Category Archives: Self Concept

Shame, shame

Posted by Amy in Body Image, Health and tagged with

There is so much shame out there for us to use against our fellow humans.  It’s so easy to claim-and-club, to bludgeon each other in the name of making others into better people.  And doesn’t it feel good, knowing that we’re doing the right thing, the moral thing, while others wallow in their guilt?

I read an article yesterday about how restaurant portion sizes can be an issue for people wanting to have healthier lifestyles.  In the article, a study was cited in which people were given cookies labeled “medium” and “large,” but the cookies were in fact the same size.  People who had the medium cookies ate more, and it was suggested that the labeling convinced them that the portion was smaller so they could indulge.  The implication is that if restaurant portion sizes were standard (a medium soda is always the same number of ounces everywhere, for example) then it could be more effective than laws restricting the maximum size.  The article went on to mention that clothing sizes have gone down in the last 50 years, meaning that larger people fit into smaller sizes because of resizing (called “vanity sizing”).

I have no problem with the research or even the thesis of the article.  It was mostly factual, providing information.  What did bother me was the comments on the article.  It was a string of people claiming to be very thin and unable to find clothing that fits.  (I find that hard to believe, as I have noticed neither an epidemic of nakedness nor large numbers of skinny people in baggy clothes.)  In fact, the majority of the comments ran along the lines of, “Let’s not make excuses for the fat people sitting around on their lazy asses stuffing themselves with supersized fast food.”

In other words, fat shaming.

I will never understand why it’s so appealing to say hateful things on a public forum.  I’m not even talking about the stupidity here, the conflating of fat and lazy or unhealthy. I’m talking about the name-calling, the character assassination of people we don’t even know.  I don’t get the desire to verbally thrash complete strangers, as though we ourselves live flawless lives.  Nor do I relate to the underlying fears that lead us to disproportionately shame fat people as though being overweight is among the worst things one can do.

I’ve never met anyone who had long-term success becoming a better person as the result of being shamed into “proper” behavior.  I’ve met plenty of people who have become fearful and depressed and have hidden some of the best parts of themselves because they believed that they weren’t worthy of love.  Not only that, I’ve seen perfectly healthy people become ashamed of their bodies because they are curvier, more muscular, large-boned (and I mean that literally), or even because they are pregnant.  Is this what we’ve become as a society?  People who are afraid of natural variation and even natural biological function?

The thing is, I’m not even laying this one on the church.  While I think that in large part the church has a role to play (Christian “diet” programs, anyone?), that doesn’t explain why there are so many people who are not now or never have been Christians who believe the same things.  In this case, it’s not necessarily the direct actions of the church but the passive failure to act that is the problem.

As Christians, we have a responsibility to end the cycle of shame.  We need to stop buying into the lie that thinness is God’s plan for humanity or that there is any such thing as “righteous” health behavior.  I don’t mean that it’s our job just to make people feel good about themselves.  But we need to separate what society says from what God says, especially if we claim to be “Bible-believing.”  (I’ve never seen a commandment in Scripture that says, “Thou shalt be thin.”)

I’m not really a “fat activist.”  I was merely bothered by the rude and judgmental comments (along with the bragging about being too small for normal clothes; if that’s not fat shaming, I’ll eat my hat).  But if you are interested in the subject, here’s a woman who does just that.  Her blog is fantastic and she regularly gets all sorts of interesting feedback.  Check it out (and especially check out her Hate Mail page if you want to read a cross between hysterically funny and rage-inducing).

An Open Letter to No One

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Feelings, Life and tagged with ,

I am sick and tired of open letters.  It’s a meme I wish would die a thousand deaths.

Some time ago, I posted my response to Joe Dallas’ “To My Gay Angry Friend” (you can read those posts here, here, and here).  The other day, I read a post titled, “An Open Letter To The Girl In The Dressing Room.”  Those are only two examples of this “open letter” idea, two among a sea of similar blog posts.

The thing is, I understand why people write these things.  We all have feelings that we need to explore after our encounters with others and the world.  Situations can be triggering for us due to our own past or because of what we’ve seen loved ones experience.  As a person who loves words, both written and spoken, I understand this need.

