Author: Through Grace

I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12). I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ. 1 John 4:7-8 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

The “place” of a woman

A woman’s place in the church and in the home… I’ve had Ephesians 5 quoted at me so many times, and frankly it’s quoted all the harder at those women who are intelligent and capable, not “rebellious” or “unsubmissive.”

I don’t feel comfortable with women pastors. It’s my personal preference; I condemn no one for having a different opinion. However, that’s where my agreement with complimentarianism ends. I don’t disagree with Ephesians 5, but I do disagree with the too frequent misuse of it and a few other verses to condone abuse within Christian homes and communities.

Submission. It’s a term that has been yelled at me, preached at me, a term used to condemn and manipulate me and to relegate me to the sidelines not because I’d done anything wrong, but because I was born with two X chromosomes. Because of how God made me, I’ve been taught that the following were acceptable behaviors toward me and other women:

physical abuse
sexual abuse – such as rape of a wife by her husband
verbal abuse (referring to women as heifers, discussing them as housekeepers, extra income, child bearers and keepers, and objects, but never as people to love and collaborate with)
child neglect (the man and his desires have precedence over any other person in the household- the wife is to submit and the children to obey)
stalking (if I didn’t want it, I should have married)

The problem with these is that when this is the “love” demonstrated by the church and “godly” men, when they go on to say that these are acceptable because if the women enduring these things would only submit more (meaning put up, shut up, and take whatever was done to them), God would surely step in and prevent more harm, when these are allowed or ignored, they undermine the rest of the passage in Ephesians, for if Christ loves the church and gave himself for it, if he loves the church truly and completely, but will only stop abuse if the woman accepts it and says nothing, does nothing, and if the husband who does this to her moreover is also supposed to be demonstrating the same love for her as Christ does… then she is doomed, because neither loves her well. She is relegated to the position of slave, with only what value someone else – her abuser, her accuser – places on her.

Consider this: In the church, which happened first, the church’s submission or Jesus’ love? He loved first and he loved well. The church still struggles with submission. If this is the case, then in marriage, if it can be compared to the relationship of Christ to the church, the husband should love without demanding submission in any form. Submission can’t be commanded anyway. If, though, the husband loves well, submission from the wife will come. She will trust the one who loves her more as she learns more about that love.

What is a woman’s “place?” The same as any human’s. Not in some certain hierarchy of worth or lack of worth, not “under” a man, not in a certain role. A woman is not a threat to man that she should be put down or destroyed. She is to be loved. That is her place, and it will not be found in abuse, in hierarchy, or in any relegation to a lesser role than she is capable of. Love promotes growth and encourages the one loved to be all that she can be. It values the person as she is, without demand or expectation, without condition, while still encouraging her to be more than she could expect of herself.

Church Submission Teachings

I sat in church this morning trying to convince myself that it was going to be OK, that the verses being read were not meant the way I’d heard them preached. I succeeded for awhile, but the more we read, the more concerned I became. Why were we reading about God’s wrath the week after we read about his resurrection? What was happening? The verses read still don’t make sense. The songs were poorly chosen, too… and all I know is that the main song leader was out, so perhaps it was just a bad day.

But then the preacher got up. He read Ephesians 5. He began with a verse that I’ve heard yelled and preached too many times: “Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord.” He didn’t stop there, and to his credit at least he did continue to read through the part about “men, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it…,” which was so little read in the unhealthy church I came from that many men didn’t recognize that part of the passage, even though they quoted the first (about submission) to women often.

The boys would actually sit in the narthex and tell passing women two or three times their age to do things and then say they were unsubmissive if they didn’t, not understanding that the verse didn’t say women were supposed to be subject to all males. A man would follow me around the church, and even off church property, muttering in tongues and saying I was rebellious and unsubmissive for not marrying him. We’d never been on a date. One woman confided that her husband raped her and both he and the church said it was OK, because he was her husband and she should submit.

In Sunday School the pastor’s wife laughed until she cried telling the single young ladies about the man who spanked his unsubmissive wife with a frying pan and another who came home and threw the supper she’d made in the trash, telling her to start over because he wanted something else. The pastor’s brother meanwhile would stand behind the pulpit calling women “loud-mouthed heifers” and other derogatory terms. They were not to take offense, but to submit to that.

And finally one overstepped the line by saying that women were things, because a verse says “he that desireth a wife desireth a good thing.” Therefore, women, in his mind, were things. Objects to be used and set aside, automatons to do the men’s biding without a word. If a woman was to speak her mind at all, it was to be done as entreating her husband, begging and/or flirting until he might consider what she said.

I know that isn’t what the preacher meant this morning. But it was way too close. Talking about how he used to want his wife to be like someone else, asked why she didn’t do this or that like someone else… he said she did speak her mind when it was best for the family now, but he didn’t say he respected or loved her for it. He said it (to my hearing) as a necessary evil of being and staying married. I hope it was just that what he said was filtered through years of abuse. I hope he didn’t mean what I heard. But I can’t shake it.

