Saturday, June 12, 2010

Religious Abuse

8:53 AM by Christi Bowman

I have read many books as of late (at least one every week or two) on the progressive Christianity side of things. I did not grow up anywhere near any kind of thought like this. I love it. My appetite for it is insatiable. Still, no matter how much of it I encounter, no matter how much I realize that this is how I thought it should be all along, no matter the confidence I gain in God and Jesus and true Christianity, whenever I encounter the littlest bit of the other stuff, It brings me way down.

A pastor that I don't know (we have an organization affiliation in common), posted on Facebook yesterday as his status update that he was putting together a message around a difficult passage in Romans. To this, a hyper Calvinist college student informed the pastor in the comments section that there was only ONE way to understand this passage, and that way is for "the elect" to be celebrating God's wrath poured on the rest of the world. He and I had a lengthy dialog, I would link to it if I could but it was on Facebook, where he used a popular demonstration of the "undeserved candy bar" to illustrate the "graciousness of God to his elect." In the end I told him how bad I felt over the manipulation of his love and his ability to see the love of God by his parents...as that was my own upbringing.

For those of you fortunate enough to not know what the "undeserved candy bar" illustration is, here you go:

"My father would come up to me and my brothers. He had one candy bar, but 3 boys in which to give it to. He gave it to my brother. Now of course, me and my other brother complained that we didn't get a candy bar. My father would answer back, "Do you boys deserve the candy bar?" As much as we would want to say yes, ultimately we have to say no. We didn't do anything to deserve a candy bar. My dad would then say, "It is my candy bar. I bought it and I can give it to who I choose. If I choose to give it to your brother, that is my decision. I didn't have to give your brother the candy, I could have given all of you what you deserve, nothing, but I chose to show my mercy on your brother by giving him the candy and I am fully right in that decision". My dad was un-equitable, meaning that he wasn't equal with all my siblings and me, which is what many parents try to do to keep the fighting down in the house. But God doesn't have to be equitable. He gives justice or Non-Justice and there is no in-justice."

Because I had experienced this myself I responded:

Ah, the old candy bar lesson...yeah...my dad did that too. I think Dobson told all of our parents to do it. It's called religious abuse. Which I am sorry from the very bottom of my heart that you had to suffer through too! I'm also sorry that you are justifying it as good parenting & making excuses for your dad...that breaks my heart...

and like the broken kid that he is, he justified it:

"First may I say.....WHAT?! The candy bar lesson did not hurt me. I have no inner turmoil, or hatred for my father, I did not suffer through that "ordeal". It is not abuse, it is a life lesson. I have no baggage from this lesson. I only have more respect for my father. That lesson humbled me before him, why? Because if I come to him with the mindset that I don't deserve certain things, than I come to him as a child who is respectful and humble when asking for something. Do I deserve the house I am in, the food I eat, the bed I sleep in, or the clothes I wear? No. I am blessed that my father taught me this lesson of being humble and not being arrogant to think that I deserve things I don't. And do you know what that kind of mindset lead my dad to do before he died in 2009? He planted 6 churches, wrote 2 books on this subject, and raised 4 children to be obedient to him. If you ask my family, they will say that there is nothing but respect and love for my late father. You fail to realize that we as humans don't deserve anything. Not life, not a redeemed soul, not belongings or food, we deserve nothing. It is only because God blesses us out of his love that we have anything. We should all be going to hell and burning there for all eternity but God decided to show some people mercy. If you don't get that man is corrupt to the CORE without God and if God doesn't hold us back we will become devils incarnate, then you will always read Romans 9 incorrectly and you won't understand why God does certain things.

The truth will set you free, but the truth might hurt along the way. I am trying to show you how the Bible describes God and just because it doesn't feel good, doesn't mean it's not true."

