Conversations that Christians Must Have–#MeToo and #BLM

So, last week I posted an article on social media with a video about Stewart-Allen Clark who (being quite plump himself) was going on and on about how married women let themselves go (and he is married) and he was talking about the male “need” for a beautiful wife and the importance of her being at least a “participation trophy” wife and all that (warning, it is quite upsetting that such a thing would be preached and laughed at and “amened” at from the pulpit). Of course, it was horrifying and I did something I never do. I allowed people to take the gloves off and express themselves, even though I dislike insults. I did it for a reason and God taught me a lot of things that were important through allowing that expression.

When people are subjected to unjust treatment, in whatever way, and it has gone on systematically all their lives (and by “systematic” I mean that there is a culture, i.e. governmental, social, socio-economic, and/or religious structures backing it up so that it is hard to escape from) and they are finally given a chance to vent, it can be ugly. And yet, that ugliness is there because of frustration and anger and heartache and a feeling of hopelessness and wanting things to be different (read Psalm 137!)—but when a future difference is contingent upon the actions of another person and how they feel about you and how their beliefs dictate that they treat you and even how God wants you to be seen and treated, all those things can turn easily to rage. Rage is a response to institutional injustice—a form of injustice where we just accept the illogical as logical and even internalize it because it is all we have ever known.

When the #metoo movement began, a lot of women started coming forward who never would have before. Because we couldn’t. I know all too well what happens when an 80’s-era high school teacher gets reported for repeatedly molesting a student. Unless someone saw it or it met certain standards, the accusations were swept under the rug and the accuser subjected to ostracism. But pedophiles aren’t generally sloppy enough to allow that to happen and they are generally such charming people that the non-victims rally around them protectively. Within the Churches, even Ravi Zacharias has his rabid supporters, as does Andrew Savage, who are still victim-blaming–despite independent investigations confirming assault and wrongdoing on behalf of the ministry staff.

Closer attention is now finally being paid, within Christian communities, to certain books aimed at men and their “needs”—books that subjugate their wives’ humanity in order to fashion them into becoming the focus of their husbands’ sins. It’s “okay” for them to lust, they “can’t help it”—just look better than everyone else so they will lust after you. It’s “okay” for them to be covetous of having a trophy wife, just make sure you meet the criteria. It’s “okay” for them to be shallow and want to show off a beautiful wife, it’s your job to be beautiful no matter how hard you work and no matter how many children you’ve had and menopause be damned, just spent another hour a day on the treadmill and eat next to nothing as your hormones betray you. Be willing to do whatever it is he saw when he was looking at porn, no matter how depraved and demeaning, no matter how violated you feel while doing it, and he will stop if you are submissive enough. It’s the way to keep him from divorcing you, they say, the way to keep him from cheating on you. It’s an unjust burden that no woman was ever meant to carry—being held responsible for the church-sanctioned sins of her man. But it’s an institutional problem within society. That preacher didn’t make up this attitude, He was just dumb enough to express it and post it on YouTube.

So much for “no male and female” in Christ—they can lust and covet and be prideful and let themselves go but we are required, in some “Christian” thought, to be the focus of their character flaws—and even encourage and feed said flaws. We are expected to enable sin while dealing with and eliminating our own. Imagine a husband being told to get a second and third job to satisfy our “need” to shop and wear expensive clothes! It’s no different in terms of being ludicrous and ridiculous.

These are good things to finally be able to discuss but not all I want to talk about.

I want to talk about racism. I want to talk about the kind of anger that all those women (and quite a few men) were venting on that post, howling in their frustration over the trap that man had his wife in, and the trap so many of us have been in over the years in one way or another—physically, psychologically and sexually. There were two people who came on playing the shame game and trying to passive-aggressively shut down the conversation. A lot of people don’t want to hear the anger. And I see the same thing in conversations about racial injustice. Although we whites would prefer to talk about how much better things are now than they were, as Christians we can never be satisfied until they are good. Women have it better now too, but things aren’t good as long as these sorts of mindsets exist (ones we can be divorced over and must live in fear because of).

