Nothing But Blue Skies

It's early summer, or late spring, whichever you prefer to call it.  Here in SC winter often shockingly gives way to summer without much warning in the way of springtime.  This year the cold seemed to linger far too long before giving way to sweltering hot days and humidity laden afternoons that try to steal your breath away.  Over the last week rain began to make a daily appearance, either by tapping on our roofs all day long, or by gathering darkly in a far corner of the sky, then descending in a deluge almost without warning.

Yesterday while I waited in the car line at school with my sunglasses on I suddenly realized I didn't need them anymore.  Headed South from home, the sun shone directly through the windshield, necessitating my glasses and sun visor.  When I turned into the school parking lot though, the sky on the other side greeted me with low, dark, foreboding clouds.  They stretched from the trees, far up into the sky, casting their ominous shadow over everything.  At one point my car sat situated so that on one side of me I saw darkness and on the other, a perfectly sunny day.  At the time I merely sat in awe of nature.  I pondered how two such opposing forces could exist in the very same sky.  Had I never turned from the road I from which I started I might never have seen that dark sky or been aware that in a few short minutes, I would end up driving through such heavy rain that I could barely see the road. 

The rain fell so hard on my car that it drowned out the sound of the podcast Charlie and I tried to listen to as we drove into town.  Puddles formed quickly in the road, so deep that as I drove through them they tried to pull my car toward the edge of the highway.  I slowed down, of course, giving full attention to my driving.  We turned off the podcast and sat in silence, just listening to the rain pummeling the roof of the car, hoping that soon we might drive out of that storm and once again find the other half of the day--the part where the sun shone brightly and we could once again turn the radio on.

Lately I feel as though inside my head a storm brews.  So many things happen in the world, and now, thanks to social media and news everywhere we look, we can't avoid knowing without making a willful effort to avoid knowing.  Much like avoiding seeing that storm by staying on the road on which I first started my journey yesterday, most of us try, in life, to not see things that challenge us or make us feel afraid.  Sometimes just hearing something that goes against what we believe and hold deeply as truth scares us.  It gets our hackles up, makes us defensive.  We search out that route where we began, when we saw nothing but blue skies ahead--no challenges, no  information that threatens
our stability on the road or storms so loud they drown out what we really want to hear.

Today I saw the news about Paige Patterson's removal from his position with the Southern Baptist Association's Seminary as a result of his past comments and teachings regarding violence and sexual assault against women.  I admit, I felt relief that finally something seemingly is being recognized about the danger of the attitudes that he and others like him perpetuate among members of the largest protestant denomination in America.  Unfortunately those attitudes and beliefs now invade the denomination, and many of the Baptist off-shoots of Southern Baptists, like the Independent Fundamentalists, the Free Will Baptists and  Missionary Baptists.  The idea that women must take a back seat role to men in all things, in my experience, is a dangerous one, despite scripture that seemingly commands women to subject themselves to the wills of their husbands, or if they have no husbands, their fathers, and if they have no father, their pastor.  The argument is often softened with, "Paul also commands that husbands love their wives as Christ loves the church, and if husbands do what they're supposed to do, then women will find it easy--even safe, to submit to the will of her husbands."


If I wanted to argue Biblical ideology I could.  I spent the first 30 years of my life in an Independent Baptist church, deeply involved in studying scripture on my own and with the guidance of pastors and teachers who gave their own perspectives as to how those scriptures should be interpreted.  Being fundamentalists, we were taught to take scripture in its most literal form while also hearing regularly that to question the authority of our pastor would lead us down the wrong spiritual path.  Never once, in all those years, did a pastor, preacher or teacher actually speak about scripture in its true context. 

Instead of arguing Biblical ideology, let's talk about the word "context."  As a Fundie, I was always taught "People will try to confuse you by using pieces of scripture out of context."  However, not one person ever looked at scripture in its true context, historically, socially, or even with consideration of the attitudes and beliefs of the time period in which they were written, and then explained what they meant.  In the Baptist world, church members are encouraged to study scripture for themselves, then apply it to their lives today--two thousand years after it was written.  Surely times have changed a bit since then, right?

In Biblical times men often had more than one wife.  In fact men often had harems of sorts, with numerous concubines to satisfy their sexual appetites and provide them with  children, yet by choice, we do not follow that Biblical practice today.  Even in the New Testament, we are taught that if a woman's husband dies, her husband's brother is to take her as his wife, even if he already has a wife.  If that happened in any church today it would be positively scandalous.  Bible scholars fail to mention that in the social climate that existed during Biblical times, women were little more than currency.  If you were female in those days, your fate lay directly in the hands of your father, or your husband, or even a brother.  You made few choices of your own--women were traded like cattle, told to stay silent, to keep themselves at home, care for their husbands and not make waves.  Women were blamed for the lustful sins of men, while the men themselves took no responsibility for their actions.  If your husband thought that you, upon your wedding night, were not a virgin, he could abandon you, which for a woman of that time could mean a cruel existence, or even death.  Women followed the constricts of their day because to not follow them meant struggle, poverty, starvation, they would find themselves ostracized from everyone they knew.  We thankfully have evolved as a society, past those old constructs now.  For the life of me though, I cannot figure out why we hang onto some parts of those old ideas, and throw out others, as if they never existed in scripture to begin with. 

