Red Flags in Hindsight

This weekend, a fellow member of a Facebook readers’ group asked for advice about what she should say to one of her students concerning the girl’s mother reading Christian romance novels.

According to the poster, the student is a strong and well-meaning Christian who is legitimately concerned that her mother is going down the wrong path as she reads one Christian romance after another. The teacher’s post had the air of one who wants to assure a desperate student that things aren’t nearly as bad as they seem.

I read the post and scrolled down. Then scrolled up again. Then down. Then up, rereading the words that didn’t sit right with me. It took me several minutes to realize why.

I saw red flags.

Initially, I didn’t recognize it, but something in my mind wouldn’t let me leave that post without addressing what I’d observed. When I began to focus on the student’s question, I realized the red flags it raised were the same ones I’d overlooked in my own experience as a teacher and, more importantly, as a parent who desperately wanted to do the right thing for my kids.

My husband and I raised our sons in what we believed was a godly environment. There was a small church in our community where the Bible was studied and preached. We loved our pastor specifically because he dug deep into the Scriptures. We made friends in the congregation and among the leadership and began volunteering for ministries so we could help serve God through the church.

Later, a new pastor arrived. His style took some getting used to. The preaching wasn’t as deep or as focused, but the work started to grow by leaps and bounds under him. The ministry became shallower, but with a broader reach.

There were conflicts among the congregation under both pastors, but most were smoothed over by chalking things up to differences in temper, opinion, and personality. Even early on, we, as part of the church, were more intent on keeping the peace than confronting potential problems.

After all, no one is perfect, right?

Even when my husband and I had issues with the pastor or fellow church members, we tried to keep it to ourselves. We didn’t want our sons embroiled in a conflict that wasn’t theirs. They were trained to respect and listen to the adults in the church.

It turned out that policy did more harm than we could have imagined.

The Christian school and church both worked overtime to convince parents that they couldn’t believe everything their children told them about their teachers or church leaders. It became a running joke — “If you don’t believe everything they tell you about us, we won’t believe everything they tell us about you!” That statement was sure to get a laugh from the pulpit.

My sons are adults with their own families now. When we visit and talk, those days of serving at our home church cannot help but come up. Our whole life was spent in that place.

My sons’ teen years centered around school and the youth group. Even though we made very little income as church workers, we ensured our sons had whatever they needed to participate in every fun experience — amusement park trips, youth rallies, plays, spring formals, camps — knowing that each activity came with Bible-centered teaching.

What we didn’t know was how prevalent it was for the youth leaders to teach their own opinions and preferences as if those were just as important as Scripture — and even conflated their teachings AS Scripture.

Whenever we were made aware of the opinion teaching, we discussed it with our sons, but eventually, they just got quieter about sharing what they were learning.

We assumed it was just our teens growing up.

It wasn’t.

It was disapproval.

Little by little a wedge was driven into our family relationship widening the divide between kids and parents. Even though our sons watched us work until we dropped, they were slyly encouraged to explore any area where we fell short spiritually.

That’s what I saw in this weekend’s post. The concern of the student was centered on disapproval of her mother’s reading materials.

Red flag.

I wanted to know where the student got the idea that Christian romance novels might be detrimental to her mother’s spiritual walk.

That’s what the red flag should push the OP to investigate.

In the past two years, I’ve been confronted by the many red flags I’d overlooked when our family was deep in ministry work. I’ve also had questions answered about my sons’ behavior when they were home — behavior I couldn’t understand at the time. It was a low-level anger and frustration that they wouldn’t talk about or address and it made no sense to me.

I remember being questioned about watching television at home following church services. By that time, church services were light on church and heavy on service. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch, turn on a DVD (we couldn’t afford cable and streaming wasn’t a thing just yet), and turn off my brain for a few minutes. My practice was deemed unspiritual.

Another time I was confronted with the question, “Do you even like church?” This was after a visiting preacher spent his time behind the pulpit glorifying the “good old days when kids got beat.” I had to explain that I loved my fellow church members, the Bible, and God, but I hated that particular service because it did not reflect the truth or love of our Savior. I had also been sitting next to a triggered abuse survivor who had done nothing to deserve getting two black eyes from her father when she was sixteen. The woman was now an adult older than me, and her father was sitting on the second row nodding along to what was being said, proud of his past record of physical intimidation and abuse. The preacher’s assertion that beatings were “good” was especially grating. I’d left the service furious. My friend left it in tears.

Among the other things my sons were taught to believe in their youth group at church (but not in our home OR in adult services) were that women shouldn’t wear boots since it calls too much attention to them (I, as a fellow teacher and church member of those youth workers, wore dress boots under long skirts all fall and winter). According to them, the preferred look for godly women was high-heeled pumps (because those never attract a man’s attention).

My boys heard that depression was a sign of demonic influence (I had serious issues with depression for years) and that taking medicine for depression or other mental illnesses was wrong (I took St. John’s wart and iron after discovering that my depression was primarily due to anemia).

There was also the convincing argument that when men got married, they should choose a woman who wanted to stay home since any married woman who worked outside the home was letting the world know she was open to having an affair. This was taught by my fellow secondary teachers, workers, and co-laborers in Christ — all of whom were male. I was a working woman, a teacher whose husband was the school administrator. I also headed up several church ministries, but in the eyes of these men, I was suspect.

Nothing I did would ever be good enough, not in the eyes of the male leadership and eventually not in the eyes of my boys.

I realize now, that my sons were being shaped into mini-versions of their leaders. They were training to become men who would lead through intimidation and callous disregard for truth according to the Bible. Instead, they would preach and teach their opinions, standards, and preferences, denying anyone the opportunity to challenge their authority.

It has taken years for my family to recover from these teachings. I’ve apologized for my part in the mess and will continue to do whatever it takes to repair the damage done.

The post concerning a girl worried about her mother’s reading material may seem like a very tiny red flag, but I can’t help but feel it’s marking a significant issue. A wedge is being driven between mother and daughter, and the question has to be: WHO is driving that wedge?

I wrote my concerns in the post's comments, but by the time I was finished, the post had been removed from the group’s page. Unfortunately, the conversation had devolved into arguments concerning the literary value of the romance genre.

The fact that a Christian teen was concerned for her Christian mother’s choice of Christian reading material was largely overlooked. No one was asking why.

So I’m asking.

Why is she concerned about her mother’s reading habits? What has she heard about women who read? What has she been taught about Christian romance? Is she finding herself drawn further and further away from her mother? Is she getting closer and closer to someone in a position of “spiritual authority”? Is she being tested? Is she being groomed?

IS SHE SAFE?

And I’m hoping that the OP somehow sees this and that she starts asking too.

I can’t ignore the red flags anymore.

I only wish I had recognized them years ago.

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