Sarahbeth Caplin's Blog, page 41

Apologetics and other failed evangelism tactics

Thinking back to my college ministry days, I was so trained in using apologetics and clever arguments in my efforts to “win” people over to Jesus. It was like memorizing lines for a play: you learn your cue (“How can God be ‘good’ when there’s so much evil in the world?”), and recite your line (“Because free will, that’s why”). I portrayed myself as having all the answers, but if the conversation went much deeper, I’d find myself in serious trouble.

I strategically planned my memoir workshop class just when I finished the first draft of my next book. I turned in about twenty pages for critique last week, and of all the things I expected my classmates to find interesting, I didn’t think it would be my reasons for being attracted to Jesus in the first place: “The God of the Old Testament seemed distant and intimidating. I was drawn to the notion of a God dwelling in the sweaty, overworked body of a human, capable of feeling pain and distress. And all so we could know him.” One student said, “I have never heard God described that way before. It really made me think.”

I’ve been so immersed in Christian culture over the last eight years; I assumed this incarnation rhetoric was old hat for anyone who grew up that way. I’m certainly not the first person to describe an affinity for the Incarnation like that. But even the professor said that was one of her favorite passages in the manuscript. If I were still a member of Campus Crusade (“Cru”), I’d have been praised for “planting seeds” in their hearts. The funny thing is, this time I wasn’t even trying to.

C.S. Lewis famously remarked that the study of apologetics can be the most dangerous threat to one’s faith, and I’m starting to agree with him. I certainly find apologetics interesting, but I’ve long given up on using clever arguments to try and win people to my faith. I have two shelves full of theology books spanning from the early twentieth century until present day, but I can’t say that every one of them contains unique and original arguments. The only thing that has the potential to be completely original is one’s own life story, and I’ve had far more success gaining people’s interest by telling how I was Bat Mitzvah’d in a church over the “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?” dichotomy, or asking people where they think they’ll go when they die.

Apologetics can be an interesting hobby, and I doubt I’ll stop collecting those books any time soon, but I’ve learned that few “tactics” inspire people more than raw, authentic honesty. Next on my reading list is How to Defend the Christian Faith: advice from an atheist. It’s scheduled to arrive on my doorstep this Wednesday, and I already have a feeling it might be one of the more productive books I’ll read on the subject. Maybe one day I’ll get around to writing a book on how not to defend the Christian faith from a Jewish perspective – I have plenty of crash-and-burn examples to pull from my childhood that could fill a book quite easily!

Filed under: Religion, Writing & Publishing Tagged: Campus Crusade for Christ, Christian culture, Christianity, evangelicals, Judaism, Seminary, Writing

Labels, judgment, and ‘boxes’ of believers

Sometimes when I find myself fading out during small group discussion, I look around the room and observe the people around me. It hasn’t been a full year since I started attending this church, and I’m just now starting to remember people’s names. Talks about theology tend to go from zero to sixty in terms of getting to know someone, though, and in the process of learning the basics – what they do for a living, where they’re from – I’ve also picked up a few things that give me pause before accepting an invitation to hang out outside of church.

In my mind, I seem to have separated people into three categories. The first is Safe Christians: a category reserved for those whom I deem “safe” to be honest with about my doubts and questions. They are people I trust will listen and show empathy, rather than judge me and condemn me with, “A true Christian would never feel that way.”

Then there are Neutral Christians: people whose theology I don’t always agree with (which is fine), and sometimes they say things during stressful situations that aren’t very helpful (“God won’t give you more than you can handle”; “Everything happens for a reason”), but I know them well enough to know their intentions are pure. People in this group may not end up being my best friends, but can still be great conversation buddies.

And finally, the Unsafe Christians: a category that has yet to be filled, though I have some concerns. Last week, when discussing evidence of God’s existence, someone next to me quipped that atheists “reject” the evidence of God because, apparently, they lack intelligence.

That’s new to me: I’ve heard “in rebellion” as the most common excuse, but lack of intelligence?

