Guest Post: God in Reeboks

Through the Account and Countenance Series, I'll be featuring (via guest posts) the stories of various people and the images of God their churches left with them. Today's post comes from Sarah Moon. Sarah is a Women's and Gender Studies student and she blogs at Sarah Over The Moon. ___________

[Trigger warning: domestic violence, verbal abuse]

I’ve heard Christians say before that Jesus was just “God with sandals.” If this is true, then Jesus, for me in 2006, was an 18 year old, 6’4” football player who could bench press about 250. The Jesus of the Bible didn’t exactly line up with the God I had been raised to worship in my fundamentalist churches. Don (not his real name), on the other hand, did.

Don loved me, and he loved me like God did.

In God’s eyes, I was a worthless sinner. Any good I might do was nothing more than filthy rags to God. God’s spokesmen (Baptist church pastors, of course) were constantly reminding me of this. If I were truly humble, I’d realize the wickedness of my own heart and stop trusting myself, my emotions, my thoughts. I’d stop trying to be independent and I’d put my future in God’s loving hands.

But that God was so great, He loved me despite my worthlessness. As long as I stayed close to Him, I could have value—not in who I was, but in who He was.

Don thought the same of me. Much like God, Don saw all my sin as alike, so my tiny sins like taking a shower when Don asked me not to, or accidently drawing the attention of other men to myself were enough to make him want to spew me out of his mouth. He told me so, constantly. He told me what a whore I was, how stupid I was, how worthless, how helpless…

But Don was great. He loved me anyway. He reminded me of how grateful I should be for that—how I should never question his goodness because I deserved far worse. But if I stayed with him, I could have value.

Both had ultimate control over my life. If God (through his spokesmen) told me to do or not to do something, I didn’t get to ask why. My money, my property, my time and even my life belonged to Him. The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

Don too. He took the little bit of money that I made teaching piano lessons because I was his property and therefore it was his money too. He threw my makeup bag out of his car window when I told him I didn’t want to stop wearing the eyeliner that he thought made me look “too sexy.” He kept me on the phone for hours, even when I begged him to let me go so I could do my homework. I was his property and anything I had was his, too.

The wrath of one could send horrible diseases, car wrecks, natural disasters, and school shootings. The wrath of the other just a storm of angry words and hand-shaped bruises in places where clothes would always cover them.

One told me “Love me, or I’ll send you to be tortured for all of eternity.” The other told me “Love me, or I’ll blackmail you, yell at you, hurt you, kill you.”

This was my God and Don was just God in Reeboks.

Don was abusive. It took me several months to break up with him and several more years to fully admit the extent of the abuse.

Why was it so hard for me to admit that such an obvious case of domestic terrorism was abuse and not love?

Maybe it’s because admitting that Don was abusive and unloving meant admitting that the God I worshipped was abusive too.

I look around me, years later, and I see a Church that is terrified to look its theology in the face. I see a Church that is somehow okay with having two drastically different definitions of love—one for humans and one for God. I see a Church that holds God to a different standard than they hold human beings.

I see a Church that thinks it can do this and still speak out against abuse and to me, it will never make sense. I can no longer listen to a pastor call abusers evil and then turn around and sing a hymn to the wrathful, jealous God who can save even a helpless, hopeless, worthless wretch like me.

These dueling definitions of love have to end. God doesn’t get God’s own definition. God doesn’t get to do whatever God wants and call it love.

Reading All About Love by bell hooks has helped me expose the lie of a God (or a human) that can be both loving and abusive. In this book, hooks states that “love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of [love].” Hooks goes on to say that many of us are afraid to embrace a definition of love that does not allow abusive behavior, because confronting lovelessness is too painful.

Is that why the Church is afraid to examine the ways that our theologies let God get away with abuse? Have we so entwined love and abuse that we cannot imagine the implications of separating them? Are we afraid that holding God to the same standard of love that we would hold a human partner to will kill our faith?

Coming to a place where I admitted that the God I worshiped wasn’t a loving God was painful. Maybe even more painful than coming to a place where I admitted to myself that Don never loved me, either.