He said that there is power in submission, because submission requires trust, that the women who submit are, basically, the least damaged or most healed. He does not know me. He does not know my story. He doesn’t know the stories of others I have known, who submitted without trust, whose trust was broken through that submission… not only their trust in a man, but their trust in men in general and more important their trust in God. We were told if God loved us he would protect us if we just submitted. And the abuse worsened. We tried to submit more, and it got worse yet. In “rebellion” to that we found freedom…. in rebellion to the false idea that we should accept whatever we are handed by abusive men because God said “submit”. In rebellion, too, to the false idea that we should remain silent as we see others’ pain, as we all submitted to such abuse.

So excuse me, preacher, if I tuned you out today. It wasn’t because I wasn’t married and so didn’t see an application. It was because that passage was too often applied to me without love, and with a little too much hate or apathy or just general wickedness of narcissists left with a power they didn’t deserve and was not of God.

Another Method Of Abuse

My parents’ church, growing up, was very small and wouldn’t try anything new. They never encouraged anything for anyone under 50 to my memory. We kids couldn’t sit past the third pew on either side because a deacon’s mom sat in the third row and NO ONE sat in front of her. We had one egg hunt when I was around 8 or 10, and VBS I think about the same time. Once. Dad asked about videos during class due to reading and hearing difficulties of some. It was not considered.

They were told that mowing the church and parsonage lawn, doing a significant amount of the church maintenance, supplying all Sunday School materials from their personal budget and resources (Mom created a lot of the material herself for awhile, because the church wasn’t purchasing anything that worked for a class with an age range like they gave her.) for free was not considered in any way part of a tithe, and were not allowed to participate in decisions within the church because they weren’t giving a full 10% of Dad’s paycheck. If they’d considered how much they were giving of themselves, it would have been much more than 10% I suspect.

These were not healthy things, any more than anything I experienced as an adult. There are many various ways that churches place unhealthy and unreasonable expectations on members.

Should I be afraid?

I worry that I will get caught up in something negative again if I go to church. The fact that I get excited about church, that I want to be involved, that I can throw myself into it so easily and so quickly concerns me. But should I be afraid? Should I be concerned about this?

I’ve been attending a church that I have learned and grown in. I haven’t been there long, and I do disagree with several things on some pretty deep levels. But I’ve grown. For the first time in years, I’ve found myself praying. I’ve been interested in reading about theological issues again, sometimes even the Bible. These are good things, at least for someone who wants to believe. And yet I’m scared that I’ll get caught up in something there that is not good.

I’ve been focusing, with church and faith and such, on finding a healthy place. That has evolved into finding a place where things are presented in a way that I agree with. Yet this is actually in itself not healthy. I’ve looked at churches and tried to find one that was fool-proofed safe. Yet this type of place probably doesn’t exist on earth.

Sometimes maybe it’s better to stop looking for the perfect place and the perfect people. Maybe it would be better to identify ways to counteract any unhealthy impacts of various things in life than to try to insulate myself from them. Maybe.. yes, it makes sense, but it’s not easy to decide to do. Kind of like stepping out into thin air… or onto water. But I think it’s time to try.

Sat Down, Stood Up, and Kicked Out

I found an article about the impact of “time outs” on kids the other day. It reminded me of the way shunning is used in unhealthy churches… and about getting kicked out and such. I know nothing about kids and discipline. But as far as church discipline goes… this makes a whole lot more sense than what I’ve seen.

The article encourages that time outs be “brief… and previously explained.” That got my attention. My mind jumped to the time outs I’ve witnessed as part of church discipline–being told not to do things, not to interact… not to come for a certain amount of time. The norm in my former church was six months. These were not “brief,” and were not usually explained in advance. Actually most “discipline” in my former church was sudden and vengeful, without any warning… and completely unanticipated because they had no basis in reality, but in suspicion, rumor, and gossip. This type of punitive time out in the article is defined as punishing, hostile, and humiliating, done in anger and frustration but with no goal of growth or learning.

The article states that time outs were intended “to help children calm down so they can reflect on and change their behavior as part of a larger parenting strategy…” What if church discipline were intended in the same way? What if, if someone did wrong, they were “sat down” or “put out” in order to give them the opportunity to consider their behavior and change it, not through fear and shunning, but through love, support, and careful counsel? What if church discipline left those who must be disciplined and become repentant feeling loved and cared for rather than condemned? What if, as the article recommends for time outs, church discipline became a time of “reflection and conversation,” a time to consider spiritual and emotional states and reconnect, completed with a time of comforting, connection, and further reflection?

Time outs… being sat down or sat out. There are definite parallels.

Can you imagine making a mistake and instead of being condemned, rejected, gossiped about, and shunned–being loved, directed toward right, and reconciled?

Wouldn’t that have been amazing?