But, people, this is not the way to deal with our feelings.  There are three serious problems with these “open letter”-style blog posts.

First, the open letter puts our own overlay onto the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of others.  Both the posts I mentioned above, as well as nearly all other similar posts, make assumptions about the people to whom the letters are written.  Joe Dallas assumed that the man with the sign was gay and that he was angry.  Lauren Alexander made assumptions about what specific thoughts the woman in the dressing room was having.  It’s entirely possible that they were right, but they could not possibly know that without speaking directly to the people in question.

What they did do, however, was an inappropriate hijacking of those people’s inner life.  They confused their own prior experiences and feelings for those of another person.  This is wrong.  It takes away someone else’s ownership of his or her feelings and actions.  It takes away that person’s right to express him- or herself as he or she chooses.  It reduces another human being to an object, something that feeds our own personal need to express our feelings.

Second, the open letter fails to take any real action, or to make any real human connection.  Both Joe Dallas and Lauren Alexander comment that they did not engage with the other person of whom they spoke.  Mr. Dallas chalks this up to business; Ms. Alexander to not wanting to be creepy.  The sad thing is, their failure to connect didn’t just prevent them from knowing what real feelings those people were having in that moment.  It also prevented them from doing any real good in the lives of those individuals.

I strongly suspect that one reason some people (and I am not specifically referring to the aforementioned bloggers) don’t engage is exactly for that reason.  They don’t want to deal with whatever they might have to face if they take the risk of interacting.  They would rather use their almost-meetings as blog post fodder, rather than find ways to connect and help.  I actually don’t think it’s a bad thing to feel uncomfortable walking over to strange people in restaurants and stores.  But if we don’t take the risk and meet the other person, then we lose our right to impose our view of their feelings on them.

Third, the open letter almost never reaches its purported audience.  I realize that’s not usually the point.  The point is to write something that will possibly touch people who are struggling with similar issues.  If that’s the reason for the blog post, however, why not write it generically?  Or write about our own feelings and thoughts?  Or respond to a blog post that someone else wrote on a similar subject?  There are many better ways to handle tough subjects than coming at them sideways through the lens of what we think a random stranger might have been feelings.

Again, I believe there is an underlying fear in these open letters.  Sometimes, it can be hard to admit that something we saw stirs up past pain.  We may need a way to get ourselves into a place where we can freely write about our deepest wounds.  But I believe this can be done without transferring our feelings onto others.  Instead of making claims about what someone might have been thinking in a dressing room or outside a restaurant, why not admit that their actions—rather than their feelings—stirred the waters in our souls?

I am sure that reading (and perhaps writing) these open letters can be healing for some people.  But we need to be careful that our own healing doesn’t come at the expense of usurping someone else’s agency over his or her own experiences and feelings.

Lies, damn lies, and lies we tell ourselves

Posted by Amy in Blogs, Self Concept, Sexuality, Women and tagged with ,

By Anthony Easton/flickr: PinkMoose (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkmoose/2611293086/) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Fellow blogger Jennifer Luitwieler (go read her blog, if you’re not already doing so) has asked us to Deny the Lie.  So here’s my way of fighting back against the lies we tell ourselves.

Trigger warning: This post contains mention of body image, disordered eating, fat shaming, slut shaming, purity/virginity culture, rape.  Too many of us find those things triggering or, at minimum, upsetting.  If you choose not to read this, just know my heart loves your heart and I understand your need to protect yourself.  If you do choose to read, go into it knowing that you are loved and you are safe.

I have never liked my body.

From the time I was in third grade, I endured merciless teasing.  The most common insult my peers used was “fat.”  It wasn’t about whether or not I was actually a fat child; it was about finding the thing that would upset me the most.  After enough time, I internalized this lie—I saw my body as unacceptable.  I did everything I could to cover it, to hide under too-large clothes so that no one would see my fat.  If no one, including myself, could see it, it didn’t exist.

