A woman’s place
I caught another choice piece of Christian radio yesterday. I tuned in near the end of the program, but I found the transcript of the entire show online. You can read it here. It’s part of a series called “God’s Beautiful Design for Women.” It turns out that the “beautiful design” that God has in mind for us is to be mindlessly subservient to our husbands. I don’t dispute that the Bible says women ought to “be subject to their husbands” (Titus 2:1-5, the focus of the series). My problem is the fact that they call this teaching — well, their interpretation of this teaching — beautiful.
I understand the ideology that if God teaches it, it must be good and wonderful. Well, I don’t understand it per se, but I understand that it exists. Still, I have a hard time believing that, hearing or reading all of these testimonials from women about how they learned to submit to their husbands, Nancy Leigh DeMoss and fans of her program wouldn’t have a second thought about whether this was truly a good teaching, or whether their interpretation of those five words in Titus 2 was really the most accurate. Here’s one pretty telling quotation:
My husband has never been very open to constructive criticism or change so I have come to the point where I give him to the Lord for the Lord to work in his heart and life. It is a very freeing thing not to have the responsibility for my husband.
So let me get this straight. The wife believes the husband is making bad decisions, but he is not “very open to constructive criticism” (read: he’s a jerk), so her response is to wait for God to fix the situation. Unclear whether this works, and how long she expects it to take. Never mind that the husband is making lots of bad decisions in the meantime. She’s free! Subservient to him as per the teachings of her religion, she does not have to take any responsibility for his bad decisions. If God wants him to start making good decisions, He’ll make it so.
To me, this is a very troubling outlook on life. If you know someone is doing something wrong, and you choose not to intervene to stop them, your actions are morally equivalent to having done those wrong things yourself. (I know this statement is not undisputed, but I don’t buy the other side’s arguments. Imagine that you’re walking down the street and you see a baby lying face-down in a puddle. You didn’t put that baby there, so it’s not your fault, right? But you could easily reach down to turn the baby over to keep him from drowning. If you actively choose not to take the baby out of the puddle, you are condemning it to drowning just as surely as the person who put it there in the first place. There is no action/inaction distinction.) Feeling free in such a situation strikes me as pretty morally repugnant.
It is suggested in the program, though, that wives’ submission to their husbands inspires the husbands to be more responsible. Since their wives have chosen to accept everything they say unquestioningly and made this choice clear, husbands’ future actions are informed by this sensibility and thus they have to be more careful to make the right calls. That’s a nice idea, but I’m not convinced that it always happens. It sounds to me like the perfect set-up for a real power trip. After all, it’s God’s will that the husband is always obeyed, so how could a husband’s decision ever be wrong?
The program makes the case that submission is a sign of love. I can see what DeMoss is getting at when she talks about having a “soft and responsive heart” versus as “hardened” heart. But if we agree that this is a way to express love, what are we to make of the way husbands are supposed to act? Husbands do not have to listen to what their wives say, unless God happens to change their minds accordingly. Does this mean that husbands should not be expected to express love to their wives?
Naturally, the interpretation of this is simply that men and women have different natures, and express love in different ways. Husbands show their love for their wives by making responsible decisions and maintaining strict authority — right? Right, except for when they don’t. What if a husband is abusive with his power? DeMoss explains that this one marriage could easily have ended in divorce, because the husband’s heart was neither soft nor tender. She praises the wife for saying,
I still have daily struggles to forgive, to choose to care for my husband, to judge my pride. I do what I do because of what Jesus has done for me. He deserves to have my obedience, and my husband deserves my forgiveness and kindness because Jesus loves and forgives me.
Well, that’s nice. According to DeMoss, it’s your job, wives, to supply enough love and kindness for both yourself and your husband. You should worship your husband as just you worship a supposedly infallible deity, no matter how stupid or harmful his decisions are.
But wait! This sounds too terrible, so they’ve written in an exception:
…I don’t mean that you stand around and you watch your husband beat you up or you just say, “Hit me again.” The whole counsel of God would make it clear that if you or your children’s health or lives are being threatened, there is the biblical permission to separate, to remove yourself from that immediate danger.
