Sarahbeth Caplin's Blog, page 42

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

Finishing my memoir and the contradiction of certainty

I wrote what I believe to be the final chapter of my next memoir last night (which I’m now calling “Confessions of a Jew-ish Skeptic.” Less of a mouthful and more attention-grabbing). 125 pages and just shy of 30,000 words. How do you know for sure if a story about your life is finished? Good question; I have no idea. But where I ended last night just felt like a good stopping point – hopeful yet not neatly tied up with a bow, the way all my favorite memoirs end.

I also started reading Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty by Gregory Boyd, which helped inspire my book’s ending. As the title implies, Boyd posits that feeling secure in belief over secure in God are two different things, and the former is a form of idolatry. I had to think about that for a while, because those two things are so tied up in each other, it’s hard to tell them apart. How can you be secure in God without being secure in belief? It seems like an oxymoronic proposition.

Yesterday I had an anxiety attack in church. Literally in church, right in the middle of a sermon about how God heals people. There was a video presentation featuring stories of congregants who were spontaneously healed of everything from paralysis to arthritis to viral infections, and I got up and stormed out, and spent the rest of the service bawling in the ladies room. I understood the so-called oxymoron then: I am secure that there is a God. I am certain this God is a Creator, and everything good in this world is from him. I am not at all secure in the belief that this God is solely responsible for healing people when modern medicine does so much, and this idea of God healing some over others sounds a lot like a prosperity gospel to me.

But regardless of what I believe about suffering and healing does not sway my belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Is that the crux I should be focusing on? According to Boyd, it is.

I hope when people read this new book (I’m anticipating a spring 2016 release), they will understand that it’s a documentation of a woman on a journey, and not at all a treatise about capital-T Truth. Inevitably, an individual’s story of faith will be labeled inspirational by some and heresy by others. I personally don’t read spiritual memoirs for “truth,” but rather out of interest in the way experiences shape us.

All of us are on individual paths of discovery, which means at many points we will be walking contradictions. That’s not hypocrisy, but the natural process of figuring out life as we go (how else can you do it?).

There is one thing I’m certain about, and it’s been a very long, twisted road to get to this conclusion: I believe my faith is strong enough to handle being wrong about something without the whole thing tumbling like a house of cards.

Filed under: Religion, Writing & Publishing Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, grief, Indie Author Life, self-publishing, Writing

Oregon shooting and the ideology of martyrdom

I was eleven years old when the shooting at Columbine High School happened. Without access to the Internet beyond an instant messenger account, somehow I latched on to the story of Cassie Bernall, the seventeen-year-old who was killed after being asked if she believed in God. I remember checking out her mother’s book “She Said Yes” from my middle school library and reading it several times before returning it well beyond its due date.

This made sense, considering my fascination with martyrdom and sainthood began at the age of ten, when I latched on to the story of Joan of Arc and checked out every book and movie I could find about her. My mom was worried that this apparent obsession with martyrdom was unhealthy; perhaps rightly so. How does a Jewish kid even learn about this stuff? Good question – I still have no idea.

Now here we are again, reading martyr stories in the media from another school shooting. You’ve probably heard it already: a shooter asked students if they were Christians, and the ones who answered “yes” were shot in the head. Interestingly, those who answered “no” were allowed to live, but not without being shot in the legs.

Not long after the shooting occurred, this article surfaced on my news feed: “Dear sweet Mamas,” it begins (that salutation alone makes me uncomfortable, but I kept reading), “I know you are hurting today. I won’t pretend I know how badly…He killed nine of your children, Mamas. Do you know what that means? That means eight of your brave children saw one of their own take a bullet in the head for claiming Christ and they said yes anyway.”

It goes on…

I want my children here with me, and I know you want yours with you too.

But I will tell you that a YES and a life snuffed out for Christ is better than a NO and 100 years more on this earth without Him.

To LIVE is Christ, and to DIE is gain, and your children PROVED that yesterday. May we all look to them and BE STRENGTHENED.

This…makes me uncomfortable for a couple reasons. One, if I were a mom of a dead child who was shot randomly, not martyred, I might feel that this article is elevating the deaths of these other students above my own – as if my child’s death were less important, and more senseless. Second, without denying the bravery it takes to remain true to your beliefs despite the consequences (I really don’t want to trivialize this), what does the article inadvertently say about doubt-filled people like me? This situation is a nightmare for someone with unanswerable questions that keep her up at night; whose prayer journal contains entries over the last six months that are pretty much the same: “I don’t know how I can continue to believe when there are parts of the Bible that disturb me, and questions that can’t be answered. I’m scared to bring this up in church for fear of being told that I’m not a ‘real believer.’”