The sad thing is, the church didn’t help.  When I was older, I was still being told to cover my body.  This time, however, it was because it was important that boys be blissfully unaware that I possessed hips and breasts.  I learned that boys don’t have an interest in girls for their minds or their spirits.  My post-pubertal body was just as unacceptable as my childhood body.  The only difference was, now there was slut-shame in addition to fat-shame.

Since I already hated my body, I was only too happy to comply with the Purity Rules.

It wasn’t going to be hard for me to remain a virgin, since I was convinced that my body made me unlovable to potential boyfriends.  I was terrified that a boy might ask me out, and then find out that my body was ugly and worthless.  But as long as I kept myself under wraps, no one could see my fat and no one could touch my vagina.  I was safe, on all counts.

I bought into the lies—all of them.  Fat-shaming and slut-shaming are two sides of the same destructive coin.  Both tell girls that they are no more than their bodies.  What the church likes to call “the world” (media, culture, whatever) tells us our bodies aren’t good enough because our thighs are too big, our breasts are too small, and the scale reads too high.  The church tells us our bodies aren’t good enough because our beauty holds the key to leading boys and men into sin.  Either way, we become nothing beyond our bodies.

As an adult, I’ve faced much of the same body-shame.  Every time someone I haven’t seen in a while says, “You look good, like you’ve lost some weight,” I die a little on the inside.  It’s not a compliment.  It means those people thought I needed to lose some weight, that my body was substandard before.  It means those people had little interest in me beyond whether or not I am thin enough for their liking.  And it hurts.

It makes me want to run away, to cover my body and tell them they can’t look at it.

But I refuse to do that.  I refuse to compliment anyone on her weight loss, because my friends mean more to me than what they look like or what the scale says.  I refuse to send dear ones into a crisis of disordered eating because I made them feel ashamed of the good, beautiful bodies they live inside.  I refuse to see the ones I love as merely a body.

I refuse to see myself that way.

I refuse to insist on some unattainable standard of purity, including shaming girls and women into covering up their bodies to keep men from lusting after them.  I refuse to confirm the lie that rape is about sex or lust or a woman’s failure to keep men from desiring her body.  I refuse to teach my daughter that she needs to fear boys or her body or sex or her own sexuality.

I am more than a body.

My daughter is more than a body.

You are more than a body.

We are more than the fat we possess or don’t possess or wish we didn’t possess.  We are more than hips and breasts and vaginas, more than objects of lust (because we’re told we should be or because we’re told we shouldn’t).  We are more than the clothes with which we cover our shame.

We have souls.  We think, we love, we laugh.  We weep.  We cry out in anger at the injustice done to our bodies: the ways in which culture, the church, our families try to own them.  We fight back, demanding to own ourselves, to end the cycles of shame and violence done to us.

I don’t believe I will ever be fully beyond the struggle to accept my body.  Perhaps that’s why I fight so hard for those who have been shamed for who they are.  Deep inside, I will probably never see myself the way God sees me.  I will always be, in some way, that little girl crying in her bed at night because another classmate called her fat and ugly.

But I’m learning.  Every day, I tell myself that those words are lies.  Every day, I remind myself that God doesn’t need me to look just right or wear the right clothes or hide inside myself or pretend that the feminine parts of my body don’t exist.  Every day, I fight back a little harder against the power of those lies.  Every day, I win back a little more of my soul.

What lies do you need to deny in your life?

All Dressed Up

Posted by Amy in Body Image, Sexuality, Women and tagged with , , ,

Since I’ve already (twice now) addressed the problem of how men treat women, it’s only fair that I make a point about women. While I don’t believe it’s reasonable to blame women for male shortcomings, it’s equally unfair to blame men for the things women do.

I don’t get my panties in a bunch because a woman wore a low-cut blouse or showed a lot of leg. I think this is because I have a much more narrow definition of lust than most conservative people. Conservative Christians often define lust much too broadly, allowing it to encompass absolutely everything that even remotely seems “dirty.” That may be why we’re so anxious to absolve men of their “problem” by pointing fingers at women and what they are wearing. Let’s face it, this issue has been around since forever, and what women are wearing isn’t what drives it. If it were, then we should have no problem with cultures that expect women to be covered head-to-toe. I strongly suspect that it wouldn’t matter if some women wore sweat pants and didn’t wash their hair for a week. There are still men who would try to make a case that they’re using “pheromones” or something to attract men because they don’t cover up their natural scent.

