaking excited about this post for a while, and I’m thrilled I get to share it with you.
“Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

The past few years, I have been on an intentional journey into freedom from the panic, rage, and fear that has been the constant undercurrent of my young life. A big part of that journey has included the freedom to look at the horrible things in life and to say with confidence and conviction, “Fuck. This. Shit.”

Profanity was not allowed when I was growing up (and at the time words like “heck,” “gosh,” “darn,” and “shut up” were included). There were always lots of reasons given, mostly in the form of Bible verses about letting no profane word come out of your mouth or letting your speech be always with grace seasoned with salt. One that always stuck out and appealed to me was that people only swear because they lack the intelligence and vocabulary to otherwise express themselves.

I call bullshit.

Another that I heard a lot (and continue to hear) is that profanity just isn’t appropriate. It isn’t very nice. It’s especially not something that good girls use when speaking.

I say, fuck that.

On some level, I’ve always understood the power of words. I remember as a young child, when a terrifying rage I couldn’t understand would boil up inside me, I would brokenly tell God that I didn’t know what the heck to do. (In my more honest moments, I would actually say hell. I’ll give you a moment to gasp and clutch your pearls.)

As a teenager and young adult, I waffled back and forth on my stance on language. Many times I would cling to my moderately impressive vocabulary and spout the “I’m too smart to swear” defense, hiding behind my classism and ableism like a child hides behind his mother’s skirts. Other times, the pain of a dozen betrayals, great and small, would overwhelm me until I swore quietly to myself (or violently to trusted friends) as a release valve.

Then there were the other times, the more dangerous times, when I used the strength of cursing to inflict pain on myself, to condemn myself for my perceived Biblically-declared depravity, filth, and worthlessness. It seemed to me that the Bible’s strongest language was reserved for sinners, to describe the depth of our evil. And so I internalized that message and adopted such language most harshly for myself, because I was convinced that I was unworthy and unclean.

(Allow me a moment to again say, FUCK. THAT. NOISE.)

Ahem.

Without profanity, I never had the words to deal with the horrible situations in my life and in the lives of others — the betrayals, the abuses, the heartbreaks and horrors, the ever-growing doubt about whether God was good or a monster. There simply were not Christian words strong enough to do these things justice. Instead, I made myself as numb as I could to pain, and I kept it carefully bottled inside, shared only with a few trusted friends, and only then what was acceptable to share. I hid my panic, I hid my rage, I hid my doubts, I hid the depth of the wounds that were so deep I couldn’t hide them even though I wanted to. I hid them all with my exemplary vocabulary, Christian platitudes, acceptable euphemisms, and cheap imitation curses.

But after years and years of hiding and self-destructing, it has gotten too damn hard, and I am done.

I’m not hiding the pain anymore. I’m not hiding the doubt, fear, or rage. I am describing them with the most colorful language I can muster, to paint the clearest picture I can. I am living openly and honestly and looking you straight in the eye when I do so instead of ducking my head and muttering, “His ways are higher than our ways,” or “Just trust in the Lord and everything will work out for His glory!” I am grabbing your hand and saying with confidence, “This shit is fucked, and I am so sorry, and I love you and we will get through this.”

And in all of this, the dark places are being exposed, and I can see a little more clearly, breathe a little more freely. I’m finding a smidgen of peace through this seemingly tiny thing of finally allowing the ugly words to describe the ugly things in life.

October 2, 2013 by SamanthaField

Theology

learning the words: love

Today’s guest post is from Timothy Swanson, who blogs about his literary explorations at Diary of an Autodidact. “Learning the Words” is a series on the words many of us didn’t have in fundamentalism or overly conservative evangelicalism– and how we got them back. If you would like to be a part of this series, you can find my contact information at the top.

As in so many other aspects of the Fundamentalist/Christian Patriarchy worldview, the twisting of the meaning of words comes through a long series of half-truths. An idea that is true to a degree will be taken just beyond that degree. Then the next idea builds on that, and so forth, until the original meaning of a word has travelled so far from its intuitive and normal meaning that it almost cannot be recognized.

Let me explain how this happens for the concept of “love.”

Throughout Christian culture – and even in our culture in general – there is the idea that “love” isn’t just a feeling. It is an active word that must manifest itself in our actions, not just in our emotions.

As I noted above, statements like this are true, to a point. Love, in the deep sense, cannot be merely an infatuated feeling like “puppy love.” If you really love someone, it will come out in actions. Country Music singer-songwriter Clint Black wrote a delightful and mushy song, Something That We Do, which captures the good side of this idea, the intertwining of emotion and action. Our feelings of love and our loving actions feed on each other, support each other, and together make up this messy, complicated thing we call love.

