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what Fireproof and Twilight have in common

During my undergrad days, one of my friends convinced me to read the Twilight series. At first I rolled my eyes at the “vampire books,” but I did read them— flew through them, really.

I strongly, strongly identified with Isabella Swan– but when I tried to explain it to my friends, all that I could come up with was that “we were both clumsy.” My friends laughed at me, or rolled their eyes, so eventually I shut up about it. I was never able to figure out exactly what it was about Bella that tugged at me so much. I knew it had something to do with her relationship with Edward– I was frequently able to draw direct parallels to my relationship with John*.

When our relationship ended in disaster and I realized not terribly long after that our relationship had been abusive, the connection between Meyer’s books and my relationship hit me square in the face. I’d identified with Bella because she was in love with an abuser. She felt the same way about her abuser that I’d felt about mine. She’d used all the same exact justifications, the same coping mechanisms, everything. Everything was ok, everything was fine– after all, Bella had gone through the same exact thing with Edward, and they were the perfect couple.

I remembered trying to explain this sentiment to a friend, and the best thing I could come up with was that our relationship had a lot of “passion,” and that while it was a “roller-coaster,” I would be “bored with anything less.” She stayed mostly quiet, but I could tell that she disagreed with me– I just didn’t fully realize about what. Now I knew. While Bella and Edward’s relationship had parallels with mine, the abuse John* put me through was so much worse. Everything he ever did was a tactic to control me, to get me to comply with all of his commands, no matter how extreme– even if he had to scream at me, had to physically hurt me. And it worked.

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

I don’t recall exactly at what stage John* and I watched Fireproof together, but it was sometime after he’d proposed. One of the married couples from church had loaned it to my family, and it was being hailed all over my college campus as a relationship-must. Its accompanying book, The Love Dare, was making the rounds among most of my friends, and was touted as one of the best books written on Christian relationships. I didn’t think that my relationship was struggling, but I was an avid believer in having the tools before you needed them, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

After the movie ended, John* was upset. He pulled me into the hallway leading to my room and demanded that I explain to him what that had been all about. “Are you trying to say that I’m like that? That I do that? You think I’m some kind of a jerk like he was?”

And I protested, no, no, of course not, I hadn’t seen it yet, I didn’t know what it was about– and, after all, it was really the wife’s fault. He was just responding to her indifference and disrespect. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but fear was tingling in my fingertips and wrenching my stomach. I could feel his fingers clamping around me arm, I watched as rage enters his eyes.

“You’re right. If you ever treat me the way she treated him, well. . . . ” He didn’t have to finish his sentence. I knew.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week, one of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Moon, live-tweeted her viewing of Fireproof and Courageous. Reading through what she said brought that memory back, and it was almost impossible to stop myself from re-living the experience of looking into his eyes and knowing that he was capable of beating me if he felt like it. One of the scenes she highlighted– the part where Kirk Cameron’s character backs his wife up against a wall while he’s screaming at her– I remembered vividly. I remember it in a way that I don’t remember the rest of the film. I can still recall the basic plot and my mother saying something about how Cameron’s wife stood in for the actress during the last kissing scene, but everything pales in comparison to that particular scene.

I remember the exact way I felt while I watched Cameron’s character scream at his wife. I remember seeing the expression on the wife’s face, I remember forcing myself not to shrink away from John*. I remember wanting to stop the movie– right then– and go do something so I could eliminate the anxious, twisted feeling that felt like a horrible presence in my head, taunting me.

But I also remember the way I felt after the movie ended. I remember what I believed about my relationship with John* after it was over. I adopted what the scriptwriters and producers had just spent the last 90 minutes trying to convince me of– that all relationships, even ones that are emotionally and verbally abusive– need work, that both people have to participate, that you should never, ever give up no matter how bad it gets. They put an abusive relationship on that screen and got me to believe that lie that if I just worked, if I just dared, that I could fix my relationship. Leaving him wasn’t an option– that was only what the “world” (and, apparently, in Fireproof-land, the “world” is exclusively made up of black women) would try to get me to abandon my relationship. But that was not loving. That was not what a Christian would do. No, a Christian woman who is being emotionally and verbally abused by her partner will stick by him and give him one more chance . . . and then another . . . and then another . . .

John*, as a highly skilled manipulator and abuser, didn’t really need that much help in making sure I remained submissive and compliant. He didn’t need help– but he got it anyway. He got it from dating books and purity manuals and the Twilight series and Sherwood Baptist Church. And I’m realizing that one of the answers to the question “why don’t you just leave your abusive husband/boyfriend?” is to point at all the things in American culture that scream at women don’t leave him, it’s not that bad, if you just work and do what he says things will get better. It’s in our most popular books, it’s in our movies . . . and it is a deeply held belief in Christian culture, too.

In all of the dating and relationship advice books that I’ve read, in all the sermons I’ve listened to about marriage, it is extraordinarily rare to hear anything that could help a man or woman in an abusive relationship. Abusive husbands and the wives they hurt are invisible. No one wants to talk about them. It’s a hard, desperate reality. And so, a pastor gets up on Sunday morning, delivers a message for married couples, and ignores the fact that if his church has 50 married couples, 10 of them are physically abusive— and half of these people are being raped, usually in a degrading way purposefully intended to humiliate them.

I know this isn’t a reality we want to talk about. I desperately wish I could live in a world where none of these things happen.

But, the reality is that one of the biggest reasons why women are abused and raped is that we never say anything. And if we do say something, it’s to create a movie about an abusive husband and tell the wife that leaving him would be wrong.

November 19, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood Review: Happiness

So, it’s been a little while since we’ve delved into Helen Andelin’s world. We’re about halfway through the book, and we’ve reached the point where we’re going to start seeing a lot more ridiculous statements. On one hand, it makes it easier for me to demonstrate the absurdity of her beliefs– at times, all I’d have to do is quote what she says and even the most die-hard Vision Forum devotee would roll their eyes– but on the other hand, that makes it seem that what Helen’s promoting is so outdated that no one accepts it anymore.

That is, unfortunately, not true.