That said, I do think modesty is important. But I don’t mean in the sense that girls and women should just “cover up.” (Because I think it’s perfectly acceptable to wear shorts to the gym or a bathing suit to the beach.) I mean in the sense of how she herself treats her body and how she treats men. Immodesty comes more from motivation than from the garment in question. I’ve seen women look immodest in t-shirts while others look appropriate in above-the-knee skirts and low necklines. But somehow, we’ve cultivated the bizarre idea that the percentage of flesh showing is directly proportional to the degree of sluttiness possessed by the woman.

This is the very same stupid logic that leads people to claim that public breastfeeding is improper. The idea that there is a nipple somewhere under that baby’s lips, and that a little flesh might show around the baby’s head, is just plain horrifying to some people. The irony isn’t lost on me that in cultures requiring head coverings, public breastfeeding is relatively common and no one blinks.

We’ve grown into a society that values women for their looks. From an early age, girls are coached on how to look good. Young girls are encouraged to look (and dress) like little adults, and adult women are encouraged to look like prepubescent girls. We’re all supposed to base our self-worth on how pretty our faces are and how thin our bodies are. Is it any wonder that so many women and girls dress themselves in ways supposedly designed to make men drool? We’re taught to believe that our value rests on whether or not we can successfully catch (and keep) a man.

Strangely, culture has become fixated on the most fleeting of female traits, her physical appearance, and has dictated which characteristics are the most attractive. What we are to find beautiful today will change tomorrow. And the other side effect of all this is to fail to give real men credit for being better than that. We tell them they “can’t help it” when confronted with “hot” women. But the fact that real men are marrying real women betrays the lie. Real men love their significant others for a lot more than what can be seen.

Instead of teaching our daughters that they ought to be careful how much cleavage, back, shoulder, or leg they show, we should be helping them love their bodies no matter what they wear. We’re aiming at the wrong thing. It’s not about trying to figure out where the modesty line is and how not to cross it. It’s about having a healthy concept of ourselves without needing external proof. It’s about dressing for ourselves instead of someone else.

We also need to encourage our daughters to treat their male friends with respect. I know a lovely (read: kind, sweet, charming, intelligent) young woman who has a lot of male friends. They all treat her with respect, even though she is pretty and dresses in ways that flatter her figure. Why? Because she knows the line and doesn’t cross it; because she treats them with respect; because she expects them to return that respect; and because she doesn’t place her worth on whether or not she is dating any of them.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. For every degrading beer commercial, there is a woman striving to help us become body-confident and see ourselves in a positive way regardless of our shape. If you’re a woman in the business of helping other women love and respect their bodies, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s raise a generation of young women who don’t buy into the commercialization and exploitation of their bodies.

Taking It Too Far

Posted by Amy in Feelings, Odds 'n' Ends, Relationships and tagged with

Today I got into a fight online with a stranger. The thing is, I have no idea why I took it so personally. Well, come to think of it, maybe I do.

It wasn’t because the other person was mean. She was harsh, yes, but not cruel. It wasn’t because I was right and she was wrong. I’m not sure there was a right or wrong. It wasn’t because she doesn’t like me. I have no idea what her feelings toward me are. And I don’t care if random people like me.

No, what bothered me is that I wasn’t able to come across as my authentic self. I would have needed an entire blog post of my own to explain the feelings and thoughts that the original article evoked. So I resorted to idea nuggets in the comments section. It was a bad idea.

Even worse, I failed to be anything like the Jesus I claim to love. Not because I was rude, nasty, or resorted to childish behavior, but because I didn’t express mercy or grace.

I’m not okay with that. I don’t want to be that sort of person, one who comes off as unconcerned about someone else. When I posted my comments, I wasn’t trying to be unkind. But I somehow wasn’t able to convey my real feelings about the issue being discussed.