I thought about this conversation quite a bit yesterday in light of a story I have to tell. It is not a pretty story, but it has the happiest ending it can have given the circumstances:

I was at the grocery store with all three children by myself the other day (a mistake I try and not make) I was looking for a certain brand of something I could not find in the refrigerator section of the store (I point that part out as it was cold and I was in summer clothes.) I was freezing so all of my senses were heightened. My children were irritating each other for sport and getting louder and louder...I was becoming more and more embarrassed at their behavior. I kept reminding them to leave each other alone, be nice, talk in their inside voices, and stay out of the middle of the isle so that other shoppers could pass us by. (and get as far away from us as possible) All of the sudden my youngest let out the whiniest scream at the top of his lungs. I lost it (in the least obvious way available to me at that moment) I put on my sternest mad mommy face, (it wasn't hard) I looked right at him as I pointed and whispered in a most severe way: "I am going to tear you apart." All of the color drained from his face, his countenance dropped and he began crying in utter fear of me...I could see it all over him. It did not even take me a second to realize, with horror, what I had done. I immediately picked him up and acknowledged that I had scared him. I told him that I was very sorry. I reassured him that not only was that not possible for me to do but even if it was I would never do it. I acknowledge that I should have never said that to him and that I don't even know why I did. He forgave me and squirmed back down. He asked for reassurance: "You would never tear me apart?" I said no. I mocked myself and the children giggled...they began saying it to each other...and giggling. Every once in a while it comes back up as a game and I am reminded that mommy was not very nice and I confess that out loud. He wants me to play my part and I oblige and then he laughs...as if doing it over and over again, in a mocking way, reminds him that he doesn't have to be afraid of me.

My parents used fear and humiliation coupled with God as parenting techniques. My parents were followers of the Dobson way and I have stories that would make you cringe. I promised myself that I would never do to my children what my parents did to us...that I would never allow other people to do to my children what my parents allowed others to do, in the name of God, to my brother and I. And although I was diligent to make some changes, to my shame and horror, when I had children of my own, because it was all I knew and I didn't know how to have a healthy child parent relationship, I saw many of those parenting techniques seeping in. It broke my heart in two ways. As awful as it sounds, if I had only to deal with the hurt I was causing them I might not have found the will to stop and look for new ways of parenting...I would have thought that was the way things were supposed to be...after all it was the way things were for me. What was killing me (as selfish as it was) was reliving my own pain through the pain of my children when I would parent them with some of the techniques my parents used. My own pain was the catalyst for change that led me on this journey in search of the real character of this God I kept bumping up against.

As I write I am reminded of Matthew 7:11. It was my own selfishness that was the crucible for change not the love I had for my children. But in my "evilness" I was still able to give good gifts to my children.

I am in the process of being transformed. Much to my chagrin, a process that will never come to a complete end (I would like to know that there could come a time when I could completely stop hurting people out of selfishness) As Blanca, a friend of Sarah Miles, says in Sarah's book 'Jesus Freak':

"In six years' I've learned to be a little more of a team player...Now I yell but then say I'm sorry. We're learning how to be with each other."

Through this process, although I haven't learned to master my emotions completely in the moment, like Blanca, I have learned to say I'm sorry to my children and admit that I have been wrong...in the moment, but this has only come from the transformative power of walking as best I can muster (which isn't much) in the Jesus Way.

If this power to treat my children with far more respect than I ever received, comes from my God, than my God can not possibly be the same god that the student above describes in his comments. Yet, I know that students god. I grew up in fear of that god. I have these conversations with myself every time I encounter this other god's theology because no matter how much I learn about the goodness of God, this other god grips me with fear when I encounter it. (and I encounter it a lot), Brian McLaren, in his new book "A New Kind of Christianity" calls this god Theos. I have a lot of baggage from Theos, and it is as if God uses even my screw ups to keep reminding me that God is not Theos.

And as a side note: if there were to be a judgment like most Christians describe, and I don't think there will be (but hey we all see through a glass dimly) I don't think this same God who has transformed the kind of parent I am, could look at the paralyzed fear on the face of one of God's children (we are ALL God's children) and send them to everlasting conscious torment because they didn't have the right dogma? If God has softened my heart towards my own children it is only because God has made it more in line with God's own heart.

Thanks for being a part of one of the many conversations I have with myself to prove to myself that God is truly good and not even remotely represented by much of the Christianity I encounter...this is my life right now. If any of you who have walked similar paths have any advice as to how I can get through this phase of the journey a little quicker I would appreciate it...I hate being drug back into Theos' layer so quickly.

Labels: 'A New Kind of Christianity', 'Jesus Freak', Brian McLaren, Jesus, Religious Abuse, Sarah Miles, Theos, Transformation

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