We have this cruel thing we do, and I see it on social media. They (our black brothers and sisters) talk about the pain and shame of slavery. Some white person reminds them that slavery is over and that my ancestors, the Irish (grandma was full-blooded and dad is 75% Irish and we’ve been in this country since well before the Revolutionary War), were slaves too and brutalized. But if they escaped, could you look at their face and tell? Would you look at me right now and do you wonder if I am the descendant of slaves? Have my ancestors been denied the vote or judged to be 3/5 of a human being? Were we ever barred from living in whatever neighborhood we could afford over the last century? Have any of us been lynched lately? No, of course not—there are even parades where people can pretend to be “one of us.” So, please stop using my ancestors to shut down the conversation. I mean, that was hundreds of years ago and the consequences erased long ago. We look like y’all so you couldn’t do anything to us anyway.

Black Americans will say, “Black Lives Matter” and whites will counter with “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” or, my personal favorite, “Unborn Lives Matter” as an intentional slap on the face of the entire black community about the high rate of abortion, as though all black Americans support abortion and do not mourn deeply over it. Hey, police lives are important to me—my kid is going to be a cop; it’s been all he has wanted since he was two and in 18 months, he is headed for the Academy. But it’s just an attempt to, again, shut down the conversation that things are wrong—something my future cop son and I discuss a lot. Black Lives Matter, Black Pride, Black is Beautiful—unlike the corresponding White Pride and White is Beautiful, they have never meant “only black lives matter” or legally enforced racial purity or supremacism. Instead, they mean, “Why is this still happening in a nation that claims to be Christian?” How about, “Why don’t you love and respect me?” These mantras mean, “I am tired of being ashamed and treated differently because of my skin color.” They warn, “I am not going to apologize because I am fearfully and wonderfully made and God Himself is going to ask you what your problem was with that!!” They inform us of the truth, “We are tired of our sons being pulled over and detained for things that no white person would be pulled over for, much less detained unless he was a known criminal.” But we want to tell them that things are better than they used to be and we are scared to death of how uncomfortable and unprofitable it might be for us to fix this. The truth is, that the price of not fixing it is even more expensive and just as devastating to our collective souls as allowing slavery to historically continue so long in the first place.

We do other things too. We make excuses for whites using the n-word by pointing out that blacks use it too—even though we all know full well it doesn’t mean the same thing when we say it. But we don’t want to talk about how horrifying it is that black children still hear those kinds of words from white adults, that they have to deal with the sort of fear that must induce, so we deflect and side-step. But those of us who were brutally bullied and rejected as children—we can manage a glimpse. Can we stand by and allow it? Can we say, “I survived it and so will they?” Is mere survival what we actually want for black children? Or black adults–are they expected to just have thicker skins than whites need? And, if we believe that, are we any different than the overt racists? Is shrugging any different than personally speaking those words? I tell you the truth, that racism is a heart issue that runs deeper than we know. That we can find it on both sides is irrelevant to our need to fix it within ourselves. There is no place for such lukewarmness toward suffering in the life of any believer–when someone made in the image of God is made to suffer, He suffers.

One of the most horrible things we do is point out that the slums and the ghettos aren’t so bad because “the best and the brightest escape all the time—therefore, it’s all about hard work.” I am not okay with a system that only the “best and the brightest” can escape. And what does that even mean? Does it mean we hold to a hierarchy of worth based on intellectual aptitude? “Smart people can escape, so it’s okay. They don’t deserve to be there”—that’s the unspoken truth of that attitude, as though some people do deserve it. Anything that the least of these cannot escape from is not okay, and as believers how on earth can we even promote this sort of thinking? Are we really going to be counted among the sheep or will we be found among the goats?

And people of color have to just bite on their tongues and take it because when they bring it up, we bring them right back down. But this is a conversation that needs to happen. There are changes that we need to make—and I have no idea how to do it. But if we don’t try then we might just find ourselves on the left with the goats, chewing on cans. The Gospel isn’t the Gospel at all if the only lives it changes are our own. Christianity isn’t a white European religion. The first three major centers (besides Jerusalem) were Syria, Rome and Alexandria, in Egypt. Christianity was thriving all over North Africa and it produced brilliant minds like Tertullian and Athanasius but it isn’t an African religion either. It belongs to the world. Every color. Every language. Every culture and cultural expression. And we have to mourn over injustice and hunger and thirst for change that will bring justice every bit as much as we mourn over sin and hunger and thirst for holy behavior in general. One without the other is a false picture of the Gospel of the Kingdom. And in “Christian nations” we can’t turn a blind eye or shut down uncomfortable conversations. We have to talk about what is wrong. Cancel culture wouldn’t exist if we were all willing to talk about it and move toward resolution together, as a team and not as adversaries. Cancel culture is our own fault for being unwilling to listen without being dismissive. People do what they feel they can when all avenues for reasonable action are shut down. I am not saying it is right, but I am saying that maybe that’s the only option we’ve allowed. You can’t blame the balloon for succumbing to the eleventh slow leak when you’ve plugged the other ten with your available fingers. The yearning for dignity and justice and relief will find an outlet.