Helen might say it much more directly than Mary Kassian or Dannah Gresh or Stasi Eldredge probably would, but all these conservative women are advocating for the same principles and in very much the same way that Helen does. They ignore the same types of people that Helen does, they dismiss the realities of many women’s lived experiences like Helen does, and it all results in a set of teachings that condemn at least 40% of the American population– and that’s just America! Forget about the global church– if you’re not at least an upper-middle-class white evangelical stay-at-home mother . . . well, you might not even be a Christian, so there. The principles and the message haven’t really changed that much. Whether it’s a Mormon woman writing in the 1960s, or an evangelical woman writing in 2005, we’re still hearing the same things.

~~~~~~~~~~

First off, she tells us what happiness is, taking an approach of defining by negation. She has a hard time explaining what happiness is, so she talks mostly about what unhappiness is and what happiness isn’t. First of all, unhappiness is totally our fault. Unhappiness “arises from a failure within–weakness of character, sin . . . We are unhappy when we are doing something wrong.”

That is a statement I am familiar with. I grew up in fundamentalism, and the appeal of fundamentalism could probably be wrapped up in the promise “follow all our our rules and you’ll be happy!” Which made the converse true: “not following all of our rules makes you miserable!” Happiness became totally defined by whether or not we were following the rules, period. Even if we thought we were happy, if we weren’t following the rules, we were mistaken.

She then moves on to setting up a false dichotomy between happiness and pleasure. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an argument for conflating these two, but she makes the argument that good little rule-followers are happy, and people who don’t care about “eternal laws” can’t possibly be happy. They can find pleasure, and they are so ignorant they mistake that for happiness. It’s the same sort of statement that she made on the first page– “You may think you are happy, but in reality you are not.”

Then comes the bulk of the chapter: what you need to do in order to be happy. Since happiness is “earned,” there are specific things we can do to make ourselves happy. Some of these things are pretty solid ideas– she encourages charitable volunteering, which some researchers have connected to happiness. She also tells us to “accept ourselves” (although she limits that to “don’t rip yourself to pieces for burning dinner or breaking something” which doesn’t really fall into the typical understanding of self-acceptance), and to “appreciate simple pleasures.” I’m all for appreciating the simple things; however, even while telling us to be rose-smellers, she takes the time to demonize many women.

I’m one of those women that jewelers like to say have “exceptional taste.” I like the sound of a silver fork tapping the side of a crystal water goblet. I think London blue topaz stones are some of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen. The feel of angora, the luxury of silk . . . the enthralling moments of a Puccini opera threatening to burst through the ceiling of the Kennedy Center. . . those are all amazing, glorious things. That doesn’t mean I also don’t appreciate snuggling up in my polyester blanket in my sweatpants with a cup of tea I microwaved in the $1 glass mug I bought at Wal-Mart, but I think it’s totally fine if you appreciate both. That’s not permissible in Helen’s world, though. While there’s something to be said for the cost of “keeping up with the Joneses,” that’s not what Helen is saying here. Enjoying and appreciating nice things is the opposite of enjoying and appreciating “simple” things, and enjoying the luxuries renders you incapable of enjoying the “simple” things.

So, once again, even when the basic idea (“accept yourself!”) is a good one, she obliterates it in a wave of vitriol.

But most of what she argues will guarantees happiness is– do I even have to say it?– horrifying.

The first one, surprise surprise, is “fulfill your domestic role.” You have to do this “wholeheartedly,” or you’re a failure, and you’ll be miserable. If you break the “eternal laws” of not playing out patriarchal, Victorian gender roles, “you must suffer the consequences.” And since you’re a woman, if you don’t adhere to 150-year-old stereotypes, you are “failing in life.” And not only that, if you do not “succeed in all three duties– wife, mother, homemaker,” you are a failure.

This is one of those times when Helen is completely ignoring a whole spectrum of people. Today, almost 40% of women are the primary breadwinners in their households– and that doesn’t even count how many women aren’t “homemakers,” but work outside of the home either part-time or full-time. They’re all failures, according to Helen. And, many women never marry, so they’re failures, too. And even for women who are married, they might be infertile– or their husband might be. Failures, failures, failures, all of them.

That isn’t that far off from the message I’ve heard in dozens of evangelical churches all over the country. Not a wife? Well, what’s wrong with you? You’re too selfish, that must be it. You’re one of those bra-burning feminists who values a career more than what GOD wants for you. Not a mother? Or, you’ve been trying to have children for years and haven’t been able to? Have you prayed for God to reveal hidden sin in your life? And, sometimes, the message isn’t that direct, but every Mother’s Day you’re sitting there without a rose while all the mothers are exalted and praised while you’re completely ignored.

And, on top of all of that, she throws in this: “You must fist find happiness before your husband can love you. Men all over the country are turning from their wives to someone else because their wives are unhappy.” So, if you suffer from clinical depression (which “sinfulness leads to depression and mental illness”– also a dominant message in American evangelicalism), guess what, you’re husband is going to cheat on you unless you do exactly what Helen says.

If you don’t do what I say, your husband will cheat on you, unfortunately, is such a common threat. Debi Pearl’s book is laced with it, and I’ve heard, seen, and read Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian make similar threats. It’s troubling to me that this is the way evangelicalism seems to have unanimously decided is the best way to make sure women toe the line. Instead of saying “y’know what, if your husband cheats on you, he’s an ass,” women are taught that if our husbands cheat on us, we should immediately start looking for all the ways we’re responsible for it and he’s not.

This is why feminism is such a necessary conversation to introduce to American evangelicalism. Because feminism makes people responsible for their own actions. Feminism takes away the need to control women with threats. Feminism removes the ability for men not to face their own problems head-on. Feminism removes all the false guilt and shame that women bear for the sins of their husbands. Feminism means that we do not show favoritism.

November 18, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: Pandora's Box

I’m going to be honest: I have no idea what to do with this chapter. None. So, for today’s post, I’m going to quote a some larger portions, in their entirety, add some of my concerns, and see what you all think of what she says.

In a Pandora’s Box reaction, instead of the man responding with love and tenderness, he becomes angry and pours out hostile feelings toward his wife. Why does he do this? Up to now he has been afraid to express his anger. In the face of his marriage problems he has felt he must suppress his anger to hold his marriage together. This it not to say that he acted wisely, but only to say that he did so out of what he felt was a necessity. A high-principled man who loves his children will make every effort to hold his marriage securely together.

When his wife applies Fascinating Womanhood over a period of time, he begins to feel secure in his marriage. He no longer feels he must hold his troubled feelings within and loses his fear that speaking out will cause marriage problems. Then one day, at last, he dares to open Pandora’s Box and release the resentful feelings he has kept hidden there.

If you should face this situation, allow him to empty Pandora’s Box. You should, in fact, encourage him to speak freely and completely. And you should not make the mistake of defending yourself, justifying yourself, or fighting back. You will have to sit there quietly, taking it all and even agreeing with him by saying “I know, I know, you are right.” But, when the last resentful feeling has been expressed and Pandora’s Box is empty, he will have a feeling of relief, and a love and tenderness for you not known before. And if has had a reserve, it will probably come tumbling down along with the Pandora’s Box . . .