So here I sit, reminded that how we interact online is just as important as face to face. Next time, I need to choose my words much more carefully, or say nothing at all.

Owner’s Manual

Posted by Amy in Bible, Doctrine, Life, Self Concept and tagged with , ,

Why is it that when we read the Bible, we seem to look at it as though we’re reading a textbook?  I don’t just mean all the things that sound irrelevant or even completely dull (long lists of people who “begat” other people, anyone?).  I mean that all we ever do is view it as some sort of how-to manual, as if we’re trying to fix the kitchen sink or learn to speak unnaturally formal French or put together a piece of cheap furniture.

There are some really wild stories in the Bible.  What’s in there rivals some of the greatest action films and puts love stories to shame.  Yet we read even those tales in terms of what we can get out of it.

This week, the devotion I follow has been using the text of 1 Kings 18.  If you’re not familiar with that story, I suggest you read it.  Here’s a convenient link.  This has to be one of the best Bible stories, hands down.  Evil king? Check.  Badass prophet of G-d? Check.  Showdown with a bunch of false prophets? Check.  Awesome power of G-d demonstrated? Yup, that too.  I mean, it does not get any better.  Seriously, I can just imagine the field day the special effects techs could have with this one in film version.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand.  After Elijah completely makes fun of the Prophets of Baal, he tells them to call on Baal to ignite their altar.  Their method of summoning their god is to beat themselves and cut themselves in order to draw attention to themselves.  When I read the devotion on that Scripture, I was about six different kinds of horrified by the direction the writer took.

I mean, you’d think that there would be some mention of idolatry, maybe a comparison to the ways we hold up false gods today, such as money or power.  Maybe some parallel about the ways in which we try to draw attention to ourselves in our idolatry.  Heck, I could even have seen something about the ways in which we may be practicing subtle idolatry.  But, sadly, that’s not the way the devotion writer saw this text.

That particular day, the writer decided to take it in a very strange direction.  I think it may be the most bizarre literal use of Scripture I’ve ever seen.  The writer used this Scripture to berate teenagers who cut/self-harm.  Yeah, no kidding.

Instead of a fantastic story of G-d’s power, the false nature of idolatry, and the courage to stand up for what you believe in, this person chose to use Scripture to condemn and wound.  The writer clearly has no experience with actual teenagers (or, at least, teenagers with serious things in their lives).  He essentially left it that teens who cut are just attention-seeking.  That would have been bad enough, but there were several people who posted sickening replies to the devotion.  Among them were the parent who tried to “help” her son by using that Scripture to remind him of the sinful, selfish nature of his self-harm and the healthcare worker who apparently believes mental illness is a “cry for attention.”  It reminded me of a conversation I had with a fellow nursing student about 15 years ago.  She said she didn’t like working with kids who have eating disorders.  She said she wanted to go to them with a candy bar, shove it in their faces, and say, “Eat this!”  Wow, so much heartfelt empathy there.

The above is a classic example of finding Scriptures and making them conform to our beliefs.  It reduces the Bible to nothing more than a rulebook, wherein every story has a neat, snappy moral lesson and every human behavior has a corresponding Bible verse.  There is no love or compassion in showing a troubled, desperate adolescent a Scripture about idolatry and saying, “See this? G-d’s gonna strike you dead for your false way of getting His attention.”  There is no grace in crushing people’s spirits with condescending pseudo-understanding.

The whole thing came across as though the devotion writer didn’t actually read or study the story, didn’t try to understand the historical context, and didn’t even see the truly great things right before his eyes.  He was too wrapped up in his own “Aha!  This sounds like something I read on a Fundamentalist web site once!” moment to notice his superior tone.

We need to be very careful that our reading of Scripture doesn’t lead us away from extending grace, mercy, and compassion for others.