I mean, come on. We’re a people who turn for guidance to a book with talking snakes…

I realize these categories stem from lingering paranoia and anxiety from past painful church experiences. I can recall plenty of times when I discussed theology with people who divided Christians into On Fire and Lukewarm categories, and I no longer believe that anyone fits neatly in either one.

In many ways, my relationship with Jesus is a lot like the one I have with my husband. I don’t fully understand either man, and I doubt I’m really supposed to. In a marital relationship, I’ve signed a contract and made public vows of commitment. I keep these vows even if I don’t feel in love all the time. The relationship can be strained, certainly, but the contract – the covenant – remains. I can no easily walk away from Jesus for being difficult any more than I can walk away from a husband who leaves dirty clothes next to the hamper, rarely in it, despite knowing full well how much it irritates me.

If there’s such a category as Christian Skeptic – someone who understands Jesus, but not much else – feel free to place me in that one.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, evangelicals, marriage, Spiritual Abuse

How Twitter made me a better writer

On any given afternoon, when not in class or working on school-related things, you will typically find me at home with a cat or two and several social media tabs open on my laptop: Facebook, WordPress, and Twitter. It’s the last one, however, that’s been most beneficial to me as both a reader and a writer. But mostly as a writer.

When it first became “a thing,” I convinced myself I’d never have anything to do with Twitter unless I became a Really Big Deal, and there was a captive audience who actually cared what I was doing every moment of my every day (highly unlikely and just a tad creepy). It seemed no different than the Facebook status, but with fewer characters allowed. At the time Twitter started gaining popularity, I was working on my first book, and had no idea there were more strategic ways that Twitter could be used.

Today, #AmWriting, #WriteTip, and #AmReading are three of my favorite hashtags. Using them is not only the most effective way to spread the word about my own work, request feedback, and find related articles; it’s also how I formed a network of other supportive writers.

You get what you give in the world of social media. Following the 20/80 percent rule – twenty percent of my tweets (approximately) are my own content, but eighty percent is others’ content – has turned that small network of writers into a community of friends.

People are not only more likely to share your content when you share theirs, but the real gold mine is in the personal responses: when other Twitter users (“tweeters”? “twits”?) share that they relate to what I’m working on; that they too have been stuck in the same places with a manuscript. The wisdom of more experienced writers is invaluable: I’ve gotten feedback from agents I follow with the possibility of querying one day that I’m on the right track with building my platform. Twitter, it turns out, has been the most effective way to reach out to influential people and “meet” new writers on the rise that I might not have otherwise heard of. It’s somewhat of a surreal experience to chat with someone on Twitter for several months, and then find their book on the New Fiction shelf at Barnes and Noble.

The easiest way to meet several writers and readers in my chosen genre has been through weekly tweet chats. I highly recommend finding and participating in these via the #WriteChat and #K8chat (my friend Kate’s weekly writer’s meet-up on Thursdays) hashtags. The best part is that even if I arrive late to these “parties,” the hashtags serve as bookmarkers so I can always look them up and read the tweets on my own time.

While it certainly isn’t foolproof, the “method” of using Twitter has worked best for me in this way:

Tweet about my work sparingly, but mostly share kitten pictures (the internet LOVES kitten pictures!)
Twitter user sees pic, “favorites” it, or retweets it if it’s especially cute (I don’t blame them, my kittens are adorable )
Twitter user likes content enough to click the “follow” button on my profile
Twitter user notices my biography and sees that we not only share interests, but that I write books (if you have books available, link that up! Make them as easy to find as possible)
After talking for a while, and mutually sharing each other’s content, Twitter user likes me enough to decide their money is worth spending on something I wrote
With any luck, Twitter user tweets an opinion or review about my book, and the cycle repeats with someone else.

Time consuming, yes, but luckily I enjoy this enough that I’d do it even if I was guaranteed to never sell anything. I don’t get out much, and I’m awkward around new people, so this form of socialization is very important.

This should be obvious in any kind of business, but relationships always matter more than the product. If you have any stories about how social media has influenced your life as a writer, I’d love to hear them!

Filed under: Writing & Publishing Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, cats, Facebook, Indie Author Life, self-publishing, Twitter, Writing

Convincing students to care about assault awareness in a culture of apathy

I received an email yesterday informing me (for the first time) that I had not yet taken an apparently mandatory sexual assault awareness course. As such, my student account would be frozen until I completed it, prohibiting me from registering for spring classes (registration starts next week).