She then goes on to relay stories from readers, two of which are horrifying and involve verbal abuse and extra-marital affairs that the wives in these situations “humbly accept” and “know that they deserve.” For the wife whose husband cheated on her, she woke up in the hospital after getting her tubes tied so her and her husband could have more sex (they’d been on NFP previously, and they were both Catholic)– only for his “mistress” to be in her recovery room the second she wakes up. And… she blames herself entirely. The fact that her husband didn’t even bother telling her that he was cheating before she had an invasive medical procedure performed just . . . Ack. And then it’s her fault. I can’t even.

But, back to her opening paragraphs: I can somewhat understand where she’s coming from with this. I’ve been in some relationships– friendships and otherwise, where I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ever be honest about my feelings. Our relationships just weren’t the kind where we could talk about things that were bothering us– and that was ok with me, I just didn’t put in a lot of effort to those relationships, and they either never deepened (which is fine, you don’t have to be “bosom friends” with every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet), or the relationships died– which was also fine.

I imagine, in a marriage relationship, becoming comfortable enough to share your feelings could result in this “Pandora’s Box” situation she describes, but there seems to be several assumptions going on in the background:

She assumes that if you don’t follow the path laid out for you in Fascinating Womanhood, then your husband is hiding all his true feelings from you. The only environment where a man can safely express his feelings is one where the wife is following Helen’s plan to the letter. Any other marriage style will result in your husband feeling unsafe, trapped, insecure, and unloving. She makes this attitude clear in the stories she chose to include.
Communication, apparently, is a one-way street. You’re not allowed to criticize, you’re not allowed to have needs, everything you want, everything you need, is supposed to be superseded by his preferences, his wants, his needs, his desires. He is allowed to resent you, treat you badly, disrespect you; you are required to “take it all” and “agree with him” without the opportunity to have a discussion.
This “Pandora’s Box” situation, she assures us, will only happen once. After he has emptied it, you will never have to revisit these issues again. That one just seems impossible. I’ve watched marital relationships closely for over 20 years– I’ve never seen a couple who could talk about an issue that caused deep resentment and anger only once and never, ever, have to talk about it again. This Pandora’s Box, she says, can last “up to several months,” but then she confidently tells us that the only thing he’ll express is “love and tenderness”– as long as we keep following Fascinating Womanhood, that is.

For those of you who have been married a while, what do you think of this?

October 7, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

songs and ballads and True Knights

from HBO’s Game of Thrones, Season 3.

trigger warning for emotional and physical abuse

Just a heads up– tiny spoilers for Storm of Swords.

I’ve been reading through A Song of Ice and Fire by G. R. R. Martin for the past few months. Ordinarily I speed through fantasy novels like a hot knife through butter, finishing entire series in a matter of days, but I haven’t been able to do that. Game of Thrones was incredibly difficult for me to read, especially after you-know-what for anyone who’s read the books (or seen the show. I have not watched it yet). They are not your typical epic fantasy fare– it’s not that they’re so much darker than other fantasy novels I’ve read, it’s that they are . . . so very deeply human. I’m sure anyone familiar with the series is already brutally aware of this, but none of Martin’s characters are especially good– or especially bad. There are characters you’re rooting for all through Game of Thrones, and character you absolutely despise, but then you get to Storm of Swords and you’re reading the book from the perspective of the “evil” character, and you realize . . . no one’s particularly “evil” in these books. There’s no bad guy.

But, at first, one of the characters I fiercely hated in the first book was Sansa Stark. After the incident in the woods with Arya, especially, and the whole mess that resulted from that. I found myself nodding my head when The Hound constantly insults her with “little bird,” telling her that she’s just a silly little girl that is naive and silly and who romanticizes everything even when her situation should make it clear that Joffrey does not love her and Cersei does not have her best interests at heart. She seems to play a constant game of make believe, seems to purposely delude herself.

But then I read this scene:

“I want you to tell me the truth about this royal boy,” said Lady Olenna abruptly. “This Joffrey.”

Sansa’s fingers tightened around her spoon. The truth? I can’t. Don’t ask it, please, I can’t. ” I . . . I . . . I . . . “

. . .

“Calm yourself child,” the Queen of Thorns commanded.

“She’s terrified, Grandmother, just look at her.”

. . .

Sansa felt as though her heart had lodged in her throat . . . a shiver went through her. “A monster,” she whispered, so tremulously she could scarcely hear her own voice. “Joffrey is a monster. He lied about the butcher’s boy and made Father kill my wolf. When I displease him, he has the Kingsguard beat me. He’s evil and cruel, my lady, it’s so. And the queen as well.”

After the end of the chapter, I had to stop reading just to cry, because it suddenly hit me. I could feel my heart pounding against my bones, everything throbbed– I felt hot and cold flashes everywhere.

I was Sansa Stark.

I’d been raised with the expectation that I would marry a knight in shining armor, or a prince. All the stories I had were in places like Lady in Waiting and Stay in the Castle. All the images I had, all the metaphors, all the stories, fit inside this narrative. I was a princess who had locked herself in a tower to protect herself from “the world,” and I would spend my life waiting for my “one true love” to come and claim me (with permission from my father, of course). This knight-errant, this prince, would be good and noble and just, a “True Knight,” like Sansa would call him. He would follow honorable codes of conduct, be respectful of authority. He would be handsome, and kind. And we would live happily ever after.

So, when I met John*, I instantly saw in him all the traits I’d been taught to look for. He was gallant, charming– a gentleman in every respect. He held the doors open, he stood in the cafeteria line, again, just to get me a cookie. He found the biggest bouquet of stargazer lilies for our first date, remembering after I’d mentioned once that I liked lilies. He wrote me poetry, and songs, he played his guitar for me over the phone, he passed me notes written on 3×5 cards between classes.

Everything, everything, was exactly as I’d been told it should be.

So when he started emotionally manipulating me, I was so utterly blind to it. He was kind and devoted— so when I was up, huddled on the cold tile of my bathroom floor, until two or three in the morning, listening to him rage and sob about how terrible I was being, that I just didn’t understand how much he loved me, I had no way of processing what was happening. Even when he started physically hurting me– twisting my arm, squeezing my knuckles together, pinching me, I was so deeply buried in the story that I believed with all my heart– that I was blind. He was my True Knight. He was rescuing me from myself. He was teaching me how to be good, how to be self-controlled, how to be the meek, quiet, gentle wife I’d been taught I was supposed to be but couldn’t manage to become on my own.

So when Sansa spoke those words, when she said, out loud, what Joffrey was– that he was a monster, and cruel– it was a flash of recognition so strong it bowled me over. There were people around her– people like the Hound, who were trying to show her what was happening, but she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t necessarily stubbornness, or willful ignorance. It was that she didn’t have any other way of viewing her relationship with Joffrey. The songs and the ballads were all she had. For her to admit, really admit, that Joffrey was not the True Knight she desperately wanted to believe he was– I’ve been there.

