I made my last pile of Christian books to give away. When flipping through them I was surprised to find that I have a critical (as in, skeptical) response to almost every sentence. I realized I could never take these books seriously again, whereas they used to make me feel peaceful and secure. As I was reading I thought of questions I’ve read and that people have been asking me, like, How can any intelligent person be a Christian? And, why do women flock to such an oppressive religion? The beginning of an answer lies in these books.
I picked up a book called God, A Good Father by Michael Phillips. At the beginning he asks the questions, “Do you not long, in your quiet moments, for relief from the restlessness and frustration with which life seems filled? Would you not rejoice to find that you might enter into a center of calm, where the intensities of today’s frantic pace lose their power to make you tense and anxious? Does not the thought of such a place cause you to sigh, ‘Ah, could such truly be possible..for me? Could such waters – refreshing and cold and invigorating – quench my every thirst, always renewing themselves, never running dry?’” How could any honest person answer no to these questions? Everyone has times when they want to escape life, but in my experience, Christians have them more often. Conservative Christians believe that the world is bad, something to separate themselves from, and that God is perfect. Since Christians believe only they have access to God, the kind of experience described above becomes a dangling carrot, something that must be achieved in order to escape the pain of this world. Henri Nouwen is an honest Christian. He says that after 20 years, “I am still searching for inner peace, for creative relationships with others, and for the experience of God” (Reaching Out), to which any reasonable person would ask, Isn’t it time to try something else? The reason people begin and stay in Christianity is the same reason people chase after the American dream. It’s the promise of a better life with little responsibility on the individual to make it happen.
And why are there so many women willing to be subjugated into being second class citizens? Besides the cultural framework that makes it all too easy to accept that role, there are special promises for women in Christianity. In a healthy relationship people know that they can’t be everything for each other. Not so in Christianity. The promise to women is that you have a perfect lover/husband, father, and friend who is with you 24/7 and loves you no matter what. Each woman brings her own aches and pains from having been hurt or rejected from the male figures in her life to Christianity where she is told, Here is one man will never let you down. In Captivating, John and Stasi Eldredge write, “Every woman has a beauty to unveil…it is God who longs for romance, God who longs to be our ezer [helper], it is God who reveals beauty as essential to life.” (italics theirs). But there is a trade off here. The authors say that a man’s gift is strength; a woman’s gift is beauty. When women don’t accept this they become “dominating”. The images in another book are those of brides and princesses, and love letters written from God to the reader. The discrepancy between this message and how women were treated by men in authority was one of the nails in the coffin on Christianity for me when I worked in a church from 2001 – 2004. There was far more respect shown to men in big and small ways, by both the women and men on staff.
You’ll notice I spoke exclusively about men and women. It is the rare congregation that makes room for GLBT, queer or trans folk. The strict perimeters around maleness and femaleness impoverish Christians who are kept in these roles by depriving them of those who are left out.
