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iron sharpeneth iron

iron sharpeneth iron, part two

Growing up, I received some very specific messages about relationships and friendships. For many Christians, evangelicals in particular, who you choose for your friends is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in life. Aside from the idea that men and women are not allowed to be friends (which is so large a concept it’s almost a completely separate issue), we’re given a set of guidelines for how we initiate and structure all of our friendships.

One of the very first principles that we’re given is that while it’s ok to be friends with people who are “in the world,” or “non-Christians,” we’re not supposed to form deep attachments to them. This idea springs from verses like “A righteous man is cautious in friendship, but the way of the wicked leads them astray” (Pro. 12:26). The “wicked,” here, is not referring to truly wicked people, actually. “Wicked” people, in Christian parlance, are the unsaved, the non-elect. It’s not possible for us to form deep bonds with unregenerate people, and, if we do, the only thing that can happen is for the “wicked” to drag us down.

We’re given many metaphors to explain this idea– a rotten apple ruins the whole bunch, you can’t put clean water in muddy water to make the muddy water clean . . .

What this does, however, is set up a false dichotomy for us: Christians are completely unlike “non-Christians,” so much so that just associating with “them” can cause our downfall. We’re better than they are. Oh, I’m positive hardly anyone would actually say that, but, sadly, it’s what they mean. We’re more moral, more upstanding, have higher standards, better goals, and throwing a “non-Christian” into our attempts to be “holy” can only cause us problems.

This leaves us with only one purpose for interacting with “non-Christians”: evangelization. Sometimes we’re encouraged to be quite overt about this, but, most of the time, we’re just told to have a “shining testimony” in front of our non-Christian friends. And that . . . leads to problems, in my experience. Because then you wind up with self-righteous teenagers who think that adhering to the party line is what a “testimony” is. Defend your faith! we’re ordered, but, most of the time, all that looks like is defending our parent’s politics.

After we make sure we’re not fraternizing with the enemy too much– just enough to make sure they ~~know we’re better than them~~ see our testimony– what are we supposed to do with our friends who are Christians?

The basic, guiding, principle behind most Christian friendships is the concept of “iron sharpeneth iron.” That’s our purpose in friendship. Sometimes this is described as “edification.” We’re supposed to do all we can to help our brothers and sisters in Christ become better Christians. We’re to help each other stay on the straight and narrow, and, if we see someone straying from the path of righteousness? Well, “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Pro. 27:5-6) or “Two are better than one . . . For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow” (Ecc. 4:9).

But, what I’ve experienced, and what I heard from many of you yesterday, is what this mentality frequently leads to is all of us watching each other like hawks. We start wondering who’s going to slip up next? We start looking for things like “besetting sins” in each other. We offer ourselves as “accountability partners.” In the end, we do everything within our power to maintain the system.

A reader, David, wrote a comment yesterday that I thought made an excellent point:

Part of the issue is that within Christian circles there always seems to be an ulterior motive, not just in terms of friendships but in general. You’re not a friend for the sake of being a friend but because Jesus wants it. You’re not feeding the poor because they need feeding but because it gets you Jesus points. You’re hugging that person because it’s what one does not because you want to hug them. The subversion of social motivations is insidious and so damaging.

And, I have to say, I agree with him. There’s a level of superficiality in most Christian relationships that I think is baffling. Which, I’m not saying that only Christians have superficial relationships, that’s not true at all, but it’s surprising to me that a group of people who are told “they shall know you by how you love one another,” aren’t known for that at all. We’re supposed to be striving for deeper, more meaningful relationships. Friendships where the overwhelming characterestic is love.

I haven’t gotten a whole lot of love from most of my Christian friends.

Condemnation, sure.

Constant admonishments to toe the Christian line, absolutely.

But love? That’s scarce.

For many Christians, however, the two are conflated. Condemnation is love. Accusations are loving.

I’ve had this idea explained to me, on more than on occasion, as “The Poisonous Cookie.” Your friend sees a plate full of cookies, and they look absolutely delectable– all warm and soft and melted chocolate. They decide that they want one, but at the last second before the take the first bite, you snatch it out of their hand. Initially, they’re extremely frustrated with you. “Why would you do something like that?!” But then you explain: you saw the butler put poison on the cookies. If they’d eaten the cookie, they would have died. And, voila, suddenly they’re eternally grateful.

Because, as a Christian, you wouldn’t let someone you cared about do something you know is bad for them, right? The best thing for them is to have a “good relationship with Jesus,” and you have to keep them away from the poison cookies– which could be “sin,” but is frequently “anything that doesn’t conform to our rigid standards for Christian behavior which may or may not have “biblical” backing.”

We’re not really taught what it means to be someone’s friend. We are given messages about love and understanding and “beams and motes” and don’t be judgmental, but it all gets overridden in the flood of be as judgmental as possible.

August 21, 2013 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

iron sharpeneth iron, part one

“I’m really worried about her.”

I was laying in my bed, staring up at my ceiling, envisioning all the different situations one of my dearest friends could find herself in, now that she was living in the downtown of a big city, far away from people she knew and the community she’d grown up in. Handsome was on the phone, listening to my concerns.

“Why? She’s a grown-ass woman. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Well… I’m just worried that she’s away, and so busy, and the only relationships she’s forming are with people that she works with.”

“So?”

That question made me pause. I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by so? This was a straightforward concept, at least to me, and he didn’t seem to understand my concerns at all. Which puzzled me, and I wasn’t sure how I could explain what was, to me, a foundational idea about relationships. I was running into conversations like this one with Handsome more and more often– concepts I’d lived with all my life, that I had accepted as normal, seemed completely foreign to him.