I was helping with the dress rehearsal changes of a dramatic production the first time I saw it. John* had been made director, and I had actually helped him cast the short play immediately after he’d broken our engagement– and become friends with two of the women in his play. During the final rehearsal, when I was pinning on her wig, she was ranting.

“I don’t know how you were ever in a relationship with him! He is such a jerk!”

I tried not to meet her eyes in the mirror, concentrating on making sure the wig was appropriately disheveled. “What do you mean?”

“He’s so manipulative! It’s like he’s always had everything he’s every wanted, exactly when he wanted it, and we all have to bow and scrape and be his little slaves. It’s like we all have to be mind-readers. If we don’t do exactly what he wants, exactly what he wants, then he completely looses it and starts screaming. It’s a freaking tantrum!”

I laughed, nervously.

“Did he ever do that to you?”

My throat tightened. I couldn’t swallow. My ears were ringing. “Yeah . . . yeah, he did. A lot.”

And, suddenly, her hand was touching mine, holding it still, and I met her eyes in the mirror. She was crying. “That’s not all he did, is it?”

I shook my head, and then she was holding me, and I was sobbing in the dressing room.

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

After that night, though, somehow– things were better. Worse, but . . . better. Freer, in a way. I’d said it. I’d told someone. I’d finally told someone, and even though I didn’t tell her anything specific, it was like saying those words out loud helped me break out of the cage I’d been in for years.

He was a monster.

A liar.

He’s evil and cruel, my lady.

October 3, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: sympathetic understanding

This chapter could quite easily be subtitled “all of your needs are completely unimportant and everything is always your fault.” Actually, that’s probably a good subtitle for the entire book, but it comes screaming out of this chapter in particular. However, surprisingly, Helen did give some advice that I found myself agreeing with, so I’m going to start with that.

Under a section titled “How to Give True Sympathy,” she tells women to “suffer with him,” to “build him up,” and not to “minimize his problems.” Which, honestly, seems pretty close to what I envision what sympathy looks like. When I’m experiencing something hard, something painful, the first thing I need from my husband– anyone I’m close to, really– is not an attempt to make it all go away. I want a hug, I want someone to simply understand that this, whatever it is, is hard. There have also been moments when Handsome has simply done or said something to help lift my confidence, and that’s given me all the strength I need to face whatever it is. And, lastly, I personally hate it when I’m sharing a problem and the only reaction is that “it’s not a big deal” or “starving children in Africa have it worse.” I get what Helen is saying when she says that “minimizing” only makes him feel “ashamed” and “discouraged.” I wish she’d stop gendering everything, though– honestly, women also feel ashamed and discouraged when someone minimizes our problems. That’s just . . . human.

She also shares a story about a rich man she knew named Leslie who wanted to make his new wife happy by showering her with stuff. When he lost everything, he was terrified of how she would react, believing that she would be devastated and unhappy. When, lo and behold, she adores the cottage in the country they move into with strawberries in the back yard, he’s astonished and falls in love with her even more.

Which, “rolling with the punches” seems like a pretty positive attribute. I’ve always admired resilience in people, and I liked that the woman in this story (who doesn’t get a name, by the way, even though the husband, Leslie, does) was able to adapt. She didn’t need the luxuries they’d had when they got married in order to be happy, and I admire that. Human nature doesn’t always react that way, unfortunately. Just this past weekend, Handsome and I were talking about where we’d like to live eventually. Handsome made the light-hearted suggestion that we buy a five-acre lot and then live in a tent, which I scoffed at. (Something about, “you try to make me live in a tent, I’m moving back home with my parents. A single-wide, sure. A trailer, absolutely. I’ll live in a shack, if necessary, as long as it has a stove and a bed. But not, voluntarily, a tent. If we have the money to buy a five-acre lot, we’re buying a house.”)

What was annoying about this story was that Leslie automatically assumed that his wife was so deficient in character that she wouldn’t be able to handle being an average middle-class wife– an attitude Helen emphasizes in order to make the ending more surprising.

Anyway, that’s it for “Things Helen said that Samantha can Agree With.”

Moving on to “Things Helen said that make Samantha Throw the Book through a Window.”

The first part of the chapter she dedicates to laying out a general idea for what “sympathetic understanding” looks like:

She measures her own inconvenience against what may have been required of him and counts her problems as insignificant . . . When he comes home each day, he is always greeted with a warm smile, and never problems . . .

She tries to understand that although [these problems] seem important to her, they may seem insignificant to him . . .

She, of course . . . needs this. But he has a need which supersedes hers . . . she forgoes her own in preference to his greater need.

I tried counting how many times she uses the word “insignificant,” but gave up. It got too depressing. One thing that made a certain sort of sense: not instantly throwing a bunch of stuff in his face the instant he comes home. I try not to do this with Handsome, giving him a bit to unwind and switch out of his “working” state of mind. But, sometimes, I really need him to help me with something right away, and he’s understanding of that. I try not to do it often, but we’re both flexible. This is what bothers me about how Helen put it, though. It’s “always a smile” and “never problems.” There’s no opportunity for either the husband or the wife to be flexible. There’s no give-and-take. There’s no sometimes or usually. There’s no exceptions.

I actually spent most of Sunday thinking about this “no exception” approach to life, and it’s one of the things I find deeply disturbing about the way I hear Christians– especially spiritual leaders– talk about things. Making the exception, using the caveat, incorporating qualifiers– it’s not the easiest way to present information, but it is necessary. Absolutizing pieces of advice– presenting them as if the advice must be followed, always, or failure is inevitable (and always your fault), is unhealthy and damaging. Because there are always exceptions, and you cannot operate as if they do not exist. I’ve seen it all my life– in fundamentalist churches and out of them– and it usually means that we end up erasing whole groups of people. We simply ignore that people who are not white, middle-class, safe, and physically or mentally healthy exist. They disappear.

Helen literally makes women disappear in her book– Leslie’s wife never even gets her own name. And I’ve seen that happen in our churches– I’ve even felt it happen to me. I’m Mrs. Field. I’m his wife. I’m linked to him, and treated as part of his unit. We’re not a completely new unit now that I’m here, I’m simply an addition, a tacked-on person, to the man they previously knew. Most of the people at church don’t treat me like this, just to be crystal clear– but it does happen. And I know it happens to other women in other churches, too. And it’s not just a church thing, either. Our entire culture has a system that eradicates the personhood and agency of married women.

Women, according to many Christian leaders, don’t get to have actual problems. We don’t have needs. We don’t have the right to ask for help. We’re the helpers. We’re created for the basic and all-consuming purpose of helping men— they are not here to help us, and we’re certainly not here to help each other. Our needs, our wants, our desires, our dreams– none of it matters. It’s all insignificant. It’s all superseded by his needs, wants, desires, dreams. We’re supposed to forgo our needs in order to meet his– always.

September 30, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: wounded pride

Picking up from where we left off last week, we’re about halfway through the chapter “Masculine Pride.” Helen has spent a lot of time explaining exactly what she means by “masculine pride” and went into a lot of detail on what men are proud of and all the ways we women constantly destroy them, by doing things like having a job or having interests he doesn’t share. Next she’s going to explain to us how the entire world seems designed to break and humiliate men and all the ways women are responsible to make up for how terrible the world is.