But in admitting the absence of love I’ve learned (and am still learning) to recognize true love wherever it exists.

If the Church wants to know a God who is love, the Church cannot continue to worship a God who abuses. An image of God that looks just like the Dons of the world can never teach us to love, can never be love.

Let us echo the words of bell hooks over, and over, and over as we seek the God of love.

“Love and abuse cannot coexist.”

Friends With Kids, Love Stories, and Rape Culture

(spoiler alert for Friends with Kids and trigger warning for rape). One of the few things I like about international flights (besides, you know, getting to my destination) is the abundance of entertainment on board. I usually have a chance to see a movie I’d wanted to see but hadn’t been able to catch in theaters and isn’t on DVD yet. Sure, it’s not the ideal environment, but usually the movies are good enough to pass the time (I don’t really sleep on planes) and it works for me.

This time around, I got to watch several flicks I hadn’t been willing to pay to see – The Amazing Spider-man, Men in Black 3, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World – and was, for the most part, pretty entertained. But one that I chose simply based on the cast ended up leaving such a sour taste in my mouth the rest of the flight. That movie? Friends With Kids.

Now, I love Adam Scott. And what I’ve seen of Jennifer Westfeldt, I like. And Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm and Chris O’Dowd? Count me in. But, with the last line of the movie, you’re going to have to count me out.

Friends with Kids follows Jason (Scott) and Jewel (Westfeldt) over a 3-4 year period in their lives. They have been best friends since college, and share everything – they know each other as well as two people can know each other. As their married friends begin having children, they watch the stress having kids bring to a relationship and decide (illogically so) that the answer is to have children without being married (because that makes sense). So they have a kid. They figure, they’re in their late 30s, why not have a readymade family for when they finally meet The Guy or The Girl that they’re supposed to be with forever?

Naturally, things get complicated. Now, I called the end result of the movie from the moment they said “let’s have a kid,” because it’s a romantic dramedy that is fairly predictable and relies on a lot of Rom-Com tropes (though, it thinks it clearly thinks it’s a clever subversion of said tropes, but more on that later). Mainly – sarcastic spoiler alert! – you know that Jason and Jewel are going to end up together. It’s now just a question of how, because of course men and women can’t just be friends.

Jewel falls first. And hard. She realizes how sexy it is that Jason is a good dad and all her pantsfeelings and heartsfeelings get all mixed up. Groan. And meanwhile, Jason is completely oblivious and happily going on about how the girl he’s currently with is probably The Girl because she’s really hot, has big boobs, and is a FLEXIBLE DANCER. (In short, Jason is an asshole to women. This is important information.)

But best friends in an opposite sex relationship? IT CAN’T BE. So Jewel spends most of the movie pining after Jason, who sees her as nothing more than a friend he impregnated once upon a time. All of this culminates in an uncomfortable, awkward birthday celebration where she surprises him by having a dinner for just the two of them. She explains that she’s in love with him and can’t deny it anymore, and he responds by explaining that he doesn’t see her in that way.

Fast forward to almost exactly a year later, when Jason breaks up with the one he thought was The Girl because he got bored with her (quelle surprise!) and realizes, “OH MY GOD IT’S BEEN JEWEL ALL ALONG! SHE HAD ME AT HELLO!” and other clichés.

Here’s where an awkward yet interesting movie begins to get uncomfortable. He decides that, now that he feels the way she did a full year ago, he can just tell her and it’ll all be sex and rainbows and babies.

Not so. You see, they haven’t really spoken in a year, except awkward exchanges when dropping off and picking up the kid. He hasn’t even seen all of her new home in Brooklyn (he still lives in Manhattan – three train rides or a $70 taxi ride away!). But nonetheless, on the night he decides he loves her, the kid insists on both Daddy and Mommy putting him to bed, so they do. Cue Jason saying something about wanting to stay at the house – IN FRONT OF THE KID – and Jewel’s shock and dismay.

Everything through this interaction goes in a realistic and pretty damn great manner – she yells at him for giving the kid false hope, for not thinking of her and having a conversation before saying such a thing, for thinking he can just barge in and proclaim his love. She even refuses to let him kiss her and kicks him out of her house. Yay! A woman asserting her right to make her own choices about her love life and her right to her own physical space! You never see that in supposedly romantic movies!