“I… well, I mean, hanging out with non-Christians is fine, but it seems like it’s more difficult. You need Christian friends, too. So they can help you.”

“I don’t understand, Sam. None of my friends growing up were Christians, and I think I turned out just fine.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “Really?”

“Yeah. All my friends were Muslim or Sikh or non-religious. I knew a few people who were Orthodox, but yeah, all my close friends weren’t Christians.”

This was a complete about-face from anything I’d previously been given about the nature of friendship. I fell silent as I struggled to process what Handsome had just handed me– it felt like a deluge, like being thrown into a river and I couldn’t quite tell which way was up.

“Anyway, I don’t think you have anything to be worried about. She’ll be fine.”

We talked for a few minutes longer, but when we hung up, I didn’t move. I continued staring up at the ceiling, recalling past relationships, past friendships I’d had. I realized that I had always assumed that being a Christian made you a better friend, and even through all of my struggles with God and religion and faith, even when I’d lost my faith completely, it was such a deeply held belief that I never even bothered re-thinking it. But, suddenly, I could almost taste how ridiculous the idea was. Nothing about being a Christian makes anything about me intrinsically better than any other human being on the planet. But that was what I’d believed– I’d believed that having Christian friends was better. To an extent, I’d believed that having “non-Christian” friends was almost a waste of time.

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

I was nervous. More nervous than I’d been on my first day of class– more nervous than during my freshman piano audition, even. Philip* had approached me during choir practice and asked if we could go to dinner together after church– just the two of us. I was confused by this, especially since Philip earnestly believed in never being alone with a girl, so whatever it was he was thinking, it was serious. I had accepted, and here I was, sitting at the cafeteria table, waiting for him to get through the line and join me. I arranged the potato chips on my plate, fiddled with my silverware, wiped the condensation off my glass.

I jumped when he appeared, and my heart started beating harder as he took his seat. He said grace, and he dug in while I picked at my tuna sandwich. Eventually, after a horrendously long attempt at small talk, he brought up why he’d asked me to dinner.

“I’m worried about you.”

I didn’t say anything, knowing he’d explain without prompting. I couldn’t even look at him.

“Why have you abandoned all of us?”

I didn’t know how to answer him. Being honest– if he even believed me, it would not be well-received. “I’m just not comfortable hanging out with you guys any more.” I could feel my promise to myself wavering. I’d sworn I wasn’t going to get pulled back into the politics of it all. The backstabbing, the gossip, the lies and manipulation. I was done. I was leaving.

“Why not?” He was careful to keep his voice calm, soothing.

“I just don’t get along with . . . people.”

“Sarah*.” The one word was an accusation. I expected him to know; the problems between me and Sarah had long become obvious to pretty much everyone.

“You’re both being utterly ridiculous.”

That made me look up, look him in the eye. “What do you mean?”

“You two. You’re both squabbling over something that isn’t even your decision to make. It’s mine.”

I cringed. He’d caught on to that. Finally. “I’m not squabbling with her over you, Philip. I could care less.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t believe you.”

“No, honestly. I don’t care. I’m your friend, and that’s it. I don’t want anything more than that. I’m not interested in anything more than that.”

He leaned back his chair, crossing his arms. It was a gesture I knew well. “Then why have you been constantly fighting with her over me?”

I sighed, exasperated. “I don’t like you. But she does, and I think she thinks that I do, too, and so… well, I’m a threat. And she’s been manipulating all of us, and I’m sick of it. I’m not interested in participating anymore. I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but it did no good. So I’m done. It’s pointless, and stupid, and it sucks.”

“I think you should stay.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s your obligation to. We’re friends, and that means that we’re supposed to help each other. Iron sharpeneth iron. You can’t just abandon your friends when you don’t like what they’re doing. You have to help them grow.”

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

“Hey, you think I could try on your scarf? It’s so fluffy!”

I turned from the pool table, grateful for a momentary distraction. I was terrible at pool. I was losing, embarrassingly, to Michael*, who had already imbibed six bears, half a bottle of rum, and a few shots of . . . something that smelled a bit like gasoline. When I saw who had just asked me that, I laughed. “Sure. Absolutely.”

A few minutes later, after Michael had completely stomped all over my terrible billiard-playing abilities, I walked over to introduce myself, and we ended up chatting for a few minutes.

“Hey, you want to catch a smoke?”

“A– what?”

“Do you smoke?”

“Uhm . . . no.”

“Cool. Mind if we go outside while I smoke?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

We stepped out onto the rickety porch and joined a few others who had stepped out of the crowded entryway and living room to get some air or to smoke. Someone I didn’t know launched in to what seemed to be a familiar speech, describing all the benefits of “whole leaf” cigarettes. I got handed one, and in lieu of lighting it on fire and sticking it in my mouth, I sniffed it. “It smells like tea!” my surprised outburst interrupted the flow of conversation. Initially, I was embarrassed. I never knew how to handle myself when I’d inadvertently grabbed attention.

But everyone just laughed. “Of course it does. Awesome, isn’t it?”

And they moved on.

No admonishments about not interrupting people.

No gentle reminders to let everyone take their turn in the conversation.

Nothing.

I looked around at the group of people I’d found myself in– I wasn’t entirely sure how I had ended up here, at this party. But it was the first place I’d ever been where I felt like I could belong. A stranger, someone hardly anyone here had even met before. The shy, nervous little girl who didn’t know how to play pool, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t talk– and when I did talk, it was random outbursts that didn’t fit. The woman standing in the corner nervously fidgeting, obviously desperate to fit in, to be cool. They could see right through it– but they didn’t care.

