|
Post by krwordgazer on Jul 2, 2009 18:16:12 GMT -5
I'm especially turned off by the idea that the baby boy died to save his mother-- as if male protective chivalry begins before birth. Would the same thing have been said if it had been a girl? Somehow I doubt it. The magical thinking that this child somehow made choices, is no doubt comforting the family right now. As such, it's not something I would want to wrest from them. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. I had a friend who was bedridden with every pregnancy and each time it was worse ~ not life-threatening, but just really miserable. After the 6th, her husband asserted his "authority" over her ~ and had a vasectomy. He refused to put his wife through that any more. I remember feeling so jealous ~ I couldn't imagine having a such a decisive husband who was willing to take the responsibility to say, "No more" himself ~ and I was really impressed when he told me, "It may not be the right thing scripturally ~ but if God has a problem with it, He can take it up with me. I will not do that to my wife again." Wow ~ a god-fearing man willing to take on the Lord in defense of his wife. That's love like I have rarely seen. This is eye-opening, Vyckie. What kind of a god is this, that an ordinary human man can so easily outdo him in love and compassion? "The right thing scripturally" speaks of a god who cares more about his rigid rules than about people. A small-minded, mean little god. Not the God who is Love at all. Here is an article from SpiritualAbuse.com called "If your god is not God, fire him!" I think it's particularly appropos to the discussion in this thread. www.spiritualabuse.com/?page_id=4
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jul 2, 2009 0:55:52 GMT -5
pandapaws, it's down again as well is her Birthing For The Lord forum. Guess she didn't like the tone of the responses. Very odd, she seems to want to live her life for an audience but gets upset when not everyone applauds. Well, I remember being that way. I thought I was being a "witness for Christ," and that everyone would envy my wonderful life. But what they actually saw was a facade. Negative reactions made me upset because I saw it as hurting my witness and the cause of Christ. I didn't understand that it was much better to just be real. . . But I understand Hopewell's reaction. It does seem a little creepy when you first think about it. On second glance, it isn't really, though.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jul 1, 2009 15:29:23 GMT -5
Ok, I've seen it all. It was bad enough to see Grandpa Duggar's "casket cam," but now people rocking a dead baby and his siblings giving him gifts??? Has anyone considered how horrifying this experience might be for those 8 precious living children??To sit "adoring" their "radiant" mother and her "amazing" husband after having to give gifts to a dead sibling? This family needs some serious counseling--and NOT by a QF/FIC Pastor. By a REAL pschologist or psychiatrist. I will offer a real prayer of praise that Carri is back home where she wants to be, but please tell me attention is being seriously given to the potential psychological damage done to those kids! You know, on this one I'm not so sure. I have read about counseling given to parents of stillborns: that it's therapeutic to hold the baby, name the baby, have a funeral-- not to hush the death away. I think sometimes our culture sanitizes itself away from the realities of death too much. As for giving gifts to the baby-- to me it all depends whether the living children were doing this voluntarily or under compulsion. If it was their own idea, then it may very well be therapeutic for them, too.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jul 1, 2009 12:42:37 GMT -5
Vyckie-- and others who may have experienced what she is describing in terms of a similar event or a reminder that brings back the past-- Here is a link to a helpful page on triggers and how to respond to them. www.ualberta.ca/~uasac/Triggers.htm
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 27, 2009 13:36:04 GMT -5
Thanks for the info, Grandmalou! And welcome back, Vyckie & Co.! ;D
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 25, 2009 16:36:33 GMT -5
Angela, I am a Christian too-- and I know the stove I got burned on. It's called "spiritual abuse," and it was at the hands of a coercive religious organization. It was long ago, and I have found ways to forgive and be healed-- but there are many here who are still early in the process. Because I know what it's like, I'm here to give my support to them in any way I can.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 25, 2009 16:18:21 GMT -5
Angela-- with all respect, you came in here and read one thread, or part of a thread, of posts. You think you see a lack of compassion for Carri. I don't think what you see is accurate. You say you don't know Carri. Well, you don't know us, either. I think you are jumping to certain conclusions based on a partial reading of a forum you are unfamiliar with, together (possibly) with certain preconceptions about what kind of people we are here. We are all human, as you say, and life on this planet isn't easy. The anger you have seen here isn't about Carri-- it's about certain ways of looking at religion that have been personally harmful to us. We perceive that it may have been harmful to Carri as well. If we are wrong-- well, we're fallible. When you've been burned, it's hard not to be wary of the kind of stove that burned you. Peace to you. (Edit -- I posted at the same time as Grandmalou-- she said it much better than I could have. )
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 25, 2009 15:51:09 GMT -5
Well-- my take on it would be that God does not often override the natural functioning that God set up in the physical world. But see-- that works both ways. It is normal for the human female to become fertile on a monthly cycle. If her partner is fertile, and they have intercourse at the right time, the natural functioning of their bodies will mean she will get pregnant. The fact that God does not step in and supernaturally prevent it does not automatically mean the resulting child was God's perfect will. This is evidenced by the fact that children are conceived out of wedlock, although out-of-wedlock births are clearly not God's will according to the Scriptures. My position on this is that of many other Christians-- that God purposefully limits the exercise of omnipotence, to allow for the human exercise of free will. This is not to say every child is not a blessing-- because every child is made in the image of God. But I do not think every time a woman conceives, it's because God made it happen-- any more than I think every time a rock falls off a cliff, it's because God pulled it down. My husband and I use birth control, and we prayed together for the guidance of the Holy Spirit on when not to use it (with an eye on our finances as good stewards of God's provision). I really do not see how that is a less "godly" method of family planning than Quiverful's-- besides being much healthier for my body and our finances. Anyway, Rejoice-- we are certainly not "a bunch of hound dogs waiting at the gates to tear Carri apart." I really cannot see how you could think that, from the posts you have read here. Every post has expressed some form of sorrow for Carri. Along the same lines, regarding those of us who have come to this forum as part of a healing process-- is it really fair for you to dismiss their pain by calling it "so-called grieving"? Is that not doing the same thing to us that you are accusing us of doing to Carri?