I’m not talking about your body being threatened, as Jesus was—to the point of death. Most of the time it’s not life and death or physically threatening for us, though there are some. Most of the time it’s our wishes, our desires, our convenience, our comfort, our personal desires and pleasure, and He says, even if it makes your life difficult, “be subject to your own husbands . . . even if some do not obey the Word.”
I have two pain problems with this passage. First: even if the husband does not follow the Word of God, the wife should submit to him? That seems like poor advice. Second, and more importantly: where do we draw the line, and why do we draw it there? DeMoss and the Revive Our Hearts ministry have an easy answer. The Bible says that these cases are on this side, and these cases are on the other, and we don’t have to think about it anymore. But what happens if we do, horror of horrors, apply some of our own independent critical thinking to the Bible? What should a wife do if she is forbidden from buying the new shoes she wants, because her old ones are giving her back pain? What if her husband wants to take the kids out for fast food most nights, but she wants them to eat healthier? How much health should a wife consider an exception for? Also… what about emotional abuse, rather than physical abuse?
I think that cuts to the heart of the issue. If a woman is expected to humble herself before her husband just as she humbles herself before Jesus Christ, how could it possibly not be an emotionally abusive situation? Divorce is a tragedy, but sometimes it is better than remaining married — in a broader range of situations than merely the ones where there is physical violence. I don’t understand how someone could consciously decide to follow the teachings of a religion which is so blatantly in contradiction with common sense and moral intuition.
Not a religion?
While I was out running errands this morning I stumbled again upon the Christian radio station I’ve mentioned a couple times here before. There are a couple in my area, but the others tend to be more Reverend Lovejoy-esque scripture readings and monotonous sermons. This one has the peppy kids’ shows — which is how I recognized it.
“Stay tuned for today’s episode of Adventures in Odyssey,” the voice on the radio said. I thought: Sweet! This will be hilariously entertaining, and maybe I’ll get some good blog fodder out of it too. But the episode today didn’t have any of that delightful arguing-for-the-opposition that the others did. It discussed the biography of hymn writer Horatio Spafford, who suffered through a lot of tragedy but still had buckets of faith. One of the discussion questions on the episode website sounds like the atheist response: “How could Horatio Spafford write ‘it is well with my soul’ even though he lost all of his children and his business?” In other words, it seems a bit strange to say that God is “good” when crediting him with making your life totally miserable, unless you have truly bizarre definitions for “good” and “bad”, or are clinically insane. Christians (and folks of many other religions) say, we can’t understand the complexity of God’s will. Things may seem bad to us but if it’s what God has planned, it must be just and beautiful. And to an extent, they’re right — when you’re talking about a definitionally good supernatural being with powers incomprehensible to the human mind, who knows? The real question is, why are we talking about a definitionally good supernatural and all-powerful being in the first place?
That argument has been hashed out a million times, particularly on the intertubes, so I’m not going to spend any more time on it here. Of much more interest to me was an advertisement I heard just before the Adventures in Odyssey show got started. It was the voice of a girl talking about how she hated her life and wanted to be “anywhere but here” — but there was someone (unnamed…) who helped her realize that everything was great. To find out more, I was supposed to visit NotReligion.com.
Right. Get saved by Jesus, but don’t worry, it’s not religion or anything. The goal of the site is to help people form a “relationship with God,” particularly people who are “skeptical of or turned off by religion.” Newsflash: if you thought you were “skeptical” but you’re duped by this site, you have a lot to learn about critical thinking.
First, let’s take a look at some definitions. Thanks to Merriam-Webster’s for “religion”:
1 a: the state of a religious <a nun in her 20th year of religion> b (1): the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2): commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith
And just in case there is any ambiguity, “religious”:
1: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity <a religious person> <religious attitudes>
2: of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances <joined a religious order>
3 a: scrupulously and conscientiously faithful b: fervent, zealous
NotReligion.com says that “every question has an answer and that the answers are found in a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ.” On the topic of this Jesus fellow, they say that he’s “the Son of God. It’s important that you know Him. Your whole eternity depends on it.” Hmm… faithful devotion to a deity and its accompanying system of beliefs? Sounds like a religion, guys!