This will soon be clear (if it’s not already), but the kind of behavior and reactions Helen is about to describe as completely normal, natural, inescapable, and unchangeable are what most of society classifies as immaturity. She describes things like withdrawal and pain avoidance, which are normal human responses. We all struggle with hurt feelings and humiliation, and to some extent, we all know that it’s a part of life. We learn to process it, confront it if necessary, but ultimately move on.

However, that’s not what Helen describes.

She begins by outlying how men have grown up in a world hell-bent on making sure they are fragile and weak. Their families mock teenage boys for their youthful beards: “their mothers may have viewed it with disdain.” So, men have grown up where families show endless disdain for their burgeoning “masculinity.” Then, it’s the working world, which is “brutal,” “sadistic,” and “undermining.” Which, granted, it certainly can be all of the above. And, finally, his wife “wounds his pride” by showing “indifference” (previously described as being busy or preoccupied). All of this, she argues, leads to a very specific set of reactions that men cannot help but have. These responses, she says, are always how a man responds to his environment.

Reaction #1: Humiliation

This happens because you, his wife, has touched “the most sensitive part of his nature.” A woman who shows indifference becomes “repugnant,” and Helen is not surprised when “he reacts by being explosive.” This is one of those times when Helen’s language deeply concerns me. Her word choice has been far too consistent for phrasings like this to be accidental. Over the course of this book (and we’re almost halfway through it), Helen has deliberately chosen to use words like “violent” and “explosive” to describe how men react to wives that displease them. Almost always, these words are accompanied by “no wonder” and “unsurprisingly.” Given all the threats she makes to her readers, it deeply bothers me that she also threatens us with our husbands’ overt and physical violence.

His “explosive” reaction to finding you “repugnant” is followed by–

Reaction #2: Reserve

And she makes it clear she doesn’t mean shy. Reserve, she says, is “a wall to protect himself.” And the only possible way we could ever hope to get around this wall is making sure he is:

absolutely certain that his ideas will be met with appreciation . . . the slightest hint of misunderstanding will shatter the illusion and drive him behind his wall of reserve again . . . If [you] indicate that [you] are not the least bit interested, he will wince as if struck by a lash . . . If the girl acts indifferent at such a crisis, she has a heart of stone.

Such is the case with every man . . . He will quickly resume [his reserve] unless he can bask in the full glow of an all-comprehending sympathy . . . the higher the caliber of the man, the more he tends to draw into himself when his pride is hurt . . .

If you detect this reserve in your husband, take measure to eliminate it. If you don’t, he may be tempted to seek the company of another woman.

So, in order for you husband not to view you as “repugnant” or react “explosively,” he must be absolutely certain that you worship the ground he walks on. If you’re confused, or bored, or distracted, you are whipping him with a lash and he’ll cheat on you. This, Helen says, is the inescapable reality of manhood, especially for men of “higher caliber.” She goes on, in the next reactions, to tell us that they’ll also become dishonest, resort to blame-shifting, and start constantly fishing for affirmation.

This is what I meant when I said Helen describes immaturity as a universal, unchanging male constant. Yes, all sorts of people have the kinds of reactions Helen has laid out here. We are all capable of getting our feelings hurt, and doing what we can to protect ourselves. Yes, we are all quite capable of throwing people under the bus and lying our asses off to keep ourselves out of trouble. I’ve even done the whole “fishing-for-compliments-by-belittling-myself” thing. We’re human. We do some ugly, pathetic things.

However, this is not behavior Helen describes as immature, or wrong, or anything. This is not only appropriate, she even says that this should be what we expect from men of higher caliber.

I know I’m reviewing Helen’s book, but this is one of those times when I start thinking “surely this is crazy. Nobody thinks like this anymore.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. These sorts of attitudes about men are not only common, they are the dominant narrative concerning men and masculinity in fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. Men in these circles are consistently painted as base animals. They cannot help themselves. Their reactions are completely and totally outside of their control, and the only arbiters left, the only barrier between themselves and debasement, are chaste, virtuous women. It’s our responsibility, women, to restrain the beast. Men can’t do it on their own. They need us. We commonly see this crop up in any sort of Modesty Rules discussion– “women, we need your help to keep ourselves pure! We can’t help it when we lust after women who are immodestly dressed! It’s just how we are! We’re visual!”

But do women get any sort of the same consideration?

You cannot pour your heart out to him. You must withhold feelings and confessions which would wound his sensitive pride.”

And that is how Helen finishes this chapter. She has quite efficiently done everything she possibly can to make sure that women are permanently silenced. While we sit in rapt attention, hanging on our husbands’ every word, we also have to make sure that we never say or do anything that could possibly be interpreted as a slight to his pride.

September 23, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: the male ego

I’ve picked up a lot of new followers since Wednesday (hello, all!), so I wanted to give you a heads up on today’s post. I’m currently in the middle of an extended book review on Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin. The introduction to this series is here, and you can find a complete list of all the posts here. I put up a new post in the series every Monday. Also, because Helen’s book deals exclusively with traditional, essentialist, patriarchal gender roles, it makes it difficult for me to escape that sort of language. I work to affirm LGBTQ identities, but sometimes I fail in that when discussing her rhetoric.

I’m halfway tempted to have today’s post be nothing but a collection of choice quotes from this chapter, because they almost entirely speak for themselves. However, like most of what Helen’s says, it’s all grounded in (unfortunately) common stereotypes about gender, so they are worth discussing. The chapter is titled “Masculine Pride,” and I had a hard time identifying anything in it that I could agree with or tolerate. Beginning with this:

The most important thing to learn on this topic is that masculine pride is very sensitive. A man cannot stand to have his masculinity belittled, ridiculed, or treated with indifference. Such an attack on his manhood is one of the most painful experiences he can suffer.

As members of the human race, I’m sure most of us can attest to the unpleasantness of being belittled and ridiculed. I’m going to be honest and say that, in grad school, I had to deal with a woman who belittled me in front of our peers pretty consistently– and it was worse than just distasteful. It was infuriating at times, and there were days when I drove home from work literally screaming in frustration (yes, I’m that dramatic).

The most painful experience of my life? Completely unendurable? Uhm . . . no. Not even by a long shot.

Granted, I’m a woman, but I’d have to be a real “man-hater” to believe that all men were incapable of tolerating any sort of ridicule whatsoever. But that is, in fact, what Helen spends her entire chapter arguing– that all man are, in fact, this immature, and are incapable of growing beyond it. I understand that when your spouse ridicules you it’s a lot harder to swallow than when a colleague does it. We trust our partners with a vulnerable heart, and being attacked by him or her would be painful.

If that’s where Helen went with her ideas, she’d have no argument from me. However, to Helen, there is no difference between offering constructive criticism and ridicule. They’re the exact same thing– at least, if you’re criticizing or ridiculing something about his masculinity. She is completely silent on how your husband will supposedly respond if you start negatively talking about something that she doesn’t associate with his “masculine qualities” (“his muscular body, his manly skills,” etc.). By doing this, she completely erases any sort of possibility that men exist outside of Western gender stereotypes. It’s not just that she’s reinforcing stereotypes– by telling women to only recognize their husband’s masculinity, she is telling them that recognizing and appreciating non-masculine traits is either a) a waste of time or b) wrong.

