Browsing Tag

classism

"How to Win Over Depression" review: 137-159

Books like this make it almost impossible for me to believe that there’s any meaningful difference between fundamentalism and more mainstream evangelicalism. Theologically there’s no real difference that I’ve ever been able to find, and all the differences I can find are surface trappings. In my view, fundamentalism and evangelicalism are on a sliding scale of how much modern culture they’re willing to adapt; fundamentalists are just stuck in the 60s while evangelicals are stuck in the 90s.

None of that really matters, though, when people like Tim quote from Bill Gothard for five pages and describe him as “phenomenally successful” (141) and “wise” (148). And yes, I mean that Bill Gothard. The man who’s been accused by several dozen women and minors of sexually harassing or sexually assaulting them, the man who is responsible for teachings like “the sin of bitterness is worse than the sin of rape.” Tim raves about him and spends most of this chapter regurgitating information found in Bill’s “basic seminars.”

Another observation: so far, in each of the books I’ve reviewed (with the exception of Zimzum of Love), there comes a part when the white supremacy and classism of many American Christians becomes blindingly apparent. The classism comes screaming out of this chapter:

She always looks her best wherever she goes; she is not overdressed but extremely attractive. She chooses her clothes and accessories with care and and exudes the confidence that always exemplifies a dynamic Christian. (139)

A porter will approach an individual and address him politely and with dignity, whereas he will speak to another with quiet disrespect. Through these contrasting treatments, I have judged that the man who exudes self-confidence and self-acceptance is extended respect by others. You can observe similar episodes in a restaurant as the waiter approaches his customers. (140)

After twenty-five years of dealing with people I do not find that vocational triumphs provide lasting self-acceptance. Instead, many individuals would willingly relinquish the fortune earned during their lifetime if the could reclaim the failure experienced … (143)

There is nothing new about ghettos; we have always had them. They are simply larger today because of our increased population and more conspicuous because of recent national attention. (146)

He connects success and self-confidence to wealth and power over and over again, and because Tim is a financially successful white man, he’s able to ignore the role that economic disparity plays in how people are treated by society.

Example: a friend an I walked into a West Elm a little while ago, spiffed up a bit for a trip into the city. We walked around the store, looking for something she needed and if were weren’t completely ignored by the staff, we were openly sneered at. A few minutes after we entered, a pair of women walked in who reeked of money. The employees fawned all over them. They walked out without buying anything, while my friend bought what she’d been looking for.

Ordinarily I’m a self-confident person, but it’s extremely difficult for me to portray that when I’m in a place that’s only supposed to be accessed by the wealthy. Recently I was able to score a deal for a super swanky hotel, but checking in made me feel like an imposter. There’s always a part of me that thinks they’re going to know I’m not wealthy, that I don’t belong, and they’re going to call security to throw the riffraff out.

I’d also like to point out that we made the ghettos. They didn’t just appear; they’re not just a normal, if unfortunate, part of our capitalistic society. Our economic policies made them.

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This chapter is titled “Depression and Your Self-Image,” and while there are some basic things I could agree with him about the general population (negative self-talk is a thing, and we should learn to stop that), he tries to take things that can be true of mentally healthy people and apply them to people who are struggling with worthlessness and/or intrusive thoughts.

His solution also has a two-fold problem. While he seemingly spends most of this chapter preaching the benefits of incubating a positive self-image and learning self-acceptance, he asserts repeatedly that self-acceptance is only possible through religion. He doesn’t actually want people to love themselves, he wants them to feel validated by his version of Jesus. People who get all their feelings of value, love, and acceptance through their religion are not actually practicing self-acceptance.

This could be extremely dangerous for a depressed person. If they accept Tim’s idea– “I will feel worthwhile and loved if I become a Christian!”– they could very well accept Tim’s version of Christianity, which is extremely focused on deciding who’s “in” and who’s “out.” A depressed person trying to feel validated by their faith could end up with a religion-induced sense of scrupulosity.

The other half of the problem is what Tim teaches about human nature:

[A doctor] went on to explain that during his internship in a mental institution, he found that “ninety-five percent of the patients were there because of religiously induced guilt complexes.”

“Doctor, you couldn’t be more in error,” I [said], “People feel guilty because they are guilty!”

To a depressed person, this sentence says all those feelings you have about being a disgusting, worthless, vile, waste of human trash? Well, they’re right! You are a vile waste of human trash! That is not something a depressed person needs “confirmed” for them. Our brains are already screaming that.

Tim tries to mitigate the damaging effects of this concept by talking about how “forgiveness” is readily available to anyone who asks. Sure, we might be nothing more than waste, but God is oh-so-ready to forgive us for being worthless wretches! And once we’re forgiven, Jesus will love us, and we’ll have the magical ability to pray and imagine our depression away!

This is one of the reasons why I disagree with the idea of Imputed Sin. I’ll have to write a whole post out explaining my reasoning for that, but for today, I think it’s enough to stress that this doctrine is inherently harmful, especially to those of us who struggle with depression or other illnesses that try to convince us that we’re useless and worthless.

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Final count of examples involving women: 9 out of 12. He describes several of these women as “frigid” (one because she was married to a verbal abuser, although of course he doesn’t say that), and in one case he says that a woman’s trichotillomania was caused by vanity.

