Jesus Can Save You From Your Feelings of Sexual Betterness.

My last post was about how it feels to be called bitter.

This post will be about Christians who have the condition of Feeling Betterness.

:)

Sorry. Had to.

I found this Passport to Purity kit at the thrift store and decided to spend $4 to save another kid from going through these painful lessons.

I was very glad to find it was all still sealed. Phew.

Get ready for one of the activities parents are instructed to do with their preteens. Jesus can save you from feeling like other people are polluted water and you are clean.

Entering marriage as a virgin doesn't make you better. You are not a more whole person because your friends are just as pure as you and you are not a half person if you kissed someone or even *gasp* had sex. Sex is not all of you. You are whole and worthy because you are made in the image of God, unique, and with a voice all your own.

And before someone gets their undies in a twist, yes, I believe sex has real and big consequences, good or bad, depending. I believe in being wise with our sexuality. But it makes me sad that the main goal of many Christian adults for their youth is to guard them from sex. Let's aim higher. Let's get deeper. Let's respect our children too much to do that to them.

And let's also be careful about our terminology. It is so sad to me that the word purity in youth groups now boils down to "not defiled by having done anything sexual, ever." It's sad that sexually active people are compared to chewed up food and gum, or, like in this curriculum from Family Matters, worthless balloons with holes in them who end up with nothing to offer their future soul mate but regret.

Let's shift our focus from the timing of our child's first date to helping them mature into a person who is ready to use wisdom to make their own decisions about how to treat themselves and others. Rules are good tools, but in the end, they fall very short of that. 

You don't get a gold star sticker on your chart (or in this case, a passport stamp) for coming up with perfect formulas of how to follow Jesus.

And finally, I'm going to borrow a Freedom Builder friend's words to compare to this last image. Which would you rather give your child?

"I ask the question of those believing that this is healthy a simple question. Would you rather your child err by having physical affection before marriage or have them fail to understand the mercy and Grace of Jesus in the midst of failing. Sober virgins with a warped view of purity, redemption, and love seems to be the worst alternative."
-Rich Poupard 

Bitterness (and emotional health and forgiveness)

Time for this post. 

I meant to add something in when talking about forgiveness. My thoughts on forgiveness came from a very insightful e-course offered by Soulation. One month focused on forgiveness, and the video that was most helpful to me was when my friend said something like, "When you wake up in the morning and you're in a lot of pain, and you begin to pray over and over 'God I choose to forgive; help me forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I forgive." what you are actually doing is stuffing your feelings." Forgiveness does not mean I no longer feel. That Soulation e-course (and community! which I love!) can be found here http://soulation.org/freedombuilders/.

Edit: A friend privately just told me that he disagrees that, after forgiveness, a natural consequence for stealing is paying back what you owe, since forgiveness is for the benefit of the perpetrator. Aha! Yes, thank you Dale Fincher, for that correction. Candlesticks in Les Miserables came to mind. 

PS
My lovely rescue cat's name is Cecelia. She was a stray. Later in the video, she was being so loud pounding on the back entry/basement door that I thought, for a moment, there was a home intruder. If you ever came over to visit, she would probably find some boisterous way to get you to notice her, too.

New Tribes Mission's Continuing Culture of Enabling Abuse

Something I found while browsing Facebook...

This is a picture of Brad Buser, a very big name in New Tribes Mission. While I was in training, he was a recruiter for NTM. He is standing with Gary Earle, the man who NTM recently refused to fire (They allowed resignation) for abusing children in Papua New Guinea. I'm not sure whose children are in the picture, and I blocked out their faces anyway, but why are they in the same room as this man who abuses children? Why do so many current New Tribes missionaries "like" this photo, including Ron Lindsey, president of the New Tribes Bible Institute, who would certainly know who Gary Earle is? Why didn't a single person speak up and ask for Gary Earle's sincere repentance? This is not just a reunion. This man was forced to come back to this corner of the world because he injured children on purpose.

For a bigger picture of who Gary Earle is, please see this post over at the Fanda Eagles: http://fandaeagles.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1362

And if you believe NTM has really changed, here are some recent thoughts from NTM MK survivors who continue to follow up on NTM's slow, questionable investigations. Their voices matter more than anyone else's on this topic. Listen and feel with them. These quotes, and their reasons for feeling this way, can be found here: http://fandaeagles.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1402&start=30

"I make no apologies if some feel that I just keep pounding the negativity drum. I think I have been saying the same things, over and over, for four years. But the reason I keep writing is that nothing has improved. NTM's response to our concerns has never been about what MK abuse survivors need. It has been -- and continues to be -- about protecting the mission." -Raz

"I wish I had not been trusting. It will not happen again." -Allbetter, in reference to sharing his or her story of abuse with the current investigators.