I started out with the incident from back in February, and how outraged and humiliated we all were as women. Ladies, remember how you felt. And when our black brothers and sisters cry out in that same frustrated, angry and outraged voice over the things in their lives that we don’t allow them to talk about—we have to suppress that instinct to sweep it all under the carpet. Everyone knows the problems go deep and they are not going away until we begin to come together as believers, as members of the same family, and deal with it. Remember how much you want people to listen when it is you. As human beings, they want and feel the exact same things and they deserve acknowledgment and redress of wrongs just as much as we do.

Things aren’t right for women until they are right for black women too, and for their sons and husbands, brothers and fathers. And if we as Christians aren’t leading those conversations and striving toward reconciliation of all people, male and female, and all colors and creeds—well, we will find ourselves at odds with the very Kingdom we claim to serve. We’re all going to be equal and equal in dignity in the world to come, so what are we waiting for? The time has come for equality now—not as a future hope but a recognition of the spiritual reality that we already are all equal to God.

Book recommendations:

McCaulley, Esau Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

Bantu, Vince L A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity

Tisby, Jemar The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

 



The Dangers of Dualism: Fearing the World Instead of Trusting in God

Dualism is a metaphysical belief that looks at life in terms of extremes – physical vs spiritual, good vs evil, us vs them, etc. Sounds reasonable ay first glance, and yet this kind of thinking has led to a terrible kind of bondage, not only in the world but also within the Body of Messiah – bondage that we see in politics, congregations, and all over social media. It is an extreme point of view that has led to paranoia, persecution and unnecessary division throughout the ages.
 
Dualism is about separation, and most often comes up in terms of “we are good, they are bad,” or “physical = bad, spiritual = good.” It’s the mindset behind the idea that this world can be written off, that it exists simply to be escaped from – where we become “more heavenly focused than earthly good.” Because of this, there has grown up a mistrust in and fear of the physical world as well as a fear of and contempt for anyone who is not in lockstep with ourselves – there are no shades of grey in dualistic religious or political thinking. For example, Catholicism (Judaism, Liberalism, Conservatism, whatever) can’t just be partially wrong, in the mind of a true dualist, it has to be entirely evil. It has to be discredit, destroyed, at any cost, through whatever worldly and even sinful means at our disposal. When we are scared, we are more than willing to allow our morals to slip “for a good cause.” Everything done under that banner has to be suspect, and no one can give them credit for any good works for fear of being labeled as a papist, or at least very dangerous. People from other countries can’t just be “backward,” they have to be subhuman – they have to be, because we, ourselves, are supposedly good. Or at least I am, in this train of thought. (Hence the American form of slavery as identified and justified by color). This is also the line of thinking responsible for political rancor, racism, and class warfare – people like me are good and anyone else is suspect and most probably inferior (at the very least)
 
The Bible even seems to support this kind of thinking, because it was written in a dyadic society – hence they had no problem with celebrating the “dashing of enemy babies against the rocks.” They were too extreme for the tastes of people growing up in a post-Cross world which has been largely transformed by the fruit of the Spirit. We take for granted that no decent person would want such a thing to happen, but again, Yeshua/Jesus died in order to bring God’s heart values (and not just outward observances, which are also vitally important) into the world in a massive and unprecedented way.
 
But, with the advent of social media, we have once again become very much like the paranoid and conspiratorial people who lived before the Cross. Nowhere is it better seen than in politics and the fake news stories spreading all over the internet – reporting conspiracies as though they were fact, citing non-existent news stories and fabricating quotes, data and statistics. Of course, these sites have a LOT of advertisements, and they get money when you visit, a lot of money. Because of this unBiblical dualism, which paints everything in terms of black and white, these stories feed the notion that, for example, government is entirely evil, and anyone who questions it is immediately granted an aura of integrity. That’s dangerous. We can’t attribute virtue to those people who feed our pre-perceived notions and call it something like, “taking the red pill” – instead, it is simply believing, without a thorough investigation, a separate storyline. Believe me, if you take too many red pills, you will overdose.
If you are obsessed with finding all the hidden evil in the world, then your focus is desperately off.
 
