Tender: On Compassion and Evolving Worldviews

The older I get, the more my heart softens. 

If you told a 15-year old me that would happen, I would be horrified. Softness and vulnerability were not things I valued. My Christian high school trained me and my peers to stand firm on our beliefs and refute the beliefs of others. Whenever we learned about other worldviews (including through a class that segmented the complexities of human thinking into either “Christian,” “Humanism,” “New Age,” or “Marxism”), the goal was to understand the enemy. Compassion was not an important piece of that. Pity, yes, that was an acceptable reaction. Mostly, we studied so we could learn how to debate someone and enforce our views. 

Compassion and pity are very different.

To me, compassion is empathetic. It’s a desire to understand and alleviate suffering because all people are worthy of dignity and respect, no matter who they are or what they believe. Pity is condescending. It’s something reserved for those who are “less than.” It’s also passive. It doesn’t encourage action on the part of the person who feels pity, or at least not an action where the other person is an equal participant. 

In school, I could be good at debates, but only when I suppressed my true emotions. While ‘appeals to emotion’ were valuable in debates, they were very calculated. Their purpose was to manipulate the audience, swaying them to your side. We never really talked about the speaker’s emotions or what they might feel about a topic. I remember feeling satisfied with a presentation if I remained cool and collected. If my heartbeat stayed steady the whole time I presented my case – even if recounting heartbreaking stories – I was winning. 

My emotions tended to flare up most when I researched and argued on behalf of an issue that didn’t align with conservative Evangelicalism. I almost always ended up truly believing I was on the right side of the debate and became frustrated when that ultimately didn’t matter. Nearly all these debates were intellectual exercises about real-life issues that affected real people. It didn’t seem like anyone felt more compassionate after the school day ended. 

The more I learned about other views on my own without the filter of a teacher’s perspective, the more understanding I became. The black-and-white ‘God-or-Satan’ mentality started to blur. 

For anyone who grew up in fundamentalist (or fundamentalist-lite) Christianity, they know just how significant this blurring is. We’re told it’s a sign of spiritual weakness. It’s a sign that we’ve become vulnerable to the influences of Satan and worldliness. Our questioning is often dismissed as just wanting to fit in with a secular crowd. I still had that belief in my mind, so I resisted my heart’s softening. I tried not to think too hard about the beliefs I was espousing because once I did, I knew I would question them. I wouldn’t be able to ignore the paradox of a creed that preaches the concepts of mercy and love, but punishes and exiles anything (and anyone) it perceives as “sinful.” 

Eventually, I couldn’t deny the paradox. It took a lot of personal pain and acknowledging the pain of others to realize that “standing your ground” on beliefs can be incredibly destructive. Changing my worldview is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Strangely enough, the narrative many churches sell is that sticking to the ‘straight and narrow’ path is what’s truly difficult. Supposedly, only “good Christians” can do it. In my experience, the opposite is true. It’s much easier and more comfortable to walk the same road you’ve always walked, not questioning what you’ve believed your whole life. Taking a step off that path, to walk in someone else’s shoes…that’s hard. 

Many Christians consider themselves “good” Christians if they don’t change their mind on issues. They’re admired for their steadfastness and commitment to a very specific set of beliefs. What I see is people who are numb to the experiences of others.

If a Christian truly values love – which is considered greater than both faith and hope – they would be constantly wrestling with their beliefs. They would be acutely sensitive to the pain of others, especially pain inflicted in the name of Jesus. If there’s a hint that a certain belief might be harmful, every Christian should be willing to reconsider their stance. 

There are many, many Christians who are wrestling, who are tender, and who are prioritizing compassion over being “correct.” They are often punished for it.

As someone’s beliefs shift, they are often shunned and even threatened by mainstream Christianity. The attacks on Jo Luehmann, a Colombian-American writer, is a horrifying example of Christian-led abuse. Blogger Libby Anne over at “Love, Joy, Feminism” describes what happened in her post “Christian Gatekeeping 2020.” 