"GRACE was the last good decision made by ntm that was beneficial to MKs." --Mosquito Bite

"It's a bit like finally being invited to spend thanksgiving with "the family" after years of wishing and hoping to get an invitation. Only to find that there is no turkey and you are the replacement." --Bemused

"Cowards then, cowards now I say." --Aussie


Edit on December 30, 2014: It has been brought to my attention that Brad Buser was dismissed from NTM at some point during my training, so many of the people I trained with were there as a result of him and are friends with him, but it seems that was not officially the case from then on. Many of the followers at a blog called ALTA-FORMA are with NTM, and the consensus on and around their Facebook page seems to be that Buser is a good guy. Secondly, NTM ended up forcing Gary Earle to resign instead of allowing him to retire, like they originally intended. Allowing a child abuser to resign instead of firing him is still an inadequate response. I have modified the sentence above about him being allowed to retire and changed it to "resignation.")

My Letter To My Parents

My letter to my parents flowed out of me one day after seeing a sibling being bullied by them…again. I spoke with my sibling, then began washing dishes. Just a few plates in, I grabbed a notebook, pen, and let it all come out. I thought I’d have to edit it afterwards, but the version I sent them is exactly what I scribbled.


Dear Mom and Dad,

How many offspring of yours do you currently have an excellent relationship with? How many of them seem to want to be a part of your lives as much as you want to be in theirs? If you feel like your adult children are angry or distant, or do a poor job of keeping in touch, do you honestly think it is all of us with a problem, and that you have done nothing to provoke us?

The truth is, I’m tired of your bullshit, your lies (especially yours, Mom. You lie all the time.) and I won’t stand up for or with you anymore. And right now, you’re probably thinking more about my language than my point, because you are judgmental. We are not safe being ourselves around you. You spend the whole time we’re together w/ an agenda to fit us into our mold. Example for Dad: At Christmas, [my sibling] said, “Holy crap!” Dad, you literally looked shocked. You composed yourself, stuck your nose in the air, and asked, “Is there such a thing?” We all ignored you. Know why? Because when your [child] comes home from her first semester of college and says “Holy crap!”, if that is all you have to worry about, then you should feel lucky. Example for Mom: I moved to NTBI and you stalked me on Facebook avidly, clicking on the profiles of my new friends as I added them. We talked and the phone, and you said, “Boy, that Shawna person sure is wild, isn’t she?” So I went to see Shawna’s profile to find out why you would say such a thing, knowing that without adding her as a friend, you could only see her profile picture. And Shawna, in the picture, was wearing a green, spaghetti-strap tank top. You obsess over insignificant details that you think are evil, but you can’t even apologize for your own glaring faults.

I find it interesting, though, that both of your views on those insignificant details only change depending on who you surround yourself with and not with careful thought. I could never dress down for church. I could not wear jeans, shirts with words, or often even dress pants, even after I took the time to explain to you that spending so much time trying to look good on Sunday mornings put me in the wrong frame of mind for church. But you cared more about how we appeared to the rest of the church than you cared about my wellbeing. Then, you get jobs at CCC and bam! Allie can wear jeans to church.

As far as the abuse goes, I have listed 3 examples to you via email and phone call—one of spiritual abuse, one of emotional abuse, and one of physical abuse. I need not list more.* You have yet to apologize for just those three. In fact, Dad told *me* to repent. But I do feel that there were two more types of abuse that I am adding to your list now, and those are verbal abuse and neglect. Technically, verbal abuse and spiritual abuse fall under the category of emotional abuse, but these are separated for the sake of clarity.

Example of verbal abuse from Mom and indirectly Dad for enabling it, as well as spiritual abuse from Dad: One night, in South Africa, Mom would not stop insulting me and I kept trying to reconcile. Dad manipulated me to do so, based on Bible verses about honouring parents and reconciling. Mom sat on her bed, uncaringly spewing out the most hurtful things she could think of. Being my mother, you took advantage of your biological bond with me and your knowledge of me to hurt me in the deepest ways. When I could not take it anymore, I would walk out of the room, go down to the living room, and sob uncontrollably. I know you could hear me, because I was literally out of control. I sobbed long and hard each time. Then, per Dad’s instruction, I would try again to reconcile with you. It happened over and over. Dad would sit and listen at the desk in your bedroom, never stopping to say, “Hey! You can’t treat my child like this!” Fuck you both. Jesus wouldn’t have stood by and done nothing. He would have put a millstone around both your necks and drowned you. He would have grabbed a whip, turned over the bed and desk and driven you away from me, because HE VALUES ME. It is only since the day I made the decision to cut ties with you that  I am clearly able to feel his love.