Since I had not been given prior warning, I was completely incensed, and immediately poured my angry feels into a response, not only pointing out the unfairness of issuing this ultimatum a week before registration (and the course was expected to take a few hours), but also using the threat of removing agency to continue my education in order to teach me, and other students, that infringing on others’ agency is wrong. Using power and control to teach against forcing power and control – effective.

Furthermore, the wording on the FAQ link suggested that even if survivors were triggered by the course, they had to take it anyway (at least resources for hotlines and on-campus counselors were included, but still).

Thankfully, my email got through to somebody, and I am exempted from the course (I also assume this means the freeze on my account is lifted), but it got me thinking: how do you teach students about sexual assault? More importantly, how do you get students to care if they a) don’t think it will ever happen to them, or b) think there’s a huge difference between “convincing” someone to have sex using alcohol, versus attacking a stranger in the park?

Sadly, too many people are jaded by all the bad things happening in the world, and will be difficult to convince that rape culture is a real epidemic.

I did feel conflicted about getting tangled up with the sexual assault prevention group, which of all things, you’d think I would completely support. And I do support their efforts – certainly every university should have something like this – but unfortunately, the method of education is a little sketchy. Making anything mandatory that is not relevant to one’s major is bound to get a “This is stupid” reaction from students who will, inevitably, feel inconvenienced. They will plop their butts in chairs out of obligation but probably spend the entire thing on their iphones. Pessimistic? I’ve seen it happen during a required safety seminar at my last school, so I don’t think so.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways to motivate students to come to a seminar about sexual assault awareness: 1) Offer extra credit that will count toward a humanities course or something (at least three of them were required for all undergrad students at my alma mater, regardless of major), and 2) You can never go wrong offering students free pizza.

So what do you think – are these types of programs effective? I recall reading somewhere that DARE – the Drug Abuse Resistance Education course I was required to take in elementary school – has a spectacularly low success rate. But that could be because of the scare tactics as that were used – who knows.

Filed under: Rape Culture Tagged: Controversy, rape culture, self-care, social justice

When church triggers anxiety

Deciding to take a temporary sabbatical from church has made me rethink the way I define “church” in the first place. It’s a very American concept to define “church” as a structure with walls, pews, and a stage, but when a news story about the persecution of Christians under ISIS crosses my social media outlets, I realize this is too narrow a definition. Church is, in a nutshell, a gathering of Christians to worship and learn about God together, regardless of time and place.

The first anxiety attack I had in church this year was when a visiting missionary showed a Powerpoint to illustrate where the half-million dollars came from to fund overseas missionaries – “funding” including airfare, hotels, food (for the missionaries, that is), and bibles, but not so much food, water, or medical care for the people they were intending to reach. Spiritual care over physical care seemed to be the priority, and this Jewish idea that permeated my childhood – that it’s a moral imperative to feed, shelter, and care for our poor in other tangible ways – means nothing if it doesn’t end up saving souls. I thought of my father’s life of compassion for others and the reality in Christendom that all his kindness was for naught because he wasn’t “saved.”

The second anxiety attack was two weeks ago during a sermon on faith healing, which regular readers already know is a trigger.

It’s one thing to be feel convicted about something, which can be an uncomfortable experience – a good church should do that. But full-blown anxiety attacks, even just one, is one too many. My history in evangelicalism has made me afraid of inquisitor-like questioning by Christians who will want to be “sure” that my avoidance of church isn’t because I want to justify some sin. I fear explaining what needs to be done for the sake of my mental health and being told that more church is the only solution. While accountability is good and necessary, I’ve become of afraid to trust my judgment regarding the final decision that is best for me.