It didn’t matter where I’d come from, who I was, where I’d been, what I believed, where I went to church, if I went to church. None of it. I was a person. And that was enough.

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

As I lay on my bed that day, my conversation with Handsome over, staring up at my ceiling, I realized something.

By and large, my relationships with regular church-attending evangelicals (with a few notable exceptions, my best friends among them) have been extremely toxic and unhealthy. It took me having friendships with men and woman who had never been Christians, who had grown up Christian but were now agnostic, who were still Christian but would be described as “nominal” or “backslidden” by anyone I’d grown up with, to experience friendship. Real, honest, loving, friendship.

I don’t think Christian culture really knows the meaning of the word.

August 20, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

I Kissed Dating Goodbye review: 123-136

“Just Friends in a Just-Do-It World”

I’m just covering one chapter for today’s review– I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but I got a job at a local used bookstore. Usually I only work two days a week, which makes it doable with my fibromyalgia, but I’ve needed to work the last four days. On top of that, my childhood dog passed away this afternoon (she was 15), so today has been … rough. It’ll be back to the regular schedule on Wednesday, though, never fear.

This is one of those chapters where I just want to throw my hands up into the air and shout “I reject this entire premise!” since it’s basically all practical advice on how not to date, since we all know dating is like falling off a cliff. In fact, being just friends is as difficult as walking a tightrope over a “gaping chasm” (124). Images like these are frustrating because they don’t reflect reality at all. Dating someone and breaking up is not as harmful as falling off a cliff. That kills you. Dating is educational. Breakups are educational. As long as everyone’s boundaries and autonomy are being respected, a little bit of the blues at the end of the relationship isn’t going to kill you. Not even close.

I just do not understand why Joshua believes experiencing some temporary sadness is as horrifying as falling to your death. So, instead, lets take a look at the advice this barely-not-a-teenager person has for people trying to keep things “just friends.”

For this chapter, he’s drawing upon the biblical metaphor of “brothers and sisters in Christ” in order to inform his opinion on friendship. According to him, there are a few characteristics of being someone’s brother or sister in Christ: biblical fellowship, affection, and genuine care.

Biblical Fellowship

He argues that Christian friendships won’t be “shallow and meaningless” like what you see on television sitcoms, instead “their passion isn’t to appear witty, but to grow in godliness” (129). First, I’m pretty confident that most people are aware that their relationships don’t look like sitcoms, but I’m not sure Josh knows that. If he was anything like me at his age, he was told by the authorities he trusted that Seinfeld and Friends are an accurate depiction of secular friendships. Except, things like How I Met your Mother and anything written by Aaron Sorkin are good television because they’re not like real life. No one steals a blue french horn off a restaurant wall in order to impress a girl. Women do not show up in coffee shops wearing their wedding dress looking for their high school buddy and a place to live. But why am I telling y’all this?

The problem with Joshua’s attempt to contrast supposedly secular and Christian friendship fails, because in truth it’s more of a comparison than I think he realizes. I don’t think non-Christians walk around spending all their time trying to appear “witty,” but plenty of the Christians I’ve known do walk around trying to appear “godly.” Most of the relationships I’ve had with church folk have been shallow and meaningless because everyone was making sure they appeared “godly” instead of human. I’ve known some church people for half a decade that I barely know because the only thing I’ve ever heard them talk about is how much God’s blessed them. It’s difficult to form a “deep friendship” with someone who’s never honest because being transparent would threaten their reputation for “godliness.”

Affection

He uses an example in order to explain what he means:

On one occasion the men of the group planned a special dinner for the ladies, served all the food, and even had special gifts for each girl. After the meal the men shared reasons why they respected and valued the friendship of each girl. This is genuine affection! (130)

No, Josh, that’s weird and creepy. This kind of event is also a marker for a cult– churches that actively foster this sort of environment are establishing a boundary-erasing over-involvement. One of the things I’ve had to unlearn is how incredibly bound up together the members of my cult-like church were. There were so many strings tying us up, it was like being caught in a spider’s web. At that place, an event like the one Joshua describes would be commonplace, but I’ve never experienced anything like it at healthier churches … for a reason.

Genuine Care

This one was just sad because the entire section is focused on criticism.

God used our conversation to convict Christina and reveal the dangerous path she was on. She involved her mom and other girlfriends and changed the nature of her friendship with the guy.

I’ve benefited from being challenged as well. My friend Heather provided this kind of care for me when she talked to me about the way I was interacting with the girls in our singles group … It was hard to hear, but God used Heather’s words to help me change. (131)

There’s nothing in here about encouragement, or support, or compassion, or empathy. Nothing about kindness, or faithfulness, or even forgiveness. To Joshua, apparently the only way to “care” about someone is to criticize them. This doesn’t surprise me, considering the only two things I heard about friendship growing up were “faithful are the wounds of a friend” and “iron sharpeneth iron.”

No we get to the practical advice section of the chapter. It’s a lot of “do group things” and “mostly be friends with other men, guys” (which I’ve had words about before), but I want to focus on his first piece of advice:

Understand the difference between friendship and intimacy.

I have no idea what he’s talking about, and I read this section over a few times trying to figure it out. He’s basing this on a C.S. Lewis quote: “We picture lovers face to face, but friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.” He’s saying that friendships are about “things outside the relationship,” while intimacy is supposedly focused on the “relationship itself” (132) and I’m just not following. Friends “do things together” while lovers … don’t?

I’m confused.