Of course, what they mean is organized religion. They don’t think it’s necessary to have a papal decree or even a session of elders to declare the details of your beliefs — instead, religion is a personal thing. I agree with this attitude insofar as I don’t think anyone should force religious beliefs on anyone else. But I don’t think that NotReligion.com really counts as religion that’s not organized. They clearly state what it is about God, Jesus, and the afterlife that they want you to believe. If you find spiritual or emotional peace with some other understanding of the world, they think you’re wrong. So it’s not really a personal relationship at all — it’s just an attempt to make Christianity seem more hip. Very sad.
More fun with Christian radio
Lest you think I was making up that radio show I mentioned the other day, I happened to catch another one, and at the right point in the broadcast to hear its name. (Yep, I’m just that lucky… or radio is just that bad.) It’s called Adventures in Odyssey. From their Parents Page:
It began as an experiment. In 1986 Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family wanted to produce a drama series for the radio that would appeal to 8-12 year olds – in the hope of countering some of the questionable programming many kids were getting from Saturday morning cartoons. The program would take place in a small town where characters could explore the events, concerns and issues facing today’s families.
Seriously — this is James Dobson’s show. This is Focus on the Family, not some guy in his basement recording some independent program for local distribution. So you’d think they’d be better at making their religious messages actually, you know, religious… but just like the episode I heard before, this one seemed to make a stronger case against Christianity than for it.
You can find a summary of this episode (and others) on their website. Basically, it’s about a boy named Isaac who has a problem with procrastination. Isaac has a history project due today, but it’s not done. There’s a geometry assignment due in a week that he’s supposed to be working on with his friend Lucy, but he hasn’t done his share of the work yet. He also promised to have made some illustrations for the local newspaper’s kids section, and he hasn’t even started. When Isaac later complains of getting a C on his history report for turning it in late, Mr. Whitaker, the sagely ice cream store owner and the star of the show, offers to help him out. He diagnoses Isaac with “chronic procrastinitus” (which Isaac, predictably, is unable to pronounce). While there is no cure, there is a treatment: a special elixir which Mr. Whitaker just happens to have in his office, since he has chronic procrastinitus too. Isaac drinks some, and it gives him the boost he needs to get motivated to do those illustrations he promised! But it was just Mr. Whitaker’s special lemonade recipe, not a magical elixir — and the power to do all that hard work came from within Isaac himself! (Bet you didn’t see that coming.) With newfound energy, Isaac rushes off to work on his geometry assignment.
But wait! Where’s the Christianity? It comes from a narrator right after the story finishes. She quotes Proverbs 10:4 and explains that God wants you to work hard and not be lazy. If you’re having trouble with laziness, just read Proverbs for a little motivation.
If you’re wondering why I listened to the show, other than the fact that there was no good music on any other station, it’s because of this: I was amazed, entranced, almost hypnotized by the possibility that they could really be making the point I thought they were making. And they were. Your hard work and good deeds don’t come from some magical, cure-all (omnipotent?) solution. They come from your decisions and your effort.
It’s not that it’s a bad message — it’s a great one. I just don’t think it jives with what they’re advocating the rest of the time. Focus on the Family says that if your friend is struggling with their marriage, you should talk to them and listen to their problems. But that’s tip #2 — tip #1 is to pray, so that God can give you the wisdom to talk to them and listen to their problems. No, it couldn’t be that you had sympathy or interpersonal skills on your own. It must have been that God gave those abilities to you. There are tons of examples of this sort of message. I guess if you’ve trained your followers not to use critical thinking, it’s not too hard for them to hear this broadcast and still say, “Thanks, God, for helping me understand the message and learn not to be lazy.”
I can’t believe these people don’t deconvert all their listeners by accident. Now, maybe James Dobson plans to do the Mr. Whitaker thing himself and make an announcement in a couple weeks. “Hey, everyone, remember that ‘God’ we told you was helping you through all your hard times and giving you strength and wisdom? Well, that was all a lie, and all that strength and wisdom was within you all along.” Somehow, though, I don’t think we should hold our breath.