I feel confident about this decision since I plan to keep attending my Thursday small group, which is a far better environment for an introvert, anyway. I thrive in theological discussion and healthy debate. While there are a handful of people there whom my paranoid mind suspects are “unhealthy Christians” (someone last week actually said atheists are atheists because they “lack intelligence”), I have met people who encourage and challenge me in all the right ways. For some people, “community” means hundreds of people, but for me, however many a typical round table can fit is good enough.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, evangelicals, grief, hell, self-care, social justice, Spiritual Abuse

The myth of the “overnight success story”

The expression “overnight success story” is a misnomer, unless “overnight” is loosely defined as several years. When I self-published my first book, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, in 2012, my only goal was to see my words in print…and make the bestseller’s list. Self-publishing seemed like the fastest route to getting my work out there, thus speeding up the process of making my life-long dream of literary fame come true.

My first clue as to just how misguided I was should have been the little time it took to go from finishing a manuscript to clicking “publish” on Createspace. In other words, it took no time at all. So many steps were half-assed (like editing!) or skipped over altogether: mainly, building a platform to actually sell the book to people who didn’t have the bias of already being my family or friend. In fact, if you’d asked me back then, I couldn’t have told you what a platform was, or why it’s even necessary.

Publishing traditionalists bemoan the rise of indie publishing, thinking that “crap books” will overload the internet and make the “good books” harder to find, but that’s actually not true. Amazon is flooded with books, traditional and self-published, but the sales numbers speak for themselves. The quality books written by visible authors will sell. Bad quality books, or even well-written books but with unknown authors, will sink to the bottom. Platform is the key to any author hoping to make a living, or at least put gas in her tank, which I’m happy to say I did for the first time in September 2014. Note the gap between then and my book’s initial publication date: it took two and a half years before I saw any kind of payoff. If I keep building up my marketing and networking skills, perhaps I can make a car payment by the time I’m thirty.

So how does platform work? In short, a platform is what you do to make yourself known to your readers. Truthfully, I learned about it on the go, mostly by realizing what didn’t attract potential readers to my book: spamming people on LinkedIn with “Hey I’m an author!” messages. Posting Amazon links over and over and over again on Twitter and Facebook. It didn’t take long to realize those “methods” hurt writers more than helped them. Everyone hates being spammed.

The first wise thing I did was create accounts on all the major social media sites: Google+, Twitter, and a Facebook business page. The more places your name can show up on a Google search, the better. Second, rather than reaching out to everyone I knew all at once, I sought out subsets of people who shared an interest in the subject of my book: religion. From Twitter hashtags to Facebook groups for spiritual authors, finding niches was absolutely critical. But in many author forums, I was treated much the same way I treated my audience: as a potential buyer. No one likes being treated that way.

Changing my outlook from making sales to building relationships is what changed everything for me. I sought to genuinely connect with other authors in my genre, marketing consultants (one of whom I found out lives in Colorado Springs, and is now one of my close friends), and yes, people who enjoy reading the topics I write about. Building relationships account for most of the time it took to get somewhere, but you know what? It’s been completely worth it. One such friend helped me find Booktrope, my current publisher, and referred me to people who like to review books as a hobby. When I decided to make my book, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, free for a few days in August of this year, it shot up to #1 on the bestseller list for personal growth books on Kindle, and stayed there for six days. And this week, my most recent novel A Stunning Accusation, was on sale and shot up to #49 in New Adult fiction (see pic above) and, at its highest moment, ended up #6 for a day.

Two and a half years to become an “overnight” success (at least in my own eyes). Looking forward to seeing what I can do with five.

Filed under: Writing & Publishing Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, Indie Author Life, self-publishing, Writing

When religion prohibits consent and agency

I had an epiphany while crying in the ladies room two weeks ago after a triggering sermon. It’s something I’ve suspected for a while, and while this may be obvious to those who have left the faith, it’s a new revelation for me: the evangelicalism I’ve fallen into forbids me to think for myself.

I thought this when a well-intentioned church leader asked me what was wrong – I figured I might as well explain, because insisting “I’m fine” in between dry heaves is really not convincing. She listened intently while I gave a brief explanation of why healing stories are so hurtful to me, and seemed genuinely sad when I said I wasn’t too sure if I believed in an intervening god anymore. Had she stopped at “We just don’t understand God’s ways,” I’d have been fine – I think it’s a cop-out answer to give to a grieving person, but it’s nonetheless true. When the conversation shifted to “Did your father have a personal relationship with Jesus? Have you asked him to be your Savior?” I shut down. That wasn’t the talk I needed at all, but I guess that doesn’t matter if one is following a script, which was what the discussion started to feel like.