I’m a bisexual woman, so theoretically any friendship I have with another woman could potentially turn romantic. None of them ever have for reasons that I can’t possibly explain since, supposedly, staying “just friends” is like “walking a tightrope over a gaping chasm.” Most of my friendships involve us chatting about our lives and things we find discussion-worthy … as does my relationship with my partner. The only difference is I fell in love with him and decided living in the same house as he does sounded pretty amazing. Otherwise, the substance of the things I do with him and my friends don’t look different (except, of course, for the sex. Duh).

I think the problem with this piece of advice is that Joshua simply didn’t have the life experience to talk about it. He’s never been married, or even really experienced adult friendships– all his buddies are still in high school and college at this point. I wonder, given that, what Joshua thinks about this section now.

June 6, 2016 by SamanthaField

Theology

ignoring friendship is destroying the Church

I’ve been mulling over a few thoughts for the past few months, and they all sort of came to a head last night. Suddenly things that didn’t seem to be connected fit together to create one compelling conclusion: the Christian obsession with marriage and family (read: traditional, nuclear) is destroying the Church and her people.

A bit ago I was a part of a discussion group to help a group of pastors who wanted to make sure they created a safe space for LGBT+ people, regardless of whether or not they identified as Side A or Side B. One of the things that was emphasized over the course of the discussion was the absolute need for married-couples centrism to end. Most of the churches I’ve been in don’t know what to do with unmarried people, especially once those people reach 30.

Church is supposed to be a community, but many churches have adopted this mentality of segregating everything up by “life stage” and gender– see Ladies’ Bible Studies and Men’s Prayer Breakfasts and the endless barrage of things for married people to do. At the last church we attended, the church set up a “Dinners for 8” program so married couples of similar ages could get to know each other. They didn’t offer anything similar for single people.

Over time it began to deeply bother me that conservative evangelicals want to shove celibacy down every queer person’s throat, but offer nothing for them. No sense of community, of belonging. Nothing to help strengthen or comfort, or help them get by in a world where they’re forbidden from being with anyone they love. “If you’re gay, then you need to remain celibate,” is the message, but then they just boost them out into the cold dark night of loneliness with a swift kick to the rear.

Another thing that seemed unrelated at first is my beef with the phrase “emotional adultery.” All of us, but most especially married people, are cautioned from basically every side to avoid “close emotional connections with the opposite sex.” This completely ignores non-binary people, who have no “opposite sex,” and bisexual people, because the idea is that we should avoid friendships with the gender we’re attracted to, and bi people are attracted to all genders. It’s also heteronormative, but affects lesbian and gay individuals differently.

Aside from the fact that this “avoid emotional adultery!” teaching is tantamount to “have no friends!” for bi people, it also makes it seem anathema for straight people to have friendships with someone of the same gender– a position that seems completely unsupported in the Bible, what with everyone thinking of each other as brother and sister and having all things in common and hanging out together all the time and greeting each other with holy kisses.

And the last thing was a eureka! moment I had last night: I have never, not once, heard a message on the topic “this is how you can have a good friendship.” Oh, I’ve heard plenty about avoiding people who would “corrupt your good manners” and lots of messages on how “iron sharpeneth iron,” but nothing that covers things like friendships require healthy boundaries or friends should communicate about their needs.

Instead, what we get is lots and lots and LOTS of messages on being a good husband or wife, on the importance of marriage and family, and a fairly basic human need like friendship is completely shoved aside in favor of the Idol of the Nuclear Family. This obsession has wreaked violence and harm in the form of homophobia and anti-marriage-equality bigotry, but it’s also destroyed the Church because we’ve collectively decided that being a community of friends is less important than worshiping a false idol.

One of the things that has always made me wistful and left me longing are the descriptions of the early church in Acts. They cared about each other, helped each other, and it didn’t matter if your family was close by, or if you still had parents living, or if your husband was dead. They thought of each other as individuals, as friends, as community, not as a loosely organized structure of Family Units. You weren’t important to them only as long as you had 2.5 kids, a picket fence, and a dog– being a person created with the Imago Dei was more than enough.

I think the modern American church desperately needs to get back to that. We’ve been so obsessed with “One Man, One Woman” for so many years that it’s made us blind to our basic human needs. We can’t afford to ignore friendship. Without it, we the Church are as clanging brass. The sound of the fury, signifying nothing. If we can’t even offer friendship, what else is there?

Photo by Jeff Golden

September 11, 2015 by SamanthaField

Social Issues

an average homeschooler: college

The night before I left for college, I was a gigantic mess. I was all packed, all ready to go, when I about had a meltdown and my mother stayed up with me late that night trying to talk me out of my tree. I was panicking– absolutely positive that college was going to be nightmarish, that I was going to fail every class, and that I would never be able to adjust to a classroom environment.

Turns out, most of that worrying was for nothing. I did well in the general education courses– although I strongly suspect that it was almost entirely due to the fact that the 101 classes at this college used the exact same textbooks as what I’d used for 12th grade, so we were literally going over the same exact material. When all the review questions from the textbook are the same, turns out the tests and quizzes are largely the same, too. Also, because I was at a fundamentalist college, the classroom environment is completely unlike what you’d see at most other colleges. I believe, looking back, that if I’d tried to enroll in a private or state school, I would have floundered. I might have been able to keep my head above water, but it would have been a struggle every day.

At this school, all seats are assigned– from freshman level all the way through graduate courses. I never experienced a class discussion the entire time I was there. Almost every class was lecture-based, with a few exceptions for “lab” classes that were essentially nothing more than homework review. Given that the environment was this structured, rule-following me actually fit in quite well. I didn’t have to guess at anything, or figure anything out. As far as class was concerned, there wasn’t any protocol that wasn’t explicitly stated.