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 23, 2009 15:05:10 GMT -5
Good point, Jadehawk. Thank you.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 23, 2009 13:29:03 GMT -5
Why do we as women guilt each other like this? Why can't we let each other make decisions? Why all the pressure to conform to this or that or the other standard? Honestly, we don't need men to oppress us, when we can do it quite well to ourselves.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 23, 2009 0:23:22 GMT -5
I feel so bad for poor Carri, and the baby. The fundamentalism I was involved in never went this far-- we were encouraged to believe God for healing, but not discouraged from going to doctors or hospitals. Also, birth control was never an issue. Having lots of kids was seen as a very good thing, but choosing not to have so many was acceptable if there were health reasons.
Similarly, we were required to go on long fasts-- up to three days sometimes-- but if someone was diabetic, or pregnant, or nursing, they were exempted.
It was far from balanced-- but it stopped short of endangering our lives.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 14, 2009 1:37:40 GMT -5
Thank you for posting the Generation Cedar link, Aimai -- I was not familiar with it.
To me the weird thing about what she's saying is not that married partners sacrifice for their kids, but that somehow the only partner who is or should be expected to do so is the woman.
She talks about women giving up high-powered careers. Apparently she doesn't know that many times, so do men-- that men are realizing more and more that career isn't everything, and how important family is.
The fact is that whether a woman is a stay-at-home mom or a career mom-- or something in-between, as I am-- the only way she's going to have time and energy to give to her husband and kids is if her husband and kids are also giving time and energy, so that the household chores are not resting squarely and solely on her exhausted shoulders.
Like you said, Aimai-- it's supposed to be about mutual support, about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. That only happens when both partners, not just one, are giving.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Jun 2, 2009 22:16:58 GMT -5
Absolutely right, Charis. It isn't the Bible they're teaching-- it's selfishness.
It's helpful to remember that in ancient Greece, two people didn't fall in love and choose to get married, as they do today. The man would more or less purchase a young wife and bring her home to bear his children. It was a radical change in that culture to expect a man to not only love his wife, but sacrificially give himself to and for her. Note that the wife, who usually had no choice in who she married, was not asked to love her husband, but merely to yield to him of her own free will. What the passage was actually meant to do was bring the kind of love Jesus taught, into an ancient form of marriage that was hardly a natural breeding place for such love.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 31, 2009 11:54:39 GMT -5
Philosophia and Arietty, your stories moved me very deeply. I can hardly imagine how hard all that must have been. I am very fortunate that though I joined a Christian "cult," and my husband and I met and married in that cult, neither of us is a controlling person and we have had a happy and healthy marriage-- especially after we got out. I simply do not understand, though, why Christians hold up the "don't get divorced" idea to the exclusion of all other Bible teachings and all common sense. And so much insensitivity to the real feelings of real people-- so wed to theory that they can't even seem to see what's really happening.