These kinds of thoughts continue to gather in my head over the last couple of days, making my mind feel as heavy and dark as those thunderclouds hanging low in the sky over my son's school yesterday.  I try to keep the thoughts to myself--I know they are not appreciated, I know they threaten people whose beliefs follow a straight line where a storm of questions and stories of real lives torn apart by their deeply held beliefs never blows them off course.  But not looking away from your own path doesn't mean another entire world of experience doesn't  exist.  It is there, looming darkly over all of us, if only we can find the courage to look at it, examine it, and take measures to understand it.

Millions.  I mean millions of women, and children go through life with the heavy weight of abuse, sexual exploitation, even rape and molestation on their backs.  A lot of these things happen to them at the hands of the husbands to whom they are told they must submit if they truly want to honor God.  Many of them experience sexual assault by clergy members or even just men who sit on the pews near them every Sunday.  Trusting their pastors, the leaders of their church, millions of women, families of children who were molested, go to those leaders for guidance when horrific things happen to them.  Millions of those same people hear, "You, as a Christian, must forgive them and keep quiet about this.  It could destroy that man's ministry if you tell people what he did to you."  They're accused of provoking assault, made to apologize in front of the entire congregation for having been sexually assaulted by a member of the church staff.   They've been told their virginity is worth more than their very existence at times. 

Domestic abuse in America is at epidemic proportions.  I find it hard to believe that religious beliefs do not in some way contribute to this problem.  Empowering men while completely stripping women of all power cannot lead to good things for society at large.  One in 5 women (who actually report abuse) have or will experience an abusive relationship in their lifetime.  Think of 5 female friends you know.  One of them either has been abused in some way, or will be.  Maybe that person is you.  Who would you go to for help? 

The problem with submission, and even the idea of a man loving his wife as Christ loved the church is this: how far do we take it?  Who decides?  Who decides whether a husband is loving his wife as well as Christ loves the church?  Is a mere mortal man, imperfect as all humans are, even capable of loving a wife with the same kind of love God supposedly showers upon the church?  And if God loves the church so much, why is "the church" so often the very place where women and children in particular, are harmed in such life-changing, life-destroying ways?   Who decides these things for us, when we cannot appeal directly to God himself for a direct answer?  As Baptists, you'd depend on your pastor as a spiritual leader to give you guidance on just how far to take the idea of submitting to a husband, a father or the pastor himself.  If we give men this kind of absolute power over us, that power will absolutely lead to our demise. 

Please don't read me as saying all Christian or Southern Baptist men are evil abusive people.  I absolutely do not believe that.  I know though, from personal experience, that the well is poisoned and far too many of those men buy into the idea that women were placed on this Earth solely for the purpose of fulfilling the needs of men.  They take the term "Help Meet" from Genesis and decide it means "servant."  Should a woman have dreams and goals of her own, or is her number on goal in life to help her husband achieve his dreams and goals?  His "calling" if you will.  Is servitude to men and children really the only valuable contribution we can make to the world, spiritually or otherwise?

How short are we selling our own worth when we adapt these kinds of ideas to our ONE CHANCE at life?

I've been around long enough to know that for every question I ask here, some Baptist will have a rationalization handy.  I too, was taught to have a scripture at the ready to combat any question someone might pose to me about what I believed when I was in the Baptist faith.  Those rationalizations backed by scripture taken out of historical and often spiritual context were burned into my brain.  You can come at me with them, but I've heard them all before.  My questions remain valid, your answers are not sufficient.

I feel right now like my thoughts are falling like rain drops--a deluge of their own, falling in useless puddles along the roadside.  Perhaps some of them will get someone's attention and persuade them to take a look past their own sunny path of belief, into the dark abyss of misery and despair they've helped to create in the name of God, or religion, or being Baptist above all else. 

It's getting late.  I have a busy day tomorrow, and so, so many more thoughts thundering around inside my head.  This post is the beginning, not then end.  It is not a mere statement of my opinion, it is a testament to my own experiences, and to the experiences of so, so many other women who find themselves forever changed by the abuse they've suffered at the hands and words of pastors, husbands, Sunday School teachers and "Christian" counselors.  There is more.   So, so much more and I want to share it all with you if you can be brave enough to turn your head just a little, and look at the darkness that exists in the same realm as the light in which you bask.  I ask you to accept, for just a while, that belief on its own is not enough.  I ask you to listen, try to understand a kind of pain and spiritual damage that seems unimaginable, but exists all the same, as a result of the religious teachings you've probably clung tightly to all your life.  I ask you to go on this journey with me, to examine the truth that exists outside your bubble of belief, and maybe even along the way, learn something profound about love.

I hope you can stick with me past the bright sunny sky of your belief, into the dark, stormy world of reality.