Socially, my experience was . . . interesting. My freshman year, all of the friends I made were fundamentalist homeschoolers (well, one of them attended an ACE church school). However, even though we were all from similar backgrounds, shared similar beliefs, and were all at this college for pretty much the same reason, we discovered that interacting with other people our age independent of adult supervision is freaking difficult. There was constant bickering and in-fighting, and none of us knew anything about conflict resolution, which led to me abandoning them because I couldn’t stand having a relationship like that anymore. I thought these particular people were just “drama-filled,” but it really wasn’t that. They were struggling just as much as I was, and we didn’t know anything about how to form friendships that weren’t inside the homeschool paradigm. There was certainly fun times– there were reasons we tried to be friends– but in the end, it became too difficult to keep ourselves together. We splintered off, and kept touch with each other, but having a relationship failed.

We also didn’t know basic human realities like it’s impossible for some people to be friends, or that basing a relationship on “iron sharpeneth iron” would probably ruin it. There is some interplay happening between fundamentalism and homeschooling– I won’t deny that– but our homeschooling background was a contributing factor in our relationship difficulties; I would argue that being homeschooled exacerbated problems we were already guaranteed to have from our fundamentalist upbringing.

In conservative religious homeschooling (which, like the rest of homeschooling, is certainly not monolithic, but, again, there are over-arching patterns and commonalities), even for homeschoolers involved in co-ops and groups, socialization doesn’t just mean “interacting with people.” It doesn’t mean “have friends.” In an incredibly basic sense, “socialization” is the process of learning how to act in your culture. If I’m operating inside a fundamentalist religious culture, then I am incredibly well socialized. I know exactly how I’m expected to behave, what role I’m supposed to fill, what “language” to use, and what the societal expectations are. When it comes to interacting with American culture, though . . . I’m lost. And it’s not just that pop culture references fly over my head, that I’ve never seen an episode of The Simpsons and that I’m just now learning about things like hip-hop and Andy Warhol. It’s that I’m still struggling to understand what pluralism means, that Truth is largely inaccessible, that freedom of religion and freedom from religion are just as important..

I also don’t understand how to behave around my peers. I don’t know what constitutes “dominating a conversation” verses merely participating in it, and what the regular give-and-take of conversation looks like. I, like Sheldon Cooper, have no idea what the social protocol is for many situations. Conflict resolution? No idea. I don’t know how to establish and maintain healthy boundaries.

And, on top of that, I spent almost all of my life interacting with people who agreed with me about everything. I did not have the experience of having a conversation with a real-life person where we disagreed about anything significant until I was 23 years old. I was not exposed to people who had substantively different life experiences, who had different understandings of the Christian religion– let alone anyone who wasn’t a Christian. I didn’t meet an out gay person until I was 21. I still haven’t actually met someone who I knew was an atheist or agnostic in real life. I’ve yet to have a conversation with someone, in person, who doesn’t believe in some form of biblical creation. The most dynamic experience I’ve ever had was having a conversation with someone who is Neo-Reformed. After we joined the church-cult, I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t white, and nearly everyone around me was horrifically racist and Islamaphobic.

That’s what we’re talking about when we say that socialization should be a concern for homeschoolers. It’s not that homeschoolers are completely isolated (which they absolutely can be), it’s that socializing your homeschooler has to be intentional, and it is not easy or automatic. Going to church is not enough. Going to a co-op that’s basically the same environment as church is not enough. You have to go out of your way, parents, to make sure that your children are being exposed to ideas–political, philosophical, religious ideas– that aren’t the ones you believe in. You children need to grow up knowing Democrats if you’re Republican, and vice versa. They need to know someone who isn’t a member of your denomination. They need to understand pluralism from first-hand experience.

Because, the second they’re not a homeschooler anymore, the second that they’re struggling to survive in a world filled with multi-culturalism and reasonable arguments for virtually every idea conceivable, they might not be able to deal with it. They could give up on everything they were taught to believe. For many homeschoolers, that typically means Christianity and conservatism.

For many conservative religious homeschoolers, one of the primary reasons to homeschool is to isolate their children, to make sure that they’re not exposed to ideas that the parents find unhealthy or dangerous. You can’t try to do that and make sure that your children are well-socialized, too. They don’t go together.

December 13, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Redeeming Love: Assumptions

Before I get into today’s post, I know there’s a lot on our minds. You know my thoughts on gun violence, and it is beyond enraging to me that more people are dead and hundreds more wounded because Republicans can’t be arsed to care about people. What that white man did in Las Vegas was preventable, and the argument that mass shootings — any shootings at all– are the necessary price we must pay for a hobby is despicable. Get informed about gun violence, responsible regulation, and start agitating for policies to make our country safer from white domestic terrorists and abusers. Our thoughts and prayers are useless if we’re not prompted to action.

And now, because we have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, the Redeeming Love review continues. As always, be aware that this book is an unending shitshow of abuse and assault.

Plot Summary

Angel hitches a ride with a trader to Sacramento.
She gets a job with mercantile-owner Joseph, who’d ordered a stove for Michael.
He keeps her occupied while he sends word to Michael that she’s there.
Michael comes, sexually assaults her.
She agrees to go back with him this time.
Miriam gets a crush on Paul; Paul feels uncomfortable lusting after a 16-year-old.
Both Paul and Angel decide they want Michael to be with Miriam.

***

There’s not a ton of plot movement; honestly, I’ve read a lot of Francine’s writing and I’m confused why this is one of her most popular books. The pacing in this is just … it’s so bad. It’s 450+ pages and honestly I think it could have been easily reduced by a third and we wouldn’t have lost anything. All the agonizing and soul-searching happening in this section is Francine beating a dead horse with Angel’s self-recrimination. She feels ashamed. We get it. However, this is what happens when people take moralizing sermons and try to turn them into books. The point of Redeeming Love isn’t to be a well-written, entertaining story– it’s the theology. Francine really has to drive home to us that we are like Angel, and we need to be convinced of our lowliness, our wretchedness.