If I didn’t care at all about being polite, I’d have stood up and left. I’d have insisted more clearly that I didn’t want to pray in the bathroom with her because being put on the spot like that makes me immensely uncomfortable. But I sat there, complying, because of a voice in my head that insisted, She’s just trying to lead you back, you know. You have so much bitterness in your heart that you refuse to hand over to God – you can’t make decisions about what’s really best for you right now.

That same self-doubting voice was there during seminary, too: You have no right to shrug off those people who are telling you to forgive the guy who keeps harassing you for a date – you know forgiveness is the right choice, but you’re just bitter because he reminds you of your ex boyfriend.

And in college ministry: It doesn’t matter what your family dynamic looks like, or how they feel about religion. God is calling you to sit your parents down right now and share Jesus with them! You’re just afraid.

This bitterness and fear were the common denominators of all those self-doubting moments, I’ve realized. I can’t trust when my intuition is telling me to get out of a potentially dangerous (emotionally, that is) situation because my bitterness, my fear – my sin – has made it impossible for me to think straight.

What I never stopped and asked myself until now is, how do I know the judgment of my Christian peers isn’t clouded by their sin? Can anyone be trusted?

Autonomy, agency, and rights to my own body – the right to pull away from a stranger who insists on grabbing my arms to pray with her when I already refused – have been deemed “selfish” by many, if not most, of the church groups I’ve been part of over the last seven years. I know why this is: The heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that – but now I’m starting to think that the real deceit is when people who don’t know your situation very well think they know what’s good for you; when they think a dash of prayer and a sprinkle of Bible verses will suffice, and having been a Christian longer than I have automatically lends credibility even if they have never been in my shoes.

I am all for community and friends who can hold each other accountable. But friends have the advantage of earned intimacy in the struggles of your life; strangers do not. And every time I doubted my ability to know what is best for me was under the pressure of acquaintances who happened to attend the same church.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Campus Crusade for Christ, Christian culture, Christianity, depression, grief, self-care, Seminary, Spiritual Abuse

What will it take to change your mind?

While it’s nice to have the support of both friends and strangers on the internet who tell me I’m brave for writing about pain, the reality is, I wish I weren’t. I wish I didn’t have to do any of this. I don’t write about the raw and the personal to prove that I’m strong, but because I’m angry as fuck. I wish I could trade all the positive feedback for a different narrative of my life.

When writing about a topic that many people misunderstand, there’s always something that gets left out because I can’t anticipate every ignorant reaction from trolls. This is what I left out:

When it comes to rape stories, there’s just no satisfying everyone. I knew the person and dated him for five years, so clearly I’m either stupid for not recognizing the pattern (more like outright denying it) or out for revenge because he dumped me. I decided I don’t care if people think that, because if he were a complete stranger in the park, people would inevitably want to know the hour in which I was jogging (is it early morning or late evening that is considered The Raping Hour?). If he were an acquaintance at a party, people would want to know how much I flirted and how much I drank. Just when you think you’ve come up with a scenario in which the assault is indisputably the assailant’s fault, someone who wasn’t there will fight you on it.

We live in a world in which children are blamed for being molested, for fuck’s sake. So what, pray tell, does a “true victim” look like? What will it take to change your mind?

“Innocent until proven guilty” applies to the accuser as well as the accused. But guys, rape is the only crime in which the victim is asked to prove they are actually a victim in order to be taken seriously. I find that inexcusable, don’t you? Wouldn’t any reasonable person?

So as much as I don’t want to, until rape culture is treated like the legitimate threat that it is, I will keep on writing.

Filed under: Feminism, Rape Culture Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, Controversy, Feminism, rape culture, self-care, Writing

What confronting my rapist taught me about justice

This is my first paid writing piece (not book-related) via xoJane!