Two of the things I admire about my husband are his intuition and his empathy. I can’t imagine what he would be like without those traditionally “feminine” traits. But how would Helen react to me consistently affirming these “feminine” qualities and occasionally being amused at his obsession with Michigan football or aerospace engineering? Pretty sure she’d be horrified.

This is also the chapter where she starts her heavy-hitting “men must always excel women” idea.

Don’t belittle, show indifference, or excel him in anything which requires masculine ability. This applies not only to skills in his work, ,but to such things as carpentry, mechanics, fishing, hunting, masculine sports, math, or anything in which he has masculine pride . . . and if, through necessity, you must perform some masculine skill yourself, do not outshine him.

I’m currently writing on my husband’s laptop because my desktop PC died a couple weeks ago. When I got a blue screen, I handled it on my own. I started troubleshooting. I googled solutions. I figured out it wasn’t the video card or the power supply completely on my own– that it was a 7B error. I cracked open the case and started switching out DIM cards. Today I’m going to boot from disc and try to see if it’s the hard drive and if my data is salvageable (backups are your friends, ya’ll). I grew up with my dad– a computer engineer — showing me everything I need to know about computers. I built this PC on my own (which, seriously, not that hard. Nowadays everything is color coded).

But, oh noes! Computer engineering is a masculine field (yes, she says this later in the book)! Computers are for boys! I’ve emasculated my husband by handling my own problems!

As if. Handsome (my husband) is proud and impressed that “I got this.” Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes, I don’t want to open the pickle jar. I could, but why not hand it off to him when he can easily pop it open and I would have to strain? Our marriage is about determining abilities and gifts– he loves spreadsheets and budgets, and I adore the Food Network. He handles the financial side of things, I handle a lot of the daily logistics. He’s big picture, I’m detail-oriented, and we do what works for us. Sometimes that means some of our responsibilities fall inside “traditional” roles, and sometimes it doesn’t. We also don’t care.

The next few pages are loaded, but it’s pretty much more of the same– although it does expressly forbid working women from “excelling him at work; doing a better job, advancing to a higher position, or bringing home more pay.” In a country where women are the primary breadwinner in 40% of all households, that particular order is insanely outdated.

Then she moves into a section labeled “Common Mistakes Women Make,” and describes a few situations. The first one is a scenario where the husband wants to make a large investment where the odds are “10 to 1 that he could be fleeced” (her emphasis). The only way we’re allowed to express concern about this? “It sounds like a good idea . . . but for some reason I just don’t feel right about it.” Offering a logical analysis? Discussing his reasoning with him? Not possible. We’re also not allowed to utter the words “Let’s be practical” or “sensible.” Anything we do that could put a damper on his enthusiasm is the same exact thing as belittling him. No, really:

Remember, if your diminish masculine enthusiasm, you damage masculine pride.

And if we’re busy with something, like right smack dab in the final moments of cooking dinner and he wants to share a compliment he got from his boss, we’re not allowed to say “That’s wonderful! Could you tell the girls to wash for dinner?” Because being distracted and preoccupied is not permitted– that would mean we’re not “feeding our husband’s soul.” She refers to this behavior (not dropping everything your are doing the second he walks through the door) as belittling and dismissive.

Helen and I could be on the same page if she used the words “belittle” and “ridicule” the same way the dictionary uses them, but she doesn’t. She turns ridicule– something that actually could be a serious problem — into any action on a woman’s part that indicates she’s an actual person with a mind, responsibilities, and abilities of her own.

September 16, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: family finances

Occasionally during the course of her book, Helen gives her readers practical, “down-to-earth” level advice. This is one of those chapters, which is dedicated to telling women how they can help their husbands by “developing the womanly art of thrift.”

Like she usually does, she opens up her chapter by appealing to the Bible, which “makes it clear” that it is “the husband’s responsibility to provide the living.” However, also like she usually does, she doesn’t reference any particular passage, just expecting us to know what she’s talking about. However, I can think of a few examples that render this claim completely unfounded:

The Proverbs 31 Woman. She’s been used to bludgeon Christian women for decades, but one of the things that “the Bible makes clear” that she does is not just “practice the womanly art of thrift” but she also makes money. Proverbs 31 describes a woman who is like “the ships of the merchant,” whose “merchandise is profitable.”
Priscilla, who with her husband runs a profitable tent-making business. Paul frequently talks about how indebted he was to this married couple, and he always lists Priscilla first. Considering that the culture of the time always listed the head of the household first, Paul’s decision to lead with her name is significant. (Acts 18).
Lydia, the “seller of purple,” and traditionally considered the first Christian convert in Europe. Because of her wealth and her status as a free woman, she invited Paul and his companions into her home, which she would not have been able to do if she was under the legal control of a husband or father. She was clearly in control of her home, independent of any man (Acts 16).
Phoebe, who Paul describes as “minister” (the same word he uses to label other notable pastors) and a “leader” or “patron.” She was tasked with delivering his letter to Rome, a duty that also would have required her to read and interpret it for the church there. She was certainly not staying at home, behind closed doors, hiding behind her husband. (Romans 16)
Titus specifically tells Roman-Christian women to be “keepers at home,” which as I’ve written about before, was a charge to run a profitable family business; it was not something Paul wrote to make sure women stay in the kitchen.

“The Bible makes clear” Helen? I’m not sure what Bible she’s reading, but it’s not the one I’m pretty sure everyone else in the world has.

But, the biggest thing that bothers me about this chapter is how harshly she divides up people. The way she talks about married couples in this chapter is incredibly divisive. She boxes every single last human being on the planet into what she thinks is “biblical” without any sort of exceptions, without extending grace, without viewing difficult situations with compassion.

She is strictly addressing wives, here, and what she tells them is that they are to be given “allowances” to cover the “household budget”– which does not include anything outside of groceries and clothing. She forbids women from making any sort of purchase– at all— that doesn’t fit inside of “anything in regular demand.” Any kind of need, like furniture or repairs, is to be sought out and paid for only by the husband, and he has “major jurisdiction and final say.” She tells us that we’re not allowed to discuss these sorts of things with him– ever. If we do, we risk emasculating our husbands and “relieving him of his responsibilities” which, somehow results in husbands becoming incapable of handling money wisely.

This actually fits into Helen’s pattern, and is a direct result of how she views communication. To Helen, any possible sort of discussion (“conflict”) is to be avoided at all costs. If a conversation between a husband and a wife could lead to any sort of disagreement whatsoever, she absolutely forbids you from having it. To Helen, a marriage is only “successful” if the two never disagree, and the only way for that to happen is for one person to never have a say. In Helen’s world, that person is always the wife. The fact that one of the biggest sources of conflict in marriages is money (couples who fight over money once a week are 30% more likely to get divorced) has led Helen to believe that husbands and wives must never, ever talk about it. If you never even discuss money, you can’t fight over it, and presto-change-o, happy marriage!