In Sacramento, Angel spends half a chapter wandering around looking for employment and walks past a bunch of brothels and saloons, rejecting each as an option. She’s pretty firm about this, too– she knows she can be successful at that, but it’s not what she wants anymore so she keeps walking until she finds Joseph’s store and he offers her a job. However, later in the narrative Francine has Angel remember this day differently. Angel thinks to herself, and says out loud to Michael, that not returning to prostitution was a close thing, and she was indescribably lucky that she found Joseph when she did.

This is another place where Francine’s theological purposes replace good writing. Angel is consistent in her desire to forge a new life for herself away from prostitution, since this has been a common thread in her thoughts since Michael imprisoned her at his farm. However, Francine is re-telling the story of Hosea so she has to have her Gomer character be “enticed” or “tempted” or whatever. Hosea is a framing of Israel’s relationship with idolatry, and Francine has to preserve that framing even when it doesn’t make sense for the characters she’s written.

When Michael shows up, the first thing he does is sexually assault her:

Michael caught hold of her and swung her around. “Oh, yes I do [know why you left]!” He pulled her into his arms. “You left because of this.” He covered her mouth with his. When she tried to push free, he cupped the back of her head. She struggled harder as the betraying warmth stole over her. (305-06).

Hoo, boy. This is the same rape myth that pissed me off in the “Breaker of Chains” Game of Thrones debacle. It’s the myth that women don’t know what we want– if we resist, if we say no, we don’t really mean it. Here, that myth is combined with the prevalent idea that women are supposed to find sexual violence arousing. Angel is being attacked by a man she was actively backing away from — tripping over tables and boots– but when he assaults her she feels a “betraying warmth.” How many times have we seen this exact scene in other books, in TV, in movies? A woman backing away from a manly man who mans very manly-like until her back hits a wall and he’s suddenly there with his manliness and oh swoon.

Confusingly, Angel’s reaction to this whole confrontation again makes sense as an abuse victim. She begins “shaking violently” as he tries to get her things together to leave. Every other description of her emotional state and actions fits right in to what I feel when I’m trying to function through panic attack. Once again, though, Francine is going to ignore that she’s writing a textbook abusive relationship. In this scene, Angel accuses Michael of feeling a “sense of power” and he admits it, but then says “But it’s not a power I’m going to use against you.” Right. Like you didn’t just use your physical power one page ago to sexually assault the woman you have manipulated and kidnapped repeatedly.

Goddess above this is awful.

***

Speaking of manipulation, there’s two incidents I’d like to address although they’re separate from the Angel-and-Michael main plot. The first is Joseph’s behavior in Sacramento. He gives Angel a place to stay and a job, and Angel starts to feel a small sense of redemption and self-respect. She’s doing what she’s always wanted, even if it doesn’t quite look the way she expected. After a couple of weeks, she’s feeling more confident and ready to move on to something more permanent. The second she mentions anything to Joseph, though, he spends the entire day being very strange and confusing. He lies and says his wife suffered a back injury so he needs Angel to stay, and then keeps changing his mind and creating work. At the end of the chapter, Francine reveals those were all delaying tactics so that Angel would still be at the store when Michael shows up.

This is hella manipulative. He outright lies to her and keeps her occupied with busy work all day– work that’s the equivalent of digging holes and filling them back in again– all so that Michael can find her. In fact, he wasn’t just waiting for Michael to show up for the stove, he’d written to Michael and told him Angel was there. But of course Joseph knew better than Angel on what was good for her, so it’s alright.

This happens again with the Altman children back at the farm. Miriam lies to Angel that Ruthie is stuck twenty feet up in a tree and convinces Angel to climb it and rescue her. She’s never climbed a tree before, but she overcomes her fear anyway because she cares about Ruthie and doesn’t want her to get hurt– or, since she’s twenty feet up, possibly die. Once she gets up there, though, she realizes that Ruthie has a rope tied around her and is perfectly safe. She’s understandably upset that she was manipulated, but it’s all in fun and Miriam just somehow knew that Angel needed to climb a tree for some reason, so it’s ok. This is good-natured and loving and adorable and ends with Michael tying up another rope in the tree and making a swing that everyone plays on.

I’m not surprised that Francine has written “friendships” that work this way. Deceitfulness and manipulation are commonplace in conservative evangelical social circles, and it’s acceptable for people to behave like this as long as you’re well-intentioned. The idea that other people know better than you is just par for the course when friendship itself is predicated on the idea that being a friend means being a “iron that sharpeneth iron” or inflicting “faithful wounds” on each other.

Redeeming Love doesn’t have a single example of love, friendship, romance, or healthy relationships anywhere in it. Every relationship is manipulative and passive-aggressive at best, toxic at worst; yet, these toxic relationships are being held up as godly, loving examples.

October 2, 2017 by SamanthaField

Feminism

“Lies Women Believe” review: 11-25

If you’re not familiar with Nancy Leigh DeMoss, one of the most common criticisms I’ve seen of her work is that she is umarried, although she is getting married in November this year. Since she’s spent so many years giving people advice on their marriages (sixty pages of Lies Women Believe are dedicated to it), it does seem relevant to point out that she’s talking about something she’s never experienced.