I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t praise the bravery of those who die for their convictions. My problem is with an ideology that is heavily focused on a hypothetical moment of having to defend your beliefs at gunpoint. This situation is very, very rare – at least for people who live in the US. This ideology doesn’t allow much room – let alone grace – for people who constantly wrestle with doubt. Thus, my obsession with martyrdom was waned a bit. My new heroes are those who openly wrestle with doubt, and extend invitations to everyone at their table, regardless of where they are on the spectrum of doubt to faith.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, martyrdom, Oregon shooting

“I’m pro-life, but…”

Don’t you love when people self-identify with a certain label, only to follow that up with a “but…” that basically contradicts everything we think that label represents?

“I’m a Christian, but I don’t hate gay people.”

“I’m Jewish, but I eat pork.”

“I’m a vegetarian, but sometimes I eat fish.”

I’m one of those people: “I’m pro-life, but I actually give a damn about both the fetus and the mother, and support every available option to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.”

It’s an uphill battle trying to dignify my stance, and I completely understand why: there are some shitty pro-lifers out there that are better described as pro birthers. They don’t (for some inexplicable reason) support government programs to help families in poverty. They don’t approve of contraceptives that decrease the chance of pregnancy. They don’t want life-saving education that can help people make responsible choices about sex. They don’t want any of that.

What they do want: to punish poor people for being poor. To punish women who have sex they don’t approve of. To punish women, period.

I listen to such politicians speak, I see the angry, shaming signs held up by protestors, and I want to stand on my own soapbox and scream I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

I’ve been told I just need to find a different label. “Pro life” is just too tarnished. Fine. But inevitably, the new label (pro women and babies? Pro actual life?) will suffer the same negative branding, because that’s what happens when humans gather in the name of controversial causes. They want the same things but disagree on how to make them happen. They advocate in ways that help some and hurt others.

We know Christians who do hate gay people and Christians who welcome them with open arms. We know feminists with rhetoric that does not include non-white, non-cisgendered women. Do we need distinguishing labels for them, too? Can you see how confusing this gets?

You don’t have to agree with me, but I do wish you’d ask me what I mean when I call myself pro-life. I’ll be more than happy to tell you that it means I think the fetus is a viable being, but I don’t value the fetus over the mother. It means I support affordable contraceptives – which, ultimately, means supporting Planned Parenthood – because that is the method proven to be most effective at preventing pregnancy.

It means supporting comprehensive education that is not just about reproduction and bodily functions, but also addresses consent.

It means offering to watch a single mom’s kid for a few hours so she can sleep and catch up on homework, rather than hold up signs of butchered fetuses intended to shame people into thinking my way.

It means I’d rather adopt a child than have one the biological way.

Let me know if there’s anything I’ve left unclear. But for the love of all that is holy, do not lump me in with the extremist wackadoodles who happen to share the same label.

Filed under: Feminism, Other stuff Tagged: Abortion, Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, Feminism

What Christians can learn from Jews about grief

The arduous process of returning to the real world after the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death revealed something poignant to me about grieving: that self-care is just as important as preserving memory. The rest of the world does not care that you’re grieving. Bills still need to be paid, work still needs to get done. I’ve learned that burying grief under mundane tasks only intensifies it when the memories do come back, and they will: for me they hit hardest when Billy Joel comes on the radio, and that one time I saw a man carrying a little girl on his shoulders into Starbucks – a little girl with similar blonde curls I once had. It could have been a scene out of my own childhood.

That hurt. It hurt a lot. There is something to be said about setting aside designated time just to be sad and let yourself despair for a bit. It’s what Judaism calls “sitting shiva,” in which friends and relatives take care of all the household stuff – cooking, cleaning – while you, the bereaved, sit in that carved-out space and let yourself feel whatever you need to feel. On the one-year mark, the yahrzeit, you light a candle of remembrance that burns for twenty-four hours.

And then you return to the real world.

My experience with death in Christian circles has been somewhat different, to say the least. While sad for those left behind, the bigger picture is that death is a big Welcome Home party; it’s nothing to be afraid of, because in the end we’ll be with Jesus. In that context, death is really something to celebrate, not mourn. Sitting shiva is one piece of Judaism I think Christianity could really benefit from. For those who are deeply hurting, we need to remember that death can be a ugly, brutal thing.

It feels like a very tall order to believe wholeheartedly in an eternal dwelling place that is equally accessible as the deceased – you can’t see it, touch it, or experience it in any tangible way. If there’s a strong emphasis on the dead being “better off” some place else, rather than here with us, it does sort of make grief seem…pointless?

I haven’t been to many funerals, but it bothers me when the service is turned into a celebration of the dead person going to their “real home.” Funerals aren’t really for the dead, but for the living, and this doesn’t do much for the people who still need to find a way to function without their loved one in their lives anymore.

Well, maybe heaven is comforting for some people, but I’d rather just have my dad back in this life.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: cancer, Christian culture, Christianity, Judaism