In June of this year, Jo responded to a hateful comment by a man claiming that colonization was excusable because indigenous people needed Jesus. Jo called that belief out for what it is: white supremacy. In her words, “all hell broke loose.” Christian accounts with big followings – including Adam Ford, founder of Babylon Bee – started mocking Jo, who had a relatively small following. She started to get hundreds of DMs from these accounts’ followers. Most of the messages were abusive. These self-professed Christians also began reporting all of Jo’s social media accounts as “hate speech.” She was locked out of her Twitter and Instagram for a time. I’ve seen some of the comments people are still making. They include death threats. This is how far efforts to squash uncomfortable discussions and beliefs can go. Christians who aren’t willing to entertain the idea that they may be wrong are trying to scare Jo into silence. They’ve not been successful. 

Christians like Jo Luehmann, Rachel Held Evans, and Nadia Bolz-Weber are the reason I called myself a “Christian” for so long. Voices like theirs give me hope that the worldview that defined my childhood and teenage years won’t go unchallenged in the future. On my journey, however, I’ve left the label “Christian” behind. I don’t know what I believe about Christ. All I know is that I’m softening. I know a lot of people from my past – the teachers, pastors, and classmates – would look at me and feel pity. They might see me as a cautionary tale. More likely than not, they don’t think about me at all. 

Worldview-wise, I don’t know where I’m going. I have one guiding principle: if my beliefs aren’t making me more compassionate to the suffering and experiences of others – especially the most vulnerable and marginalized – I need to question my beliefs.

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Is It Worth It?

 

..my question for those evangelicals is this: Is it worth it? Is a “victory” against gay marriage really worth leaving thousands of needy children without financial support? Is a “victory” against gay marriage worth losing more young people to cynicism regarding the church? Is a “victory” against gay marriage worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with LGBT people?

            -Rachel Held Evans

I’m exhausted.

Every day, through news and through people I know, I see a divide growing between “Christian love” and actually daring to love. It’s become an act of rebellion against fellow Christians to stand up for LGBT, for pro-choice, for strangers in this strange land, and even for the poor.

The title of the article Rachel wrote (from which the above quote is from) is called “How evangelicals won a culture war and lost a generation.” This is what Christianity in America has become. A war. Love looks like a sword, but instead of destroying powers and principalities that oppress, that sword is slicing through people and then the wielder dares to say “I love you.” It’s become more important to “make a stand” than to serve the needy. World Vision did not reverse its decision to hire married homosexuals because it had a change of heart. Thousands of Christians were “making a stand” and threatening to abandon their sponsorships. Pastors exhorted their congregations to “make a stand” and stop financing World Vision. Sure, there are other organizations that do similar work, but isn’t that more about how you feel than anything else? You abandon one child to just pick up another? So everything is fine? WV admitted that the reason they backed away from their revolutionary decision was because they had not considered/consulted their partners and their supporters. They had not expected that kind of fury to rise up from the ranks of kind, selfless Christians and actually threaten the state of their organization.

This is the biggest news in the culture war as of late, but there are others. I have seen the film “Noah” simultaneously mocked, and from others shunned as demonic. None of them have considered that perhaps this movie was not intended for them. Perhaps it was intended for an audience that is sick and tired of white-bearded and (frankly) boring Sunday School stories, and is more accustomed to action heroes who cut instead of pray their way through evil and do things that most of us would regret later. Russell Crowe’s Noah is more than a little rough around the edges and the religion of his cinematic world looks like more like Wicca than Christianity, but what the hell, is this surprising? This is a world that is further from the Ten Commandments than the number of years the US of A has existed, and it’s a world where there is little to no divide between the spiritual and physical realms. Is Noah supposed to just fold his hands and sadly shake his head while outside his door humanity is raping and murdering itself into oblivion? This generation is moving farther and farther away from traditional Christianity and as my family has said, perhaps this movie will at least get their attention again.

The war rages on. Discussions on abortion are littered with words like “murder,” a clear attempt to consciously or unconsciously shame those struggling with the decision. Behind closed doors, I have seen discussions where the abortion topic is saturated with unveiled death wishes upon pro-choice women, name-calling like “bitch,” “slut, ‘whore, and “c–t.” There is no distinction between women who voluntarily have abortions with those who have to choose between preserving their own lives, or inflicting both their death and the death of their child upon their grief-dizzied families. To these people, anyone who has an abortion is a murdering whore, or at the very least, an ignorant, selfish victim of politically-liberal ideals.