Also, I noticed something interesting in this chapter: when talking about how silly depression is, he almost exclusively uses examples of women, but when he starts talking about what a “godly” and “mature” person looks like, he switches to using exclusively male pronouns. Just … an observation.

June 10, 2015 by SamanthaField

Feminism, Social Issues

liberation theology, Moses, and us

So, in preparation of launching my YouTube channel, I created a Tumblr. I had never gotten into Tumblr before, and I regret not finding out about how awesome it is sooner. Like Twitter, it’s the social media that you make of it, but once you’ve found a few good people, it sort of balloons into a parade of wonderfulness. I saw an amazing gifset from The Prince of Egypt featuring Tzipporah, so one night when I was up with insomnia I watched it– and liked it. A lot. It was nice finally seeing a biblical story without any white people in it (Noah, I’m looking at you).

Watching The Prince of Egypt was the first time I’d really thought about Moses and The Exodus since I’ve started looking into Liberation Theology, and one of the things that stood out to me this time was what Moses had to overcome in order to become the man that could lead the Jews.

He had to overcome his classism.

This is something the book of Exodus actually seems to emphasize as part of Moses’ story, although I have never heard a message taught from this perspective. Moses was a child of mind-boggling privilege– fantastically wealthy, raised as the grandson of a god, and educated in one of the most advanced civilizations of the time. Exodus 2 doesn’t say how or when Moses discovered that he was not actually an Egyptian– only that Pharaoh’s daughter raised him as her own son, but sometime before the events of verse 11 it seems that he knows.

What the story does illustrate in two different ways is how Moses overcame his privilege. He probably could have remained in the palace indefinitely, embracing a system that justified brutality against those deemed lesser, but he didn’t. He committed an act of violence in defense of a victim. He does the same thing, again, when he sees his future wife being driven away from the well by a group of shepherds.

He could have ignored the oppression happening right in front of his face when he saw a supervisor beating a slave. He could have thought this is the way things are supposed to be, or if I get involved, I could lose everything, but he didn’t.

He could have thought it was right for the shepherds to take what they wanted, to use their strength and status to drive women and girls away from water. He could have thought I am only one man, what can I do? But he didn’t.

I don’t want to read too much into Moses– the text does not speculate as to his state of mind, or to his motivations. But, it is entirely human to go along with the power systems that benefit you without questioning them. The status quo is maintained not because there’s a group of conspirators actively making sure classism, racism, and sexism remain systemic and institutionalized, but through sheer force of numbers the people who accept “the way things are” keep these kyriarchal power structures in place. It would have benefited Moses to play along. He could have remained in luxury and privilege, but he didn’t. He chose to recognize suffering of those the culture he was raised in had collectively decided “deserved” to be slaves, and do something about it.

That’s also what the Bible says God responds to.

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

I’m not sure why it took God so long to do something. He didn’t act when Pharaoh ordered all of the firstborn Jewish boys slaughtered. He didn’t act for however long they were enslaved until he sends Moses to liberate them, and that … bothers me. I wish there was some explanation for why then, why not before, what changed, but the Bible doesn’t give us any.

But it makes me wonder– Americans enslaved Africans for centuries before we decided to go to war over it. Segregation and Jim Crow went on until a woman sat on a bus and four boys sat at a lunch counter and a black preacher said “I have a Dream.” It took a woman sitting down and writing Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (The Book of the City of Ladies) to point out the inequality between the sexes, and another six centuries before women could vote, own property, and legally divorce abusive husbands (this is an oversimplification for brevity).

It seems that people like Moses, and Mary Wollstonecraft, and Rosa Parks, are necessary, that it takes regular, every day, run-of-the-mill humans to stand up and say “No More.” I’m not sure what it says about God, but I like what it says about people, about you and me.

I just finished reading Robert Reich’s Beyond Outrage (which became the documentary Inequality for All), and he makes an interesting observation in the book– that the class of political activists he calls “regressives” (conservative Republicans) are advocating for economic Darwinism– a political and economic justification of classism, essentially. Rich people are rich because they worked hard and therefore deserve to be rich; poor people are poor because they are lazy or inept and therefore deserve no help from society or government. It’s a “meritocracy” and “boot-strapping” and “rags to riches” that, frankly, doesn’t exist (in the case of meritocracy) and isn’t possible for most people.

And it’s going to take us– all of us– standing together and saying “No More.” What’s wonderful about the story of Moses is that it shows us what it takes, and what we have to lose, and that we’ll need patience and perseverance– but it also shows us everything we have to gain if we “go out to where our own people are.”

(update on Elsa: she seems to be doing ok at the moment. She ate and drank regularly yesterday, and she hasn’t vomited — at least, not yet. I played with her for a while today and she was her enthusiastic self, but when I picked her up she meowed like it hurt her, and she’s currently curled up in the corner behind a chair. That’s not all that unusual, but one of the possible symptoms is “hiding” for long periods of time. She’s yet to have a bowel movement since she ate the string, but I’m trying to remain hopeful. Thank you for all your encouragement yesterday– this is starting to exacerbate my pretty constant low-level anxiety, and hearing from you helped.)

May 20, 2014 by SamanthaField