So many people get hurt. It's horrible. You both have my deepest sympathy.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 29, 2009 14:41:33 GMT -5
If I can encapsulate the positive message, I think I would say-- knowledge is power. Women and men are both victims of, and assistants in the perpetration of, patriarchal mindsets. And that's what we will continue to be as long as we simply live blindly within the views we were raised with. But-- once we become educated and aware of what's happening, we begin to have the power to make choices to do things differently. By talking about it among ourselves here, we are both learning more about what's happening, and learning how we can counteract it. What I've seen in discussions elsewhere that when it's put in terms of victim-perpetrator, everyone -- males and females alike-- can get defensive. But when it's put in terms of, "here is something we are buying into without realizing it-- so let's realize it, and choose to do something else!" then we are all empowered, and things can really start to change. So the place where I think Wilbur is making his mistake is continuing to couch his message in terms of victim-perpetrator. "Hey, men aren't the only perpetrators!" he is saying. "So women should stop acting like victims!" And then the tendency of the reader is to get defensive. "Am not!" "Are too!" If instead he said, "We all have the power to change this simply by realizing we are doing it, and choosing to stop-- or at least choosing to learn what we're doing, why we do it, and how to begin to stop," then I think he'd really be saying something.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 25, 2009 11:41:49 GMT -5
Rosa, the cult I was in was targeted by a watchdog Christian group-- I only found out about it years later, because it was kept secret from us rank-and-file members-- but this group was speaking to the leaders of my group about their concerns, trying to get my group's leaders to change their ways. It worked, to a certain extent. The group did back off on some of its worst policies, and eventually some of the lower-level leaders confronted the higher-level leaders, and the group actually voluntarily disbanded itself.
Today there are websites like "Battered Sheep" that try to help, and the book The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse was written by Christians, to Christians. I plan to read the book when I can afford to buy it-- but my understanding is that it speaks not just to people in these groups; it challenges the groups themselves.
In other words, there are Christians who do try to do things about these other groups. It's just that the Christians who are trying to counteract them are not controlling, not manipulative, not coercive-- and so their impact is naturally toned-down in comparison. But I think it would be dangerous to take on cultic methods in order to combat cultic groups. Direct, honest confrontation, without coercion, is the best that can be done. With regards to your suggestions-- boycot what, exactly?-- and blackballing is not something an outside group has any power to do to a cult. The cult has usually already "blackballed" all outside groups.
Anyway, the general populace is probably not going to even hear about what moderate Christians do. It's not newsworthy enough.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 24, 2009 20:01:32 GMT -5
Vyckie, I really felt for you, reading this story; particularly this part:
It is my opinion that you haven't failed. What you have done is, you have finally succeeded. You succeeded in breaking yourself and your children out of that terrible way of living. You succeeded in asserting who you really are in the face of all the forces that wanted to abnegate you. You succeeded, at last, in being/becoming yourself. And yourself is who God created you to be.
When I was coming out of my own involvement with cultic religious coercion, I wanted to know-- and my friends who came out with me wanted to know-- why God had let us get into it in the first place. We were asking why God didn't stop us before we harmed ourselves, and others in His name, so much. What I found out was that God wasn't threatened by these questions. God wanted me to ask them. And I found, as time went by and I gained perspective, that I had come out when I was ready, and not a moment sooner; God didn't try to force me. But God was there -- I never stopped sensing Him-- helping me get out when I was ready, and God was there letting me accuse Him; and God was there showing me a new way to be. In fact, in every way, God showed Him[Her]self to be exactly the opposite from the coercive leaders who had always told me what to do and when to do it, who had made decisions for me "for my own protection." God didn't make decisions for me because God wanted me to be an adult and make my own choices-- and God was willing to take the risks involved in not controlling me-- even if that meant I got involved in a cult; even if it meant that on coming out, I might decide to stop following God altogether.