Un-Feelings

Posted by Amy in Feelings, Relating to God, Sin and tagged with ,

Sometimes, it’s easy for us as Christians to forget that we are free. Being free doesn’t mean doing whatever we want, but it also doesn’t mean that we subject ourselves to doctrines which bind us through legalism. All that can ever lead to is feelings of shame. Faith in Christ cannot ever be about being ashamed, because that is not love or grace. A legalistic church environment denies basic, common human needs and feelings. When we live in that kind of space for any length of time, it leads to both suppression and repression.

We may be used to hearing the term “repression” in the context of sexual expression. It is often presented as an accusation by a non-religious person towards a person of faith and can be roughly translated as “prude.” A person may be referred to as “repressed” because he or she believes pornography to be unhealthy sexuality, for example.

Sexuality is only one aspect of repression, however, and the above example is a misapplication of the term. A person whose moral values lead him or her to conclude that a particular action or expression of feelings is wrong is not necessarily repressing anything. The reason for this is that repression refers to unconscious exclusion or avoidance of feelings or desires. A person with the value that murder is wrong is not repressing anger, merely making a distinction between appropriate and inappropriate ways of handling anger.

This concept is markedly different from suppression, which is a conscious avoidance of feelings and desires one deems negative. Parents often suppress their own needs in favor of meeting the needs of their children. This is entirely normal when a child is an infant; it is not normal when a child is an adolescent.

At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with legalistic church doctrine. Legalism as a measure of church doctrine is a way for church leadership to control the flock. It has little to do with actual righteous living or humbly following and serving a gracious and merciful God. Legalism, when practiced as church mission, is self-serving. Its aim is to create a group of like-minded and like-behaving people in order to project a certain image. It concerns itself not with love and life but with doctrinal purity.

In the end, this leads many people within those rigid confines to both suppress and repress their natural human feelings and desires. People begin to believe consciously that their feelings are sinful, and attempt to control themselves by denying their needs for self-expression. They may also begin to subconsciously avoid certain feelings because it is too painful or embarrassing to acknowledge their existence.

Sadly, this kind of thing happens even when a church has healthy boundaries and the leadership are attempting to guide the people without legalism. This brings me to the point I want to make.  One Sunday, for example, my son came home from his Sunday school class in which children’s very real feelings were denied. His sister expressed a “what if” type of concern, and I reassured her that we would take care of her. He piped up with, “You shouldn’t worry, worry is a sin.” I would very much like to know who used those words on my eight-year-old in such a way that he repeated them back to deny his sister the right to express her fears.

Children should not be told that their fears are “sin.” The world is a big and sometimes scary place to a young child. When a child has a fear, the correct course of action is not to scold a child for “worrying.” The correct response is to reassure the child that he or she is loved by God and the people in the church and that we are here for them. There are other ways, of course, of helping children feel safe, but that’s a basic beginning.

Not only that, the sentiment isn’t even Biblically true. It may be inferred if one wants to take certain Scriptures in a particular way. But the statement, “Worry is a sin” cannot be found within the pages of the Bible. We do find the idea that worrying alone, without faith, is a useless pursuit. But even that is a difficult concept to bring to children. One way it can be handled with older children is to ask if their worry has made the situation go away, or if they have had to trust an adult or pray about it. But for very young children, no more is needed than care and reassurance.

How often do churches make the same mistake with adults?  Rather than helping people explore healthy self-expression, we simply tell them their feelings are “wrong” or “sinful” or that God doesn’t “want” us to have those feelings.  The church becomes the thought police.  From that stems the shame, leading to people denying, in one way or another, that they have those internal thoughts.  People are afraid to be honest with themselves and others, and perhaps even with God.

Yet the truth is that the more open we are with ourselves, other people, and God, the deeper our relationships become.  God doesn’t want us to clean ourselves up, it’s His job.  He wants us to bring every part of ourselves to Him, keeping nothing back.  Not because He wants to judge us, but because He loves us and wants to crack us open that we can replace (not reject) those hurting, insecure, and sinful parts of ourselves with His grace and His desires.

I admit I struggle with this.  I still have a lot of trouble being completely open about some of the things in my life.  But I’m trusting God to fill those parts of my life with His Life, daily making me whole.