found here:
http://middlenameconfused.tumblr.com/post/36218784121

Example of neglect: We moved to CGN when I was 11 years old (and Allie and Sam were of course, even younger). I went days without seeing either of you. No one made sure I was tucked in at night. Once, I got lost in the woods at the age of 13 or 14 for an entire afternoon and you never even knew. It’s by the grace of God I made it out, no thanks to you! I brought this issue of neglect up with Mom once and she said I was at the Ham’s or Memere’s during the summers. She knows this is only partially true. I went to visit the Ham’s I think 2 or 3 times, and Catey came to visit me once or twice (then we were both unsupervised!). And I went to visit Memere 2 or 3 times for a max of 2 weeks each time. I don’t think you ever knew that the summer I got really skinny it was due to anorexia, because you never bothered to be a part of my life consistently. Mom, you sat down with me at the end of one summer and asked, “So. Who do you like?” I answered “Nobody.” And you started crying and saying that I would never share anything with you and how all the girl counselors liked you, so why didn’t I? Because I know who you really are, and they don’t. That’s why. And you can’t expect a preteen girl to open up to you after you ignore her for an entire summer. Dad, you have NEVER been a fully present part of my life, and I think you know that. From your business trips to holing out in your office in South Africa (coming out to watch television), you have always put your ministry above me. I grew up thinking that whoever you ministered to was more important to God than I was. The only thing you and I ever had in common was theologically debating and bashing all the idiots who disagreed with us behind their backs. Now that I’m an Egalitarian hippie chick, I see that you have to have more in common with someone other than opinions to have a friendship with them. I don’t know why you never wanted to spend time you’re your 6 amazing, beautiful, and talented children, but I do understand now that it is something wrong with you instead of something wrong with us. I am an incredibly valuable person and if I have to spend the rest of my life re-programming that into myself, dammit!, I WILL. Because I am made in the image of God and I have worth, whether you act like it or not.

I am changing my phone number. I am changing my email. You can no longer be in my life or my daughter’s. If you wish to contact me (for the purpose of apologizing ONLY), you may write a letter and address the envelope to David. He will read it and if it meets the criteria of a true apology, he will pass it on to me. If not, it isn’t for my eyes, because I will not subject myself to further abuse from your hands.

I do love you, but as far as I’m concerned, your abuse has destroyed our relationship and you have forfeited your rights to the pleasure of my friendship. I love you both and goodbye.

Savannah

-----

*Please note that I certainly could have listed scores more of examples. I didn’t feel that need, though, because they were refusing to acknowledge the examples I’d already given. It was and is important for me to know that someone I’m dialoguing with is willing to see my side before I spend my energy trying to show them what I see.

After writing that, I typed it up and then had three qualified friends look over it for me. They all approved it and two of them said the same thing: “I’m proud of you.” I printed it off, signed it by hand, sealed it in an envelope, and scribbled “I Timothy 5:8” on the back. So you don’t have to check, that verse reads, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I walked it to the post office myself and then I was done. I haven’t spoken to them since, and I have zero regret.

Many people have said to me, “When your parents die, you’ll lose the chance to have a relationship with them and you’ll regret this.” My opinion of these people is that they haven't taken the time to visualize a little girl being battered. I don’t know where this idea comes from that I should automatically desire a relationship with them because they are my “parents.” Our society needs to come to terms with the fact that there are some sick people in this world, and there’s no stopping many of them from having biological children. Reproducing and then abusing their offspring doesn’t make them parents. Parenting is what makes a parent.

In addition, I’ve been contacted by certain of their friends, who say that they can see how much sorrow my parents feel over me. In a way, I’m glad that those who have done so have no concept of how abusers save their tears for the public and their venom for the vulnerable. In fact, I keep a running list of things that they’ve told others about me, and it’s full of contradictions such as “We’ve apologized and she won’t accept it,” to “She’s going through a rebellious stage because we wouldn’t let her wear jeans to church.” They have never owned up to the gravity of what they’ve done, though (Or that they’ve done anything abusive at all.). When it comes to serious mistakes, repentance is only in their vocabulary for other people.

But I have repented. I’ve repented of thinking God was like my parents and that he makes for a really crappy father. I’ve repented of my self-loathing and believing I wasn’t valuable. I’ve repented of following their will for my life instead of delighting in who God made me to be. I plan to spend the rest of my life repenting, and that letter was what enabled me to start. It didn't make me a prodigal child. It made me a bird that was set free from her cage.