I have seen it used in politics, racism, anti-semitism, intercountry squabbling, religion, you name it. It is rooted in an absolute paranoia of the different. We want “us” to be good and right, and so we need “them” to be evil and wrong. It’s completely about us, and because it is about us, our moral compass goes off-kilter. We will believe everything good about us and everything evil, no matter how absurd, about them. It goes so far that we read a story and don’t even do a basic fact check – we don’t bother to find out if this celebrity actually even made the interview being quoted, or if CNN is actually the source behind a story, or if there truly is a speech on file that says what the story claims, in context. We are driven by fear and surface-appearances by people who, frankly, would appear to be training us to react and divide without even thinking about why we are doing it, and without asking questions. Who exactly is yanking our strings so effectively, while warning us that others are yanking our strings? Seems to be the perfect disguise for a deceiver, eh?
 
Think, for a moment, about the paranoia that has to exist within us, in order to believe and propagate anything bad we see reported about our “enemy” when the Ten Commandments specifically tell us not to bear false witness against our neighbors. Think about how compromised we have to be, to forward every bad thing we see about the suspected folks of our choice. That isn’t a godly virtue, or truth-seeking, being informed, smarter, a remnant, or a watchman.  In the real ancient world – a watchman who reported false information regularly would die. He was not at liberty to blow the shofar every time he saw a tumbleweed on the horizon. What we are dealing with is a lack of self-control –  fear gone wild, manifesting itself in sin through false witness. It’s a blindness brought on by a need to be good and right – but we aren’t entirely good and right – are we?
 
No. We aren’t. And it is our pride and self-deception that drives this madness of external dualism. But let’s look at a healthier dualism-ish sort of situation.
 
Within each individual (let’s not bring extremes like psychopaths into the mix), there is a battle of good vs evil. I am certainly no exception – I am trying to be more good all the time and less evil – but the Bible clearly lays out this struggle in every human being, beginning with Adam and Eve. All of the patriarchs, the kings, everyone fought this battle within themselves. We are not entirely good – only one Man could ever boast of that on His resume. The rest of us are various degrees of what I call a hot mess. It is an unending battle that we have to fight every day, for the rest of our lives. As we begin to see how suspect we are, as we stop seeing ourselves and those who side with us as inherently good, we will begin to see the world and the people in it as more multi-faceted. Honestly, that is the kind of mindset that can take the gospel to the ends of the earth – as opposed to Peter’s belief that he couldn’t even enter the home of a Gentile, even a decade after the Cross. We can’t effectively serve God when our judgment and perception is clouded by extreme dualism.
 
You know what? The best way to start is to take a break and stop questioning everyone else all the time – the government, religions, races, ethnicities, etc.; we need to question ourselves and what the things we need to/choose to believe – specifically, we need to understand what they tell us about ourselves and our need to believe that we 9and those who agree with us) are truly on the unquestionably trustworthy end of our dualistic paranoia.
 
“Wow, look at that headline, it’s outrageous, and it is about X so it must be true.”
 

Whether it was happening in Nazi Germany or today, it’s the same dualistic pride and fear behind the sin – and it is behind our inability to do anything but sit in paralyzed fear of the world around us. One thing is for certain – we can’t make any kind of headway in the Kingdom if our constant focus is the world and all the terrible things they must be constantly doing behind the scenes – especially if a lot, or even just a little, of it is just the product of our imagination spurred on by those who are out to make a quick buck, create outrage, and further their own agendas – which we actually should be questioning. After all, if we are so suspicious of X that we will believe anything that Y says, it doesn’t make us particularly well-informed, it just makes us useful to God only knows who, hidden safely and anonymously behind the scenes and hidden behind some computer screen. People we don’t know, but whom we place our blind trust in – simply because they appear to be the enemy of those whom we believe are our enemies.

We are the Body of Messiah: worshippers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Who exactly have we been trusting blindly?