Calling out contradictions
Yesterday I was skipping around on the radio when I came to a Christian station broadcasting a story. Read slowly, deliberately, and with almost comical voices for the different characters, it was the tale of a young girl who had seen a TV preacher explaining why next Saturday was the day of Christ’s Second Coming. He had an equation (?) and a book all about it, and that convinced her, so much so that she began putting up posters all around her town. Her parents, good Christians of course, saw this as crazy behavior, but they weren’t sure how to talk to her about it. After all, if they told her that Jesus wouldn’t be returning on Saturday, she’d start to question whether he’d ever return at all! They didn’t know how to get her to stop acting crazy without shaking her faith.
The real issue seemed so blatant I couldn’t believe they were just sweeping it under the rug. What are the actual reasons for believing in the deity of Jesus, and for believing in the apocalypse accompanied by his return? Why is a televangelist’s take on this not seen as credible, but a local church minister’s is? How can you challenge one irrational belief without applying the same sort of scrutiny to your other beliefs? That’s exactly what the parents were worried about — that the “good” skepticism they wanted to teach her would turn into “bad” skepticism (i.e., distrusting things she was supposed to believe blind).
It got me thinking about… well, not exactly hypocrisy, because I feel like that word should be reserved for intentional cases. I suppose I should say contradictions. We all (perhaps to differing extents) compartmentalize various controversies and rationalize beliefs we’re predisposed to, rather than making judgments from first principles. It’s very easy for this to lead to a situation in which you hold very different opinions simultaneously. The more rational you are, the more likely you are to catch these instances when they do occur, and the quicker you resolve the inconsistency. However, understanding the importance of rational thinking doesn’t mean that you never hold contradictory beliefs.
This is more than just the doctor who smokes, or the obese gym teacher. There’s the “creation scientist” who, after being presented with carefully constructed scientific theories that have withstood rigorous testing, demands proof beyond any shadow of a doubt (clearly misunderstanding the concept of science), but who would never think of turning such a critical lens on the religious beliefs that form their large set of assumptions. There’s the pro-life advocate who wants abortion to be illegal because it is murder, but who would never consider assigning sentences of the same magnitude as what murderers get. There are liberals who think of the Constitution as a set of fundamental principles, which justifies giving absolute protection to expression and religion even if that’s not how the Founding Fathers would have interpreted it — but prefer to look to 18th-century laws to justify gun control in the face of the 2nd Amendment. Alternatively, you have conservatives who would oppose the “fundamental principles” interpretation in general, deferring to the attitudes of the Founders to define Constitutional protections — except in cases about gun control where they’re happy to embrace it.
I’m not saying you can’t believe in making abortion illegal while also supporting low sentences for it. What I’m saying is that, if that’s your position, you have to have reasonably subtle logic to back it up. A good way to examine whether your opinion on a topic is rational is to look at the underlying principles and assumptions, and see if you agree with the implications of those assumptions — in all cases, not just in the limited context of the original situation.
I also think this is good to keep in mind during discussions with others. Say you present some scientific evidence to a creationist, and they respond with criticism of the study methods. It’s not worth your time to defend the study; take their point about scientific rigor and run with it. If they really believe in the scientific method, they can’t make a reasonable claim that creationism is science. Rather than just trying to refute every statement they make as though the conversation were some horrible game of Whack-a-Mole, it can be helpful to agree with them while they’re making the portion of their arguments that are better suited to your side.
This way of thinking — about basic principles that reach beyond isolated opinions — seems especially helpful in political debates. Among most intelligent people, the controversy over, say, school vouchers isn’t really about school vouchers. It’s about underlying ways of thinking about political issues, with opposing views on vouchers being obvious conclusions based on different philosophical starting points. Testing and debating those underlying beliefs is more productive (and much more interesting) than trying to deal with the specific policy issue in question.
Update: I found the radio show I mentioned at the start of this post. It’s called Adventures in Odyssey, and you can read a plot summary of the episode here.