I Regret Purity Culture

Any fundamentalist Christian who grew up in the 90’s is familiar with the phrase “True Love Waits.” Born out of a culture that prizes sexual purity, the TLW movement came with modesty slogans (for females only), purity rings, and sermon after sermon at youth groups across America. Believing that God requires total abstinence from sex before marriage, Baptists built a law around the law. “Purity is a direction, not a line you suddenly cross by going too far,” taught Joshua Harris in I Kissed Dating Goodbye. But “purity” meant “not having sex.” So we went in the direction of fighting even our sexual desires, because we weren’t supposed to engage in anything that could theoretically lead up to sex. Choosing to save one’s first kiss for marriage was usually the acceptable way to go. Where this rule originally came up from or why it was so widely accepted, I have no idea.

A couple more things you would need to know if you looked into the TLW movement are that courting was more pure than dating, giving away your virginity or anything else physically was seen as giving pieces of yourself away—an act you could never take back and would always regret, and women could not be trusted to make their own courting/engagement/marriage decisions.

My dad took that last one to the extreme. When I was 16, he tried to betroth me to a co-worker at camp, someone I was not at all attracted to and who would require me to wear skirts and give up Christian rock music for the rest of my life. My dad liked this guy so much that he repeatedly begged…and offered him our car in exchange for me. To my co-worker’s credit, he was baffled and embarrassed. He said no. I heard about it later in the summer, which made life in the horse barn with him terribly awkward for the remainder of the season. I doubt Joshua Harris would have been ok with this, so I’m not saying it represents purity culture at large, but to my knowledge, nobody told my dad that he was being controlling and…just crazy. I can’t think of another word for his actions.

His behavior for the rest of my single life was more typical of a pro-purity dad. He and my mom were constantly matchmaking (to the point that, when I was 18 and being stalked by a fellow MK, my mom asked me, “Aren’t you at least a little flattered?”). When my older brother got a girlfriend at college, my parents were totally over the moon. They trusted him to pick a suitable mate, and were delighted to hear that he had his first kiss with her on their first date. But when I was instant messaging with a potential boyfriend, my dad started getting very grouchy because this young man hadn’t spoken to him about it first.

When I met my husband to be, David, I was at NTBI in Wisconsin and my parents were in South Africa. David had to ask me for my dad’s email so that he could get permission to court me. My dad responded with a list of 10 questions for David that required detailed answers. By the time David was finished typing up a response, his paper for my dad was bigger than his biggest paper he ever had to write in Bible college. My dad’s motto is, “You wouldn’t let anyone just take your car for a drive, so why are you letting people try out your daughter?” For the record, I’m much more capable of making good choices than a car, but ok…

My dad gave David and I strict courting rules. He said he didn’t see how it was acceptable for a couple to even hold hands. “Maybe….maaaaaybe, when they get engaged,” he said. Because we were so utterly brainwashed by purity culture’s concepts of not giving yourself away, running the opposite direction of pre-marital sex, and listening to a woman’s “spiritual leader” (my dad), my husband and I didn’t have any romantic touching at all until our first kiss at the altar. While we were courting, he once led me by the hand because I was blindfolded, but other than that, no physical contact was allowed.

We took this as a joke during our engagement, but
it's not at all funny to me now.

The entire TLW movement is based on not having any regrets before marriage. They scare young people with talks about how you don’t want to explain to your future spouse how you have had physical contact with other people. But I regret so much. I regret being a part of this movement at all. I regret not standing up to my dad’s ridiculous behavior and double standards. I regret the thousands of missed romantic moments that David and I longed to touch each other but held back. I regret that my first kiss was in front of everyone we knew. I regret that my concept of purity before God was entirely centered around not having sex before marriage. I regret teaching the girls at youth group that I had set some sort of Christlike example to follow. I could go on and on.

This movement is based around insecurity, plain and simple. If a man is upset that his wife had kissed other people before him, that would be insecure and degrading to her personhood (she didn’t give pieces of herself away—she’s still a whole person). If a parent is so worried that their child will fall into sexual pitfalls that they have to ban their children from even thinking sexual thoughts, that is insecure, too.

I am not insecure about my purity anymore. Not before my “father,” not before my husband, not before myself, and not before God. But I can’t get those years back now. The only thing I can do is throw this shame in the goddamned garbage can. So here it goes…

This One Time I Got Shunned

photo found here: http://tyt2000.deviantart.com/art/Freedom-19490162

This evening, I browsed Facebook photos and came across an album called “Pastor T’s Ordination.” I clicked and suddenly saw the eyes of my abusive father (Can I get a different term for that? He is no father of mine.) looking at me through the screen. My youth pastor, who spiritually abused me, was being ordained and my abuser spoke at this event. I clicked through the pictures, identifying each person that came out to support my abusers by name. These were my once my friends, my mentors, the kids I babysat…

Pastor T apparently still endorses my abuser. Everyone at my old church does, as far as I know. And I can’t figure out why the pain flows tonight, because this is not new knowledge, but it does. It flows and flows.