I don't know what you will finally choose to do or believe, and I am not trying to manipulate your choice. But my own perspective is that God is so much bigger than we can imagine, and God really, truly wants us to be free.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 23, 2009 16:32:11 GMT -5
Reading Xara's and Charis' posts back-to-back has brought it to my mind that people wishing to leave QF might wish for two different kinds of help. Those who are turning away from religion in general would appreciate resources like Freedom From Religion. Those who wish to retain some form of religious faith would be more benefited by the organizations Charis listed. I suspect women in these situations would prefer to know in advance which type of organization they are contacting.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 13, 2009 17:25:37 GMT -5
I like the term "coercive religious group" for such groups. It's easily understandable, and doesn't have the mishmash of meanings associated with it that "cult" does. "Cult" seems overly sensationalistic to some people, and some Christian groups use "cult" to mean "any religious group we think is heretical". Thank you so much for this term, Kisekileia. It's so much less of a hot-button than the word "cult." I feel I can more easily talk to former members the particular group I left, using "coercive religious group" to discuss what we went through, instead.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 8, 2009 14:20:06 GMT -5
I agree with Aimai. My husband is my best friend, and has been for 21 years now. I think one of the reasons our marriage has worked is that the friendship factor came first, before the romance factor. Sure, I find him attractive and all that-- but he's my friend and companion first. Best friends don't need one of them to be in charge. Best friends just keep the needs of the other person in mind and do what's best for each other and for the relationship.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 7, 2009 15:44:11 GMT -5
I believe Internet Monk is open to change, that he's questioning the ways of thinking in which he was brought up, and that he's open to listening to other points of view. He may be blind to male privilege, but it's a sincere, not a self-induced, blindness. (Which is more than I can say for some of his cronies, but he's hardly responsible for them.) Which means he'll eventually figure it out. And in the meantime I will try to be a voice giving a female perspective over there, whether anyone knows it or not.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 6, 2009 19:34:13 GMT -5
There's actually a very interesting conversation going on over at Imonk www.internetmonk.com/archive/my-latest-attempt-to-become-a-complementarian, and in the comments our very own KR Wordgazer is holding her own, about complementarianism and egalitarianism in the original texts. *** --wait, what I wanted to say is that very few of the posters draw back and humbly submit themselves to the testimony of women who have actually submitted themselves to the natural outcome of this abusive and idolatrous fixation on male godhead. If a woman, like our own Molly, comes on and describes what actually happened to her when she submitted she reads like a crank, a hysteric. Oh, the men seem to say by turning their back on her comment and refusing to engage, that's so weird and so unlikely and so unscriptural and if only the men in your life had explained to you that you and your husband's thoughts on this matter were wrong! Of course the real basic wrongness is in allowing people to call themselves Christians, and market themselves as Christians, while pushing an extremely dangerous, sexist, and authoritarian version of Christianity on vulnerable men, women, and children. The first sin is Christians not taking other Christians to task for promoting a dangerous and perverse doctrine of the potential infallibility and authority of the husband over the wife. *** Power corrupts and absolute power tends absolutely to corrupt and we know that in ordinary non “holy” relationships that are not marriage. And yet the men on that board, pro egal and con egal, are so steeped in masuclinist privilige that with one or two exceptions they can't step aside and simply take testimony from the women board members and criticize their entire sex and the centuries long misogyny of the religion and the culture. That's how deep the prerogative of masculinity goes—that it can't even see itself in a mirror. Thanks so much for your comments and support, Aimai. I think that for many Christians, all that is seen to really matter is the Biblical text. No arguments can be made along the lines of "but it doesn't work in real life, so maybe we should look at it differently." It's along the same lines as the "No True Scotsman" fallacy discussed earlier-- this is what the Scripture says (the fact that they are actually starting from certain presuppositions and assumptions that result in a certain interpretation is something they are not aware of) so it must work to do it this way, and only this way-- and if it doesn't work, then the fault is the way you're doing it, not the way I'm reading the Scriptures (because my reading is the "right" one, after all!) To be fair, even if it were a man posting that male supremacy in the home didn't work for him, because it had a negative effect on his character/behavior, the man's testimony would get disregarded too. It's a kind of Phariseeism, to my mind. Rules and doctrines matter more than real people and their real needs. And yet-- I do find that my words tend to have more weight in conversations like that, when no one knows I'm female.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 6, 2009 16:01:34 GMT -5
I agree with Sleepybones. For Dale to have changed Christmas for new wife, as a way to deliberately hurt Laura, would imply that he actually thinks about someone besides himself. And I don't think he does.
Dale does what's Dale thinks is best for Dale, always.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on May 3, 2009 2:09:02 GMT -5
This story is horrible-- and also confusing. In every evangelical or fundamentalist church I know, Dale would be disfellowshipped for living with a woman outside marriage-- even if it was only for a month. Was he still going to church at the time? Did he manage to keep it a secret somehow? I cannot understand how a man who would be so legalistic that he would turn away from Christmas as a "pagan holiday" (an issue on which even fundamentalists differ widely) would then turn around and live with a woman outside marriage-- an absolute no-no for all fundamentalists! I just can't understand how he could justify this to himself. Every indication is that he's got some sort of mental issues, of course. But why no church has ever called him on this behavior is beyond me. I think it's horrible. Laura, that he gave the kids Christmas using the ornaments you bought them as gifts. By all rights, those are your ornaments to celebrate with the kids in your home. The injustice and cruelty of the whole thing is just staggering-- not just that you went through it, but that it seems so familiar to others here as well.
|
|
|
Post by krwordgazer on Apr 26, 2009 13:15:57 GMT -5
I guess that would depend upon a person's interpretation of the passage. I've heard several different ones. One thing I've learned is that interpretations of Scripture come a dime a dozen. You are entitled to whichever one you see fit. Peace, Jennie Hi jennie, Out of 14 translations 4 are interpreted your way. They are the modern liberal translation of the last 40 years. You are entitled to believe all four of them. Hmm. I suppose it doesn't matter that Chrysostom in 700 AD thought Junia was a female apostle. He must be one of those "modern liberal" translators.
|
|