***

I didn’t realize I was raped until years after it happened. I, like many young women, entered the dating world with the idea that rape was something that happened to spandex-clad joggers early in the morning and partygoers in short skirts late at night. The idea that one could be violated by a trusted dating partner struck me as absurd, because I thought I was smart enough to choose my partners wisely.

There is an art to manipulation, as I would eventually learn. Someone you think you can trust may tell you that your “no” wasn’t loud enough; he thought you were kidding; he thought you were playing hard to get. I heard all of these and more, and the blame turned inward: maybe I shouldn’t have given him ideas by wearing that tight shirt. Maybe I should have pushed him to show that I was serious. The justifications, the would-have-could-have-should-haves tumbled in my brain on spin cycle, triggering anxiety and PTSD, until I shared them in a therapist’s office and was gently informed, “Honey, you were raped.”

I don’t know what angered me more: not realizing what was happening to me at the time, or that by the time I did, the statute of limitations had passed. My ex boyfriend, the first man I fell in love with, was cunning and smart, and knew exactly what he was doing. Not only that, he moved across the country shortly after we broke up, and that was the last I heard about him. He would never be held accountable for what he did.

There are many threads we hold to that provide hope in the midst of tragic circumstances. For some people, it is the idea that everything happens for a reason. For others, it is the promise of divine justice, should a perpetrator never face it during his time on earth. I was encouraged to trust God – that vengeance is his alone. Well, that wasn’t good enough for me. Even if I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God would handle things eventually, I likely would not be there to see it. My ex’s judgment would take place without me there to witness as a fly on the wall, and that grieved me.

My therapist suggested writing my ex a letter, calling him every bitter name in the book and cursing him to my heart’s content, and then tearing it up when I finished. But I put so much pent-up fury and passion into my letter that the thought of tearing it up seemed wasteful. I didn’t tell my therapist at the time (probably a mistake), but I took her advice a giant step further and actually sent it to him via Facebook – after drinking a bottle of Pinot for “courage,” and with the hope that perhaps I wouldn’t remember doing it.

Unfortunately, once the buzz wore off, I did remember, so I swore off Facebook for a week because I was terrified of what angry response might be in my inbox. At the same time, the possibility of a response excited me in a strange way. I wanted to rattle him; I wanted to throw his world off-kilter like he did mine. Really, my expectations of justice were quite low: I actually wasn’t out to ruin his life or make him suffer in any way. All I wanted was to hold him accountable. Reasonable, right?

At the end of the week, I found my resolve and logged back into Facebook, my heart stampeding and sweat soaking my palms. I expected to see red notifications out the wazoo, and who knows what else.

What I found was…nothing.

There were notifications, of course: an invitation to Candy Crush from a classmate I never talk to, a few ‘likes’ on the last picture I posted from other virtual acquaintances. Facebook’s message algorithm allows you to see if a sent message has been read with a time stamp at the bottom (the best and worst thing ever to happen in social media, as it lets you know if you’re being ignored). Well, my message was time-stamped as “read” – an hour after I sent it. A full week had passed, the accusing message was read, and not a single response was sent back to me.

There are several reasons for this: he could be protecting himself from further trouble, perhaps on the advice of a friend, family member, or hell, even a lawyer. He felt deeply convicted of his crime and was too ashamed to face me again, even behind a screen (unlikely). Or, the most likely and most-feared possibility: he just doesn’t give a shit.

From what I knew of him during the five years we were together, all signs pointed to that last reason, and that was the one I could handle the least. Even an embittered “You’re a liar, you know you wanted it” response would have been preferred (so I thought), because at least my words – particular the smear of “rapist” – would have made it into his head.

I’m ashamed to say that I dwelled on these possibilities for months afterward, during which I still never got a response. A mutual friend posted a picture of the two of them at a bar, which was immensely triggering, and I drunkenly wrote to him, too: Did you know that you were having drinks with a rapist? Surprise, surprise: that message was time-stamped “read” and went unanswered as well.

At this point, my mind was racing with conspiracy theories that all our mutual friends signed this pact to ignore me when I spoke up, perhaps to drive me insane and effectively destroy my credibility. After all, what sense did it make to receive a message like that, and just ignore it? Rape is serious! It’s a crime, dammit! If someone sent me a message accusing one of my good friends of doing such a thing, you bet I’d say something – if not to the responder, then I’d surely confront the accused and let them know what’s up (and then demand the truth). Wouldn’t I?