Failure Is an Option

Posted by Amy in Self Concept, Writing and tagged with ,

Today’s confession: I have a deep fear of failure.  And by “deep” I mean “extreme.”  To the point of avoiding certain tasks because I believe I won’t be able to do them.  Not that I won’t be able to do them right (it’s not perfectionism), but that I won’t be able to do them at all.

This was confirmed in a somewhat lame way.  A few weeks ago, I went in for my annual eye exam.  I really like my new provider.  He’s the kind of doctor all health care practitioners should strive to be.  When he was testing to see if my current prescription is adequate, he did that thing where the eye doctor shuffles between two similar lenses and asks, “Is it better or worse?”  As I couldn’t decide, he had me read the letters on the chart.  I couldn’t quite see the smallest line with either lens.  He kept asking me to just read what I saw.  I refused, saying that I couldn’t see the letters.  His answer was, “You don’t like to make mistakes, do you?”

Now, you may think that he was just being a jerk.  Trust me, if you’d been there, you would have seen that nothing could be further from the truth.  And the reality is that he was right.  I didn’t want to read the letters because I knew that I wouldn’t get any of them right.  Fortunately, it didn’t matter.  Nothing was at stake.  The doctor determined that I didn’t really need to read at 20/15 anyway, and that I didn’t need new glasses.

But what about when it does matter?  So often, I worry that I will make some huge, very public mistake.  When that happens, there will be people saying, “I told you so.”  Even though I don’t have any way of knowing that, I still believe it and live by it.  It keeps me from trying new things in front of people, but it also keeps me from failing in private, too.

I’ve been writing for a long time.  It took me several tries before I decided to actually keep a blog on a regular basis.  Even so, I only publish about twice a week.  Sometimes, I write, revise, edit, scrap and rewrite several times before I actually commit to sending it out to the world.  Right now, I have a post in “draft” status because I am hesitant to put voice to something deep that’s been on my heart.  I simply don’t want to fail.

The other day, a writer I follow on Twitter posted a great piece of advice.  I can’t recall the exact quote, but it had to do with not being afraid to fail.  We only see in print what has been deemed successful.  How much more was written before that?

Beyond being good advice for writers (not being afraid to write garbage), it’s good advice for life.  When we live in fear that we may fail, we aren’t living at all.  That isn’t how I want to exist.  If I can’t fail in front of the mirror, how can I expect to pick myself back up when I fail in public?

I’m going to go practice writing crap.

Medical Judgmentalism

Posted by Amy in Body Image, Doctrine, Healing, Science

When we set ourselves in the place of God, judging the condition of other people’s hearts, we set ourselves up for God to knock us down.

There has always been a somewhat fringe health and wellness movement in the Church.  Sometimes, that can be very good.  There are excellent resources for people who want to lead healthier lives to do so within a Christian context.  I do not want to blame the leaders of those excellent ministries for the shortcomings of the purveyors of snake oil that can be found in pockets of Christianity.  As for the rest, their particular brand of “health and wealth” gospel takes many shapes, frequently masquerading as legitimate healing ministries.

One common thread that can be overlooked is the degree to which these so-called healing ministries attempt to blame the very people they claim to serve.  Some examples, from (unfortunately) real ministries: Your weight problem stems from lack of organization in your home; your disease process has been caused by your marriage failing to live up to God’s standards for husbands and wives; your illness is the direct result of sin in your life; specific sins lead to specific health problems.

I suppose that there might be some truth in the idea that holding sin in your heart can lead to breakdown of bodily function.  Certainly there is correlation (not causation) between a healthy spiritual life and positive outcomes following a hospital stay.  But drawing parallels between particular sins and various diseases seems dubious at best, downright evil at worst.

There are three things wrong with this.  I will cite the Biblical refutation for blaming sin for illness first.  In  John 9:1-3, Jesus speaks with his disciples regarding a blind man they have found:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (NIV)

In Jesus’ day, at least some people would have believed this very thing—that a person’s health was bound up in either his own or his ancestral sin.  Jesus lays this one to rest by assuring them that this was not so.  He also effectively demonstrates that his miracles have as much to do with instruction for us as with healing an individual.  In ministries that blame the victim, both of those truths are lacking.