My convictions continue to separate me from supporters of “traditional” evangelicalism. I have had my Christianity questioned in ways as direct as being told I am “straying from the straight and narrow,” to micro-aggressions such as vague questioning of how anyone could be a Christian and believe what I believe. I am terrified of attempting to go to a church because I have no idea what kind of opposition I might face when my beliefs inevitably come out. I am not alone in this increasingly bitter pulling away from evangelicalism and instead of looking inwardly, I find that Christians are blaming the generation they are losing, claiming we are losing our morals, becoming infatuated with “political correctness” and “liberal propaganda,” or are just plain stupid.

Maybe we’re just fed up with being told we have to rally against our neighbors in order to be a good Christian. 

 

 

Why I Am Not My Husband’s Helpmeet

How about no

Being in an evangelical/Christian environment for most of my life, I was always familiar with the term helpmeet, or helpmate. It was what a woman’s role in a marriage was supposed to be, if she was a “Biblical” woman. In conservative circles, it usually meant staying at home to raise children, learning to cook, clean, and so forth. In more progressive dialogues, it could also mean going to work to support the family, full-time or part-time.

Even when it’s lived out in a more “feminist” way (going to work), I have major issues with term “helpmate.” It literally sounds like the phrase “helping your mate.” You’re telling me that the whole purpose of my life is to “help” a man? Even if I go to work and put the kids in daycare, none of it is for me, it’s all to further this God-given mission that my husband has been set on? I was created to “help.”

This cannot be true. It contradicts the rest of the Gospel and what we know about God. He creates people for specific, unique, and individual purposes:

Psalm 139:16
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

It also doesn’t make sense given God’s track record with women and their purposes. Jael killed the general of an enemy army rising against Israel, Deborah was a prophetess and the highest authority among the ancient Hebrews, Rahab negotiated for the lives of herself and her family with the Hebrew spies she hid from execution, Esther was the queen of a pagan nation and saved the Hebrew people from extinction, Mary gave birth to the Messiah, Lydia funded the early church independently with her wealth…these women were not assisting any man. Would anyone dare ascribe the word “helpmate” to any of these women?

No person is just a prop in another actor’s story. “Helpmate” isn’t even a good translation of the original word. Most translations don’t even use that word anymore, they translate it as “companion.” The word describing Eve, the first woman, is ezer. It appears 21 times. It appears as a description for God and the help He gives to Israel.

Deuteronomy 33: 26

There is none like the God of Jeshurun, Who rides the heavens to your help, And through the skies in His majesty.

So, a woman is designed to help a man in the same way God helps His people. That is not a role that should be looked down upon, or squished down to fit into a strict list of rules. The concept that woman was meant to just help man on his big life’s purpose and not have her own thing going on is actually explained RIGHT IN THE NEXT CHAPTER. After Adam and Eve sin, God explains that their lives will not the same now.

Genesis 3: 16

To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

Patriarchy. Right there. The result of the fall was patriarchy. To adhere to the belief that women are meant to submit beneath their husband’s commands is adhering to a sinful hierarchy that God didn’t establish. He made Eve to be a companion, equal to man. It even explains why the word “ezer” was originally translated to just “helpmate;” the society it was translated in was a patriarchy and would not like women getting the idea that they should be on equal footing with men.

So that’s why I am not my husband’s helpmeet. He does not “lead our household.” So then who does? God does.

——

This is slightly off topic, but it really bothers me when people say that feminism has switched the roles and that women actually dominate men now. First of all, in what area of American society is that true? Seriously, name one field or area of media that has more women or men. And now, what area of the GLOBE is that true? There are women in some parts of the world that are fighting for a right to DRIVE A CAR. I also don’t trust statistics and surveys that ask men how they view equality. In a study recently (I looked online for forever looking for the original source because I read it a while ago, can’t find it, but it’s real), when there ratio of women to men was about 30-70, men saw it as equal, but when it was truly 50-50, men perceived that there were more women than men. Society has conditioned us so well to view inequality as “normal,” that our perception on equality is warped, especially when men are told over and over again that women will take over and make things worse for them. If a man and woman are up for the same job, and the woman gets it, a lot of men (not all) will become bitter and say it was just because she was a woman. Maybe it’s because she was better qualified than you or any number of totally legit reasons. The man is under the false impression that he was “owed” something.

Just because someone is being given more rights  than they’ve had before, or even just the same rights as you, doesn’t mean you’re losing your rights.