These people raised me. Did they always think I was crazy? Or just when I stopped believing what they believe? I haven’t done anything wrong by stating facts. They would even say that God wants truth to be known, but they want me to say nothing about the truth of my childhood.

And why do I care? I look through the photos, and it’s not like I want to move back to New Hampshire and be in their lives again. I don’t ever want to go back to that church basement for potlucks or even stand in the parking lot.  So what’s bothering me?

I think it’s the fact that they took away my basic human rights, and they continue to act as if I am evil because I took those rights back. They degraded my gender. They sacrificed me to do their mission work. They tried to control my thoughts. They taught me that I wasn’t valuable to anyone, not even God. They made me feel that setting relationship boundaries wasn’t spiritual. They said I made God sad if I didn’t do exactly what they wanted me to do. Then, when my world went beyond them, they shunned me. Some did it through ignoring me and some did it through picking countless fights on my Facebook wall (and never engaging in conversations on a personal level, even when I pointed out that our friendships couldn’t survive constant debating with no personal encounters). Every lost friendship wounded me, but they said they did it because they couldn’t, in good conscience, support me as a person. They implied that I was backslidden and compromising, doing whatever I felt like doing. What really happened? I examined the world and my beliefs with fear and trembling, afraid of what would happen with each change. I think I found beliefs that correspond better to reality. I can’t change reality. And truth I've found has been too good to me to reject. So who is the real friend, the one who shuns me for having different viewpoints, or the one who tries for years to fit the mold so that she can stay included in the community?

What do I want from them now? I want them to believe that God hates abuse. I don’t need to defend myself, but I still wish I could be believed. When they are entirely unwilling to consider that my father is an abuser, when they set him up as their leader, when they feel sorry for my mother as she plays the victim (and then focus their negative attention towards me, just as she wants), when they bend any evidence they can find in directions it doesn’t naturally go so that they can stay in their secure lives, when they support the phony “investigations,” that the unqualified leadership at Christ Community Church used to harass me, and when they call me a liar, they revictimize me. I’m not too far away to feel this pain, since they will always be my past.

And tonight, it makes me feel hated. 

Why I Choose to Love Me

I like who I am. I like who I have become. I like who I am still becoming. In short, I have come to a place in my life where I really, really love myself.

I hear the collective gasps out there.

One of those gasps is coming from my old self, who would be mortified. My old self would give my new self a sermon that would go something like this:

“We do not need to be taught self-confidence or self-love, because the problem with the world is that we already have too much of it. People are prideful, and meanwhile, the Bible says we are like filthy rags before God. Stop loving yourself. You’re arrogant and I don’t even want to be around people like you.”

If my old self really believed that she thought too highly of herself, why did she beat herself down constantly? Why did she starve herself, measure her value according to how productive or thin she was, frequently want to cut herself, or think about killing herself?  That is why my old self was dead wrong—she didn’t love herself too much. She didn't love herself at all. She was taught that she was worthless, she was treated as if she was worthless, and she believed that she was worthless…to her parents, to her god, and even in her own heart.

The ironic thing is that I learned these attitudes from people who still claim to value human life more than the rest of society, yet somehow, my life was not included in that equation. They used this inherently abusive teaching to trample me. The tipping point for me was when I read that there is a big difference between being unworthy and being totally worthless, similar to what is taught here.

Humans are valuable. Humans are made in the image of God. God has gifted humans. If it is important for me to protect the lives of other human beings on those premises, why shouldn’t I protect myself? I am human too, after all.

I’m learning to act according to my gifts and inherent God-given value. When I wear what I want to wear, I am pleased with what I’ve expressed. When I listen to a friend share that my story helped him in some way, I know I’m doing the right thing with my life right now. When I publish my freelance work, I feel that I am using my gifts in the way God intended. God is pleased when I'm helping others, so why shouldn't I be pleased?

So I’m here to say that I’ve become my own fan. I love myself, and I think the world would be a better place if everyone could say the same. People wouldn't look for someone to look down on so they could feel better about their own insecurities. They would place high value on rest and self-care, and then would be more ready to serve one another once their own needs were met. Self-harm and suicide rates would drop. Expressing their God-given gifts would lead to individuals reflecting God to the world in a clearer way.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’...‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”