For families in “financial distress” she tells women they they aren’t allowed to go get a job. Instead, we’re supposed to “reduce expenses” and “trim the luxuries” which… gah. The suggestions she makes for how women could do this? Selling their second car. Cancelling vacations. Don’t be tempted by advertisements. Which, in some situations could be perfectly reasonable advice. However, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Helen has never interacted with a poor person in her entire life. People who have two cars and can afford to sell one of them aren’t in financial distress, I’m sorry. Maybe someone who has two cars is living outside of their means, but that is nowhere near the sort of scale many families are facing when 20% of all children go hungry because they live in “very low food security households.” Selling your second car isn’t going to fix that.

And what are we supposed to do when men “make a mess of things”? When they don’t pay the mortgage, or the bills, when they overdraft their accounts?

Let go completely and turn your back on things. Don’t be anxious, checking the books to see if he added right, or is neglecting anything. If he make a mess of things, let him suffer the consequences, no matter what they are. That is the only way he will learn.

I might have thrown the book across the room at that line. Because he’s not the only one suffering consequences when the bank forecloses on your house because he didn’t pay the mortgage. This sort of comment doesn’t even begin to make sense, but she justifies it with “psychology”:

He will begin to feel responsible, to know that if anyone is to worry about the money, it will have to be him. And he will notice your relief, that you are happier. Let him know you are. As he sees you brighter he will try harder to make a go of things, to keep you happy.

Helen doesn’t live on this planet. I’m positive. If she did, she’d realize how ridiculous a statement this is. Sure, some people are motivated by wanting to make the people in their life happy. I’m one of them. But there are plenty of people who couldn’t give a damn, but she doesn’t even acknowledge their existence. This chapter, while Helen has presented it as practical advice, it is almost entirely inapplicable for huge sections of humanity. It is only relevant to the top 20% of all American households, and is wholly incapable of even making sense anyone who doesn’t have the luxury of two cars and a $70,000-a-year income. Helen, here, is displaying an astounding lack of compassion or even awareness that some families really are destitute. Her white, middle-class privilege is pouring out of her, and it’s more that just disappointing.

Helen isn’t alone in this attitude, which is heartbreaking. Many people in conservative evangelical America share the exact same blinders that Helen has on in this chapter. We’ve forgotten that Jesus said “the poor you will always have with you” and that our primary responsibility as the Church is to care for the widows, the orphans, and the poor. We don’t even know they exist anymore. Not really. Oh, we do the Christmas shoebox drives and the book drives and the canned food drives and the backpack drives– one for each season. And then we completely forget about them, except for those four times a year.

I want to be angry with Helen, but I can’t be angry with Helen without feeling anger towards the modern American church in general.

September 9, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: the provider

From The Ugly Truth, the scene where Mike tells Georgia to let her husband “be a man,” and that he is emasculated because she earns more.

Hopefully everyone had a fantastic Labor Day weekend. Today’s chapter fits quite well into that theme, actually, since it is entirely devoted to how men have an “inborn” need to provide for their families– although the way he is “intended” to provide extends beyond physical needs and goes into achieving both status and acclaim.

Helen begins by returning to familiar territory– Genesis 3. It’s here that God supposedly gives the ultimate, overriding command to men: they’re the ones responsible to provide while their wives have babies. She explicitly says that “This command was given, not to the woman, but to the man.”

Hmm. Ok.

Let’s accept, for a moment, that Genesis 3 is a valid argument for gender roles and ignore the fact that this passage is God delivering The Curse. Let’s ignore that, for a second, and go along with her argument. Let’s see what it says:

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Do you remember your junior high English classes? Remember learning about things like declarative and imperative sentences? Declarative sentences give information; imperative sentences give orders. There is a rough approximation of this idea in Classical Hebrew; however, the imperative typically appears in Hebrew in the form of a prohibitive statement: “thou shalt not have any other gods before me,” for example. Using the second person future tense is something called the future indicative, and that is what appears here, in Genesis 3.

Grammatically, it isn’t a command.

But, let’s accept for a moment that this passage is, in fact, a command. God does seem to be strictly addressing Adam here. But, this is only chapter three. Let’s take a quick look back at the end of the first chapter:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And God said to them.

Plural.

In Paradise, in the Garden– in the place that is a beautiful, extraordinary metaphor for the world as it is intended to be, men and women are working together. Being fruitful and multiplying is not singly under the purview of women– it’s given to both of them. Subduing the earth, practicing husbandry and good stewardship isn’t only to be performed by men– but by both.

A few weeks ago I was in North Carolina, and Handsome and I decided to go visit Renovatus Church. The sermon I heard that morning . . . it was beautiful, and reminded me that the first few chapters of Genesis aren’t there to tell us how horrible life is, the extent of our failure, or how deserving we are of torment and punishment. In Hebrew, the more an idea is repeated, the more important it is, the more emphasis it receives. And the idea that receives the most emphasis?

And God saw it, and behold, it was very good.

Not broken. Not Fallen. Good.

Helen has forgotten that. The only thing she seems to remember about Genesis is the Fall and the Curse. And if that’s the only part of Genesis you care to remember and present to your readers, then your conclusions are going to be unhealthy. They can’t be anything but.

She repeats very tired, very worn-out ideas in this chapter. The “man is the breadwinner” narrative is so commonplace in middle class American culture that it is barely worth commenting on. Except for that one detail: it is a middle class narrative, a middle class ideal. The nearly constant conservative evangelical emphasis on “stay at home mothers” and “providing fathers” completely erases an entire class of people. Being able to stay at home is a luxury. It is nothing more than a statement about status and wealth. Saying that wives must remain at home or they risk destroying their husbands is nothing less than making wealth a moral requirement. According to the 2007 census, of all households with stay-at-home mothers, over 25% of them reported incomes of more than $100,000 per year. Statistically speaking, that puts them in the 82nd percentile for household income. Another 65% of stay-at-home mothers are in the lower end of middle class, but well above poverty level.

Telling women that it is a biblical mandate for them to remain at home is wrong. It is ethically and morally repugnant, because it utterly ignores those who can’t afford to. It tells those who live at or below the poverty level that having a “God-honoring marriage” is completely beyond their ability.

This is one of the many, many ways that conservative evangelical Christianity has lost its soul. Evangelical Christianity, by and large, is the religion of the rich, the prosperous, the white, the middle-class, the white-collar, the fortunate, the privileged. This is, to me at least, the most apparent when it comes to gender roles. Helen quotes from her husband’s book, Man of Steel and Velvet:

Failure to meet this obligation [to provide financial support] has always been just cause for divorce . . . Financial support, and along with this, fidelity have always been the two main entitlements for a woman in marriage.