The second problem is judgmentalism.  This morning, our church had a service along with four other local congregations.  The pastors of all five (total) churches delivered a great message about judgment and freedom.  Our pastor gave the definition of judgmentalism as assuming you know someone else’s motives.  When someone tries to make claims of personal sin as the cause of illness, that is bald judgmentalism.  If one believes we are all sinners, then how does one person’s “hidden” or “unforgiven” sin cause illness, while another’s does not?  Or while another’s overt sin does not?  We simply do not know what is in another person’s heart.  We cannot know that fear or anger or lack of submission are causing disease, because we cannot know that those are the sins someone is enslaved to.

Third, the claim that specific sins equate specific diseases can be easily refuted by reality.  A few small “studies” or annecdotal evidence are not enough to prove such a claim.  This becomes even more pronounced when we add in things like healing.  If the root cause of (I’m making this up) peanut allergy is really the sin of resentment, then why are people not cured when they repent?  Are they not praying hard enough for forgiveness?  Are they not really sorry?  We are promised forgiveness whenever we confess.  So if that is what is needed, then why does it appear to work for some people and not others?  And why are there lots and lots of people who are resentful, but not suffering from any kind of allergy at all?  It becomes clear that this is no more than an attempt to control others through pseudoscience.

We need to be wary of any ministry that claims we must clean ourselves up before approaching our Heavenly Father, even if that takes the form of purging our sins before asking for healing.  We also need to be wary of anything that pretends that the Bible is a medial or a science text.  It isn’t, and it was never meant to be taken that way.  What a gross misuse of our holy Scripture.

 

Food Fight

Posted by Amy in Body Image and tagged with ,

I have posted before about body image and the expectations placed on some Christians regarding body type and healthy lifestyle.  I want to explain why this is such a touchy subject for me.

I grew up in a household in which both of my parents suffered from disordered eating.  My mother had spent her entire life binging and dieting in order to achieve a “perfect” body.  Ultimately, she destroyed her body that way and died of the resulting complications.  My father eats nearly nothing and equates extreme thinness with perfect health.  He has had periods of time in which he has consumed nothing but very strange and specific foods, such as watered-down tomato juice laced with hot pepper sauce.  (No, I am not making this up.)  He chronically fails to consume enough calories and has virtually no muscle mass left.  Eventually, despite his claims of peak health, he too will succumb to the ravages of his illness.

In this country, we have stopped viewing food as sustenance and have replaced that with treating food as a weapon.  We use it to control, reward, coerce, and judge each other and ourselves.  While some people eat themselves sick, others deprive themselves of vital nutrients.  We believe we can tell a person’s faith, morality, or even their worth as a person by what they do or do not eat.  We obsess endlessly about what is in and on our food.  We claim “allergies” as a thinly veiled form of food snobbery.  We deem foods to be “good” or “bad,” based not on actual nutritional value but on where the food came from.  We eat in secret to avoid the stab of someone else’s self-righteous sword.  And when others don’t conform to our version of food purity, we shake our heads sadly and hope they eventually realize the gravity of their sin.

It needs to stop.  This fixation is leading to a grotesque combination of rising obesity and rising eating disorders.  My parents together represented both of these extremes.  Is that what we want?  And like me, the child of parents at both ends of the spectrum, those of us in the middle won’t know where to turn for the truth.  We know we don’t want to put our health at risk with obesity, but which version of what is healthy do we trust?  And how do we achieve “perfect” diet without putting ourselves at risk of developing another kind of disordered eating?  We will no longer have faith that our food will sustain us; instead we will live in fear of our food.

As for me, I am trying to find healing from my own fears about food.  I am trying to listen to my body, trust myself, and make the best choices I know how.  I am raising my children to allow themselves to enjoy their food rather than living in terror that they might ingest the “wrong” thing or that their food will “poison” them.  My hope is that they will have a more balanced experience than I did.  I am also teaching them to make their choices and let others make their own.  It isn’t our job to judge or control what others do.

The food fights have to stop.