So far, so good.

The next step in the progression gets more interesting, however. Most of us Generation Xers are familiar with the concept of “tough love,” which was a bit of a trend and a buzzword in the 1980s and 90s. In essence, it was a refusal to enable self-destructive behavior. When one truly loved another, one would not contribute to a person’s self-destruction. Thus, it would not be loving to give one’s child money to buy drugs, for example. Or lie to protect a loved one from the legal consequences of committing a crime. The point of “tough love” is that by refusing to protect a person from consequences or contribute to bad behavior, one would be doing the more “loving” thing. The best result would be for the errant person to bottom out, and make a change for the better, rather than stumble along due to the enabling. Again, this idea is largely true, to a point.

Let’s follow the progression. Love is an action, not just an emotion. Enabling self-destructive behavior is not a loving action. Allowing a person to suffer the natural consequences of bad actions is the loving action, because it is more likely to lead to a change in behavior. We parents do this to our kids sometimes. A child might miss an opportunity to play with friends because he or she didn’t finish the schoolwork, for example. This is part of good parenting: teaching children to link actions and consequences, and take responsibility for their choices.

To this point, we haven’t gotten off track, but we have set the groundwork for what follows.

The next link is this: love means wanting and seeking “the best” for the beloved. Now this one is a genuine half-truth. Sometimes it is true. If a person also desires the same “best,” then it would be loving to help support that person in seeking that “best.” But what if something that is “the best” isn’t desired by the person? Let’s say I think that the “best” for one of my children would be a degree in medicine. That’s a good thing, surely! Unless the child would prefer a less lucrative career. Would I really be loving by wishing for the “best” rather than the “good enough” that my child wants? This is a dilemma for all of us in a variety of situations.

What comes next? For Fundamentalists, the next step is the definition of “best.” The “best” isn’t some subjective standard. “Best” means God’s best. It means God’s will for a person’s life. It means doing things “God’s way.”

Again, this is a half-truth in practice, if not exactly in theory. In theory, pretty well all Christians would agree that our goal in life is to do God’s will, to follow Christ, and so forth. So far, so good.

But it goes wrong in Fundamentalism because of the next turn. This requires a few assumptions:

We (the fundamentalists) know God’s will on most or all things.
God’s will is the same for everyone (of a certain gender, at least), regardless of situation, personality, or any other consideration.
God’s will can be expressed primarily as a set of detailed rules.

Now the links connect. Love is an action, not a feeling. Love is expressed through refusing to enable bad behavior. Love seeks the best for a person, not something less. The best is God’s will for a person. We know God’s will for a person. God’s will is these rules.

THUS:
Love for a person is expressed by telling them to follow the fundamentalist rules.

Or, if that fails to get them to follow the rules, taking other actions to force them to do so. Nagging. Coercion. Expressing disapproval. If possible, forcing them. In some cases, shunning until the rules are followed.

For some surprising reason, the recipient of this “love” usually finds the “love” to not be particularly loving.

Thus, the series of half-truths twists the meaning of “love” as it is commonly understood until it is unrecognizable. I actually had a Reconstructionist friend of a friend make the claim that forcing people to obey God’s law was the same as sharing the Gospel with them. Not “as important as,” not “similar to.” The same as. Because forcing people to follow the rules is now defined as the best way to show love. As the most extreme example, I would wager that Fred Phelps (“God Hates Fags.”) believes he is loving.

This applies in lesser degrees across the fundamentalist spectrum. A fundamentalist can be “loving” by constantly expressing disapproval of a skirt deemed too short. A fundamentalist can be “loving” by keeping his or her children from associating with other children who listen to the wrong kind of music. A fundamentalist can be “loving” by loudly proclaiming that no “true Christian” would vote Democratic. And the list goes on. Calling out women who work outside the home. Complaining about easy-bake ovens marketed to boys. Make your own list! There are plenty of rules to choose from.

Because of this new definition of love, certain things that are generally associated with love can be disregarded. How about communication? Seeing the other side’s point of view? When one already knows God’s position on everything, that is all that is necessary (conveniently, you already know God agrees with you). Empathy? Not so much, obviously. Bearing each other’s burdens? Those burdens are self inflicted in the fundamentalist view. First start following the rules, then we talk.

The result is this: the twisted definition of “love” enables the fundamentalist to believe that he or she is loving while engaging in behavior that is, in reality and common understanding, unloving.

September 18, 2013 by SamanthaField

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