Had the movie ended there, it would have been good. Bittersweet, but good. A nice lesson about how it takes two people to decide to be in love and when one person sets boundaries, you cannot make them see your side. That sort of moral bites into and subverts all romantic comedy tropes that say a guy’s only obstacle to love is the free will of the woman he’s trying to date, and if he can just make her see how much he loves her, then it’ll all be peachy-keen! (Seriously, guy-persists-until-girl-gives-in is a well-defined trope).

Yet my hopes were raised and dashed almost instantly. As Jason is driving away, he realizes that he absolutely cannot let Jewel go. This is The Girl to End All Girls and they already have a kid and even though she said no there must be still something there that likes him enough to try if he can just convince her!

So he drives back to her house in a Big Romantic Gesture, tells her that he’s changed! He’s not that asshole he used to be (though, by all indications, he totally is – keep in mind, he just dumped a girl for being “too boring.”). And eventually, he pushes (literally, pushes) her into the bedroom, onto the bed, and says, “Let me fuck the shit out of you.”

I literally shuddered in my seat on the plane.

This is his big, grand gesture: begging her for sex she clearly does not want to have, in order that she may come (pun intended) to see his side. But, at this point, he’s ignored every single no she’s given tonight. She asked him to leave when the kid came home; he didn’t. She asked him to stop talking; he didn’t. She emphatically told him not to kiss her; he tried anyway. She wanted him to go away; he came back.

What reason do we, as an audience, have to believe that she felt like she could tell him no? He was “asking permission,” sure, but how enthusiastic is this consent?

If this were a real life situation, and I was that woman, I would be afraid of saying no. Even if he was my best friend. Even if I’d known him for years and years. With the behavior he’d shown that night and the way he’d treated his romantic interests/sexual conquests throughout the story, what reason do we have to believe that he’d accept a no here, and just leave?

Rather than subverting the trope, Friends With Kids buys right into it, in a way that is more starkly rape-y than any movie before it. “Let me fuck the shit out of you” isn’t exactly the most romantic way to pledge love, but it speaks to a societal norm of the idea that sex is the end-all-be-all of All the Feels and if a guy can just get the girl he likes to have sex with him, then she’ll feel the same way too! It makes the obstacle, the central conflict in a love story, that of the woman herself. The guy’s only obstacle to getting the girl he wants is the girl herself and the way he can convince her that what she really wants is him is to, well, have sex with her.

This story of "guy persists until girl gives in" is always kind of rapey, but comes across even more clearly in this movie, with the very last line being “let me fuck the shit out of you.” We’re led to believe that she says yes because she finally kisses him back, but we get no more of the story. This is our happily ever after: “let me fuck the shit out of you.”

If this is the happily ever after that Hollywood has to offer, then I’ll be quite happy being single, thank you very much.

Real Dating Advice

So, I spend a lot of time railing against the terrible dating advice that Christian ministries often give. This is because it's often heteronormative, based off archaic gender roles, and often, just. plain. bad. And a friend has been urging me to put together what I think some good dating advice would be, so I did. This is, naturally, not comprehensive, but it's aimed at Christians trying to recover from all the bad advice that encourages women to be passive and men to be leaders and never the twain shall switch. I am one of those women, and I am currently dating. I'm by no means an expert, but I think I read enough dating advice blogs and bad dating advice (and gone on enough dates) to offer some modicum of useable ideas. So here goes!

1. To steal a phrase from Captain Awkward: Use Your Words. A lot of bad dating advice encourages women to be "mysterious" and allows men to skate on the idea that they don't have feelings. This isn't true - everyone has feelings and ideas and things to contribute to a relationship. Things will be a lot easier for both people in a relationship if communication and using your words is a principle. This applies throughout all processes of dating: from the beginning of the relationship, to the decision to be exclusive, to the proposal, to the marriage (which may or may not be your end goal). Using one's words can not only help your partner understand where you're coming from, but can encourage open and honest communication when things get tough and complicated, as they inevitably do.