Not exactly, Mr. Andelin. No where in the Old Testament was the woman ever given the ability to divorce her husband. Divorce, even in the Bible, was strictly a legal privilege for men, not for women. And men could divorce their wives, according to Hillel rabbis, for wearing her hair down outside or burning his dinner. The situation doesn’t exactly improve in the New Testament, either.

Outside of the Bible, a woman could not divorce her husband for anything less than adultery or desertion (with desertion being extremely difficult to prove) until 1923 in England. In America, a woman had to prove her husband guilty of infidelity, desertion, or a crime until 1969– and at no point since Medieval times was failure to provide adequate financial support considered just cause for divorce.

Always, Mr. Andelin? Bah.

But, this sort of thinking is common place. Huge misrepresentations of history are presented as factual, with a rosy view of history that ignores sweeping injustices. The history of the white, upper or middle class male is the only version that many people in conservative Christianity seem to remember most of the time. It’s certainly the only version that Helen seems to remember.

September 3, 2013 by SamanthaField

Feminism

complementarianism and metaphors

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

The Greek word μυστήριον, which is consistently translated as “mystery,” appears more in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians than it does anywhere else in the New Testament. The way that Paul uses μυστήριον is markedly different from the way that John The Revelator uses it– in the Book of Revelation, μυστήριον is used for its primary meaning: something hidden, something secret, something not understood or seen.

That is not the way Paul uses it in Ephesians, and his use of μυστήριον was startling to me. I’m used to thinking of mystery as being some sort of puzzle, or something to be figured out. Today, when we call something a mystery, it has the connotation of being unknowable. It’s something we don’t have answers for, and probably never will.

That’s not what it means in Ephesians. In fact, it means the exact opposite. He actually defines μυστήριον in two previous passages:

In love he predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Eph. 1:5-10

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

Eph. 3:4-6

This is how he consistently presents what the μυστήριον is: something that was not previously understood but has now been revealed; in the context of Ephesians, this mystery is intimately connected with a completely revolutionary concept of what it means to be children of God. Paul is revealing something incredibly, almost unbelievably subversive to the church in Ephesus. He’s telling these Gentile Christians that they are part of the Beloved, united in him, and are now fellow heirs to the promise.

He’s telling them what it means to be a part of the universal, catholic Church. They’re a part of a family now– daughters and sons of God, fellow heirs. He spends the first three chapters speaking to them of a sweeping tapestry– a pattern that their Father-Mother had in place from the very beginning, but was only now forming a picture they could see and understand. The last three chapters he devotes to explaining what this means for them in concrete, every day terms; Paul was nothing if not practical.

You’re a part of the family of God, he’s saying. Now, what does that actually look like?

The family is a metaphor, and he uses the pater familia, the sacred institute of Rome as the “family” that everyone in Ephesus is familiar with. And he continually subverts it. You are all aware of what Plato said about the pater familia, but you are not just Roman anymore– you are children of God as well as children of Caesar.

There are many excellent analyses of the Greco-Roman household codes, but that’s not really the purpose of my post today. I’m talking about the metaphor he’s using– which is one metaphor among dozens. In Ephesians, the metaphor for the church is the family– the pater familia. Today, many would argue that Ephesians 5:22-33 is an instruction to the church regarding marriage that must be acted out literally. The part of this passage that receives an undo amount of attention is the description as Christ and the husband as the “head.” This has resulted in the complementarian term headship, which has come to mean something entirely different than how the people of Ephesus would have received it.

The argument centers on what κεφαλή (a feminine noun, just thought I’d mention that) means– does it really mean authority?

Reading hierarchy, authority, and power struggles into Ephesians 5:22-32, from a literary criticism and theory standpoint, is actually a Marxist reading. I imagine complementarians don’t realize that, but identifying passages like this one primarily as conflicts between weak and strong is, from a literary standpoint, not sound exegesis. It’s eisegeses, or reading your presuppositions into the text. It can only be sound hermeneutics if the power struggle is actually there– some say it is, but the first three chapters of this book belie that. This letter is all about unity– in this passage, it’s about becoming one flesh, the same term God used to describe the union between Adam and Eve before the Fall.

By using this terminology, Paul is evoking the imagery of Genesis and paradise– this is what the Church is supposed to be. This is what it’s supposed to look like. This is what it means to be man and wife– so united that you become one flesh as God originally intended.

And, if there is really supposed to be hierarchy in the Church, if the modern concept of headship-leader-authority is really a part of how Christians are supposed to relate to each other; how we, as the universal catholic Church is supposed to relate to Christ– as a top-down hierarchy, then it should show up in the other metaphors for the Church.

But it doesn’t.

Oh, sometimes it does. The Church is described as soldiers, as subjects in a kingdom, as part of a priesthood with Christ as the chief priest. It wouldn’t be fair or honest to remove any semblance of hierarchy from those descriptions.

But, there are many metaphors where this hierarchy is non-existent. Most of these have to do with specifically giving us an image of inter-dependence and unity. We are the body– joined and held together, building each other in love. We are the temple, a building– with Christ as the lynch pin, as the cornerstone, as the beginning.

We are the Vine and the Branches. The vine cannot survive without the branches, and the branches cannot survive without the vine. We need each other in order to live, thrive, and function. We can’t be separated, and we are one.

That is the over-riding image of the Church and Christ: as one flesh— as something so deeply connected, interwoven, that it would be impossible to think of them as separate. To do so would be borderline ridiculous. These metaphors aren’t about building an idea of the Church where there must be determined authorities that enforce their will onto everyone else: that is is the antithesis of what it means to be the Church. Hierarchy isn’t what this metaphor in Ephesians is about. Interpreting head here, as “divinely authorized power” isn’t a fair reading of Ephesians, and it doesn’t accurately represent how head is presented in every other place it appears.

The only way Ephesians 5:22-33 works as an instruction for wives to submit to the power and control of their husbands is if you rip it out of context and isolate it– you have to insulate the meanings of these words even from the letter it’s a part of, much less the Pauline Corpus or the New Testament. You have to remove the beauty of the mystery that Paul is speaking of in such glowing terms. We could no longer be Beloved, the fellow heirs, the daughters and sons. If hierarchy is the principle in Ephesians 5, than it obliterates Paradise. Forcing hierarchy into this passage leads to seeing hierarchy and power struggles everywhere else– in all those passages where we are called to love like no one else, to esteem everyone as equals.

If there’s hierarchy, than there is no bond nor free cannot be true.

If there’s hierarchy, then all those verses that ask us to be one, to be in unity, to ignore all of the boundaries and rules and cultural constructs about who is allowed to socialize with who, who is allowed to speak to who– all those times that Jesus stepped outside those limitations . . . it all evaporates.

What Jesus did was radical, and what the early church did was just as radical– they threw away hierarchy.

Bringing it back, claiming that all of our human relationships are determined by our obedience to husbands, to pastors, to parents . . . it mars the beauty of the Church, the love of the saints. It damages the message and purpose of the Gospel and the act of the Cross.

August 29, 2013 by SamanthaField

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