In a different way, Nancy also feels that her not-being-married situation is relevant. On her “Acknowledgements” page, she says this:

Dr. Bruce Ware — your love for the Truth is infectious. I am grateful for the spiritual covering and protection the Lord provided through your careful, theological review and your enormously helpful input. (11)

Women in Nancy’s position use the term “spiritual covering” as a superficial rationalization of what they do for a living. As a well-known speaker, Nancy inhabits a complicated space where other complementarians want famous women to come to their platforms and pulpits, but don’t want to admit that there’s a flaw in their ecclesiology. The “solution” is to say that women like Nancy aren’t technically “usurping a man’s authority” because they have the spiritual covering of a man. It’s interesting to me that she felt the need for this even though the book is addressed to women– usually complementarians don’t have a problem with this as long as the intended audience is women.

Moving on to the foreword, which was written by Elisabeth Elliot. Obviously I’m not a fan of Elisabeth’s– Passion and Purity is awful, and she’s known for saying shit like “women should be grateful that God made them doormats for men.” That’s a paraphrase, but grateful and doormat were the words she used. So it was unsurprising that this was the first paragraph:

Nancy … has had the courage to plumb the depths of women’s illusions and delusions, of their hopes, fears, failures, and sorrows, so much of which might have been avoided were it not for lies propagated thirty or more years ago– such as “You can have it all,” “Don’t get caught in the compassion trap,” “Anything men can do we can do better,” etc. (13)

Huh. I wonder what could possibly have happened thirty years before 2001? Elisabeth seems unconcerned with facts, since “having it all” didn’t appear in the American vernacular until the 80s and comes with the baggage of Reaganomics and a reductionist and invalid criticism of second-wave feminism; I couldn’t find “compassion trap” in that order anywhere except in this book; and “anything men can do we can do better” is a reference to an Irving Berlin song from Annie Get your Gun, a musical written in 1946.

Yeah, those are all totally lies propagated by second-wave feminists in the 70s. Sure. This passage is important because it highlights what is going to be one of Nancy’s obsessions: how women have been damaged and dragged into “bondage” and “soul-sickness” by feminism (16). I’ve written on how she connects feminism with “soul sickness” before. She goes one step further in this book, accusing “feminist” lies of being the spawn of Satan (accompanied by the typical “Angel of Light” spiel, 19).

But, moving on to her Introduction. She spends some time regurgitating typical evangelical constructs about Eve (she’s ultimately to blame, and Adam went along with it to appease her), but it doesn’t take her long to jump straight into victim-blaming territory:

Many are in bondage to their past. Whether the result of their own failures or the failures of others, their pasts hang like huge weights around their necks. (17)

Most likely, you know other women who are living in bondage, though they claim to have a relationship with Christ. (18)

Bondage is another loaded term that many Christians use; it takes up a similar place as other words like bitterness and unforgiveness. Nancy doesn’t need to define it here, because when she says “bondage” her readers are picturing what she wants: a person who’s still affected by their past in a “negative” way. That I’m still affected by past trauma– that I still have triggers and panic attacks — means that I’m in “bondage.” According to her, that means I’m only claming to have a relationship with Christ. Considering most conservative Christians use “relationship with Christ” as synonymous with “salvation,” Nancy is calling my salvation into question.

I also really hate this equivocation between “our own failures and the failures of others,” especially in the context of “bondage” (which, honestly, is frequently use as a fill-in for rape trauma).

I tried to talk to my last pastor about his tendency to do this, because it is not at all ok to place “abuse victim” and “abuser” in the same sentence like this. That I and my partner were repeatedly ignored (or outright dismissed because “real attenders would understand what he was trying to say” even though my partner had been attending and serving on the sound team for two fucking years … digression) is one of the most significant reasons why I no longer attend his church. Connecting these two and then assigning blame to the victim for “carrying the huge weights” for their abuse is extremely unhelpful and damaging.

But oh, it gets worse:

I witnessed the power of Truth in another situation as I talked to a woman who had become emotionally involved with one of the pastors of her church. When I became aware of the situation, I called her at work because I did not know how much her husband knew. Since she was a receptionist for her company, I knew we might not have long to talk. After telling her who I was, I got right to the point ….

“I have to tell you that you are in a burning house, you are in grave danger. Because this is a desperate situation, I’m not going to worry about what you think of me or about hurting your feelings.” (22)

She called a complete stranger at work and had the gall to say “I don’t care about hurting your feelings.” It’s mind-boggling how she seems so utterly unaware of how inappropriate that is. But, I guess I shouldn’t expect anything different, since it’s a common relationship approach with Christians. It’s also reflective of Nancy’s beliefs:

Some of what I have to say will ruffle feathers. I have made not attempt to be “politically correct” or to merely write some nice thoughts that everyone will agree with. It is my belief that only radical surgery … will get to the root of our diseased hearts and make us whole. Sometimes the Truth hurts; it is rarely popular. But I would not be loving or kind if I failed to share with you the Truth that can set you free. (20)

Aside from the problems with equating actual love and I Need to Tell you Why I’m Right, what she’s done here is interesting in light of the reaction so many people had to her book. In the reviews I read, many people associated how bludgeon-y her writing is and how right she is. Apparently, this is an idea she gave them.

Aish. This does not bode well for the rest of this review.

August 3, 2015 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Real Marriage" review: 19-41, "Friends with Benefits"

When I was in graduate school, one of the books I had to read was The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, and one of the chapters was written by Mark Driscoll– unsurprisingly, it was on swearing. I didn’t know anything about Mark Driscoll at the time, but I figured out quick that he was a pretty big fan of Martin Luther. As I’ve come to know more about Mark, that he sees himself as a “Martin Luther 2.0” should surprise absolutely no one, and that comes across pretty clearly in this chapter. The first five pages are dedicated to Martin Luther’s marriage to Katherine von Bora, and Mark cannot even begin to contain his enthusiasm:

Their marriage was a public scandal and arguably the most significant marriage outside the Bible in the history of the world.