It’s funny; my therapist suggested writing that letter as a coping mechanism, but it ended up nearly destroying me instead. I allowed this man to dwell in my head full-time, to taunt me from a distance, and it was taking over my life. I was angry, extremely depressed, and started turning to alcohol more and more to suppress the memories of what he did. During this time, I got married, and my fear and repulsion of sex were starting to cause problems. I shut my new husband out, convinced that he wouldn’t understand. It didn’t matter to me how amazing this new man was; without justice, the hurt that resided in me would always be there.

I learned a valuable lesson from those dark months of obsessing over justice, however. At some point – perhaps after my husband staged an intervention and lovingly insisted I get help for my drinking – I realized the senselessness of hinging my healing on the choices that other people make, of which I have no control. And even if my rapist were brought to trial and convicted, it wouldn’t undo what he did. Neither would all the sincerest apologies in the world. There would still be damage left, and it would be up to decide how to handle it. But allowing it to take over my life was no longer an option. Moving on is a choice; it doesn’t mean forgetting what happened, but learning to manage the pain in a productive way. For me, the best thing I did with my pain was let it inspire a novel: one that I hope comforts other hurting survivors.

Make no mistake; pain changes you. But it doesn’t have to define you.

Filed under: Feminism, Rape Culture, Writing & Publishing Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, Controversy, Feminism, rape culture, Writing

The sneaky variations of prosperity gospels

From my vent session with God this morning:

I’m absolutely positive that most people’s spirituality is formed by personal experience in addition to Scriptural teaching, whether they admit it or not. In that sense, all of our beliefs are biased, and I will admit that it is perhaps a personal bias of mine that “faith healing” is crap. How do you go about refuting real-world experience?

Most people hear the word “prosperity” and probably think of dollar signs. The media paints “prosperity preachers” as those with buckets of money spent on private jets, mansions, and exotic “vacations” disguised as mission trips. Experience has shown me another form of spiritual prosperity: this idea that God chooses to heal some people over others, even if the families and congregations of both the healed and unhealed prayed with equal fervor. I have to say that I find it extraordinarily convenient when someone who was “elected” for healing quips to someone like me with a parent taken by cancer, “We just don’t understand God’s ways sometimes.” No, we certainly don’t.

This is my plea to pastors and other Christians who share these stories of “divine healing”: please be aware that these stories are extremely painful for people like me to hear. They do not encourage me to trust God and believe ever more fervently in miracles; they diminish my trust in a good, compassionate Father who cares about me and the suffering of people I care about. This idea of an uncaring, highly selective God who picks favorites is inadvertently preached between the lines whether that is your intention or not.

I’ve read the story of Jesus saying “Pick up your mat and walk!” to the man who, sure enough, picked up his mat and walked, despite being paralyzed his entire life. But now this story has gotten me thinking of all the things that God has done in both the Old and New testaments that he just doesn’t seem to do anymore. We read story after story of a God who spoke audibly to people on demand, responded to tests and challenges with a wet fleece, and bent the laws of nature so an entire army could escape to safety. Does God still do similar things today?

Would you believe your neighbor today if he told you that God spoke to him through a burning toaster? Who prayed for an amputated limb to grow back, and sure enough, it happened? I’m not sure I would. I’m honestly not sure what to do with these stories that paint a very different picture of God than the one I have experienced, and I suspect I am hardly the only person to have this dilemma.

I am certainly not lacking any blessings in my life: I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, adorable kittens, and a husband who loves me. I am grateful for those things, but if I’m perfectly honest, I’m not sure who to thank for them beyond some cosmic coincidence, because it makes me feel guilty to thank God knowing there are millions of people out there barely subsisting on the resources I take for granted. I am left with the unsavory thought, am I in some way “elected” to be more blessed than Syrian refugees, starving African children, or the homeless man I pass on my way to school? I certainly hope not.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: cancer, Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, evangelicals, First World Problems, grief, prosperity gospel, self-care