Just … sigh.

In the rest of the chapter, Mark is going to spend a lot of time trying to convince us that he isn’t a raving misogynistic chauvinistic pig and that complementarian headship in marriage isn’t demeaning to women in any way whatsoever. However, the way that Mark writes about Katherine upends that completely:

What is perhaps most curious is that their marriage did not start with love or attraction, as Katherine was not physically attractive . . . Martin even confesses to his friends afterward … that the proud and haughty Katie alienated him . . . Even Martin’s friends were not fond of Katherine. He reported that many cried with grief upon hearing of his hasty marriage. (21)

Katherine was not physically attractive? Aish. It’s not exactly as though Martin was some sort of Adonis, but Mark says absolutely nothing about his looks. And, when talking about their “awkward” early days, due– according to Mark– to their “monasticism,” he only gives an example of Katherine being awkward, not Martin.

As the story goes on, Mark describes the blossoming friendship and romance between Katherine and Martin Luther, but it’s clear from the previous five pages that Mark thinks the love that Martin felt for “Katie” was not only in spite of himself (“Good God, they will never thrust a wife on me!”), but in spite of Katie, as well; after all, Martin married an ugly harpy– a harpy who worked very, very hard and sat with him while he wrote his letters and was just there for him as he did all of his amazing man-stuff while Katherine … kept a garden.

~~~~~~~~~

The rest of the chapter is Mark and Grace arguing about how important it is for married people to be friends. Which, ok, there’s nothing wrong with that argument on its face. I think friendship can go a long way in a marriage, and I have a hard time envisioning a successful marriage without friendship– all of the happily married people I know are friends. So, while I don’t necessarily have a problem with the message of the chapter as a whole, I do have a problem with how a lot of the specifics get presented, because things like this happen a lot:

I wanted the friendship but without the conflict. I didn’t understand that true friendship involves healthy conflict and hard discussions as God reveals sin and repentance, and reconciliation takes place. (25)

There’s an important word missing there: can. Friendships can involve conflict. However, the way that Grace has phrased this– and from things they both say later on– it is assumed that all friendships must involve conflict, or they are not actually friendships:

We may say we are someone’s friend, but unless we are quick to pursue them in the sin they have fallen into, we are not really much of a friend. (40)

I disagree with that. This is coming from someone who hasn’t even been married two years yet, so feel free to tip in your two cents, couples-with-more-experience, but drawing on both my experience as a partner and as a friend, I don’t think this is true. All of my friendships have involved some sort of conflict, true, but those have been the moments when our friendships have been the weakest and the most unloving. In my marriage, my goal isn’t to “pursue him into the sin he has fallen into,” but to love and accept and encourage.

I’ve had the sort of friendships that Mark and Grace are advocating for here, and one thing I’ve learned after a short lifetime of “friends” who want nothing more than to “sanctify” and “edify” me is that it sucks. Hardcore. I can’t imagine if Handsome treated me the way that Mark thinks partners should treat each other; I would be miserable and unhappy. The fact that my partner encourages me, and loves me, and accepts me for who I am right now while also dreaming with me about everything we can be together is wonderful. We both want to become better people– more loving, more generous, more kind . . . but we are not going to do that by harping on each other every time we think the other has “fallen into sin.”

Also, Mark doesn’t actually believe this, since he fired, excommunicated, and publicly shamed pretty much anyone who dared to disagree with him, particularly regarding accountability.

Interestingly enough, this first assumption– that true friendships are about “edification”– leads to another problem I have with this chapter: Christian elitism.

Only when marriage and family exist for God’s glory– and not to serve as replacement idols– are we able to to truly love and be loved. (28)

It is through the presence of God the Holy Spirit in our lives that we are able to love our spouses. (30)

We are convinced that the couples who pray … together stay together. (36)

The more his need for her and her need to help him are celebrated as gracious gifts from God, the faster oneness and friendship blossom in the marriage. (38)

That last one is also just icky– because they say that a wife needs to “celebrate being helpful as a gracious gift from God.” Whee. Complementarianism isn’t demeaning or chauvinistic at all. Not even a little bit. But the biggest problem I have (for the moment) with these statements is that they frame non-Christian marriages as less than. They probably wouldn’t go so far as to say that non-Christian marriages are doomed to unhappiness and divorce, but by making the claim that we need to place “glorifying God” as the center purpose of our marriage in order to truly love, what they are saying is that people who don’t think of “glorifying God” as a goal cannot truly love. They can love, sure, but not truly love. Any happiness a non-Christian experiences in their marriage is because of luck, probably. Because they couldn’t possibly be building a healthy marriage filled with trust and love and respect and kindness and acceptance– not without God, at least. Not really.

Christian elitism comes out in a lot of ways in Christian culture, and they’re usually wrapped up in sentiments like this one– and it frustrates me no end because of how baldly false it is. I’m friends with a lot of atheists and agnostics, and my friendships with them have been richer and more meaningful and more challenging than most of the friendships I’ve ever had with Christians– and the relationships that I have now with Christians don’t have anything “more” than my relationships with atheists. In fact, most of the friendships I’ve had with Christians have been profoundly negative and have ended horrifically because they felt more entitled to judge and condemn me than to love me.

In short: being friends with your spouse = good. Doing it the way that Grace and Mark think is good (such as, for Grace, “forcing herself to trust him,” 25) = bad.

September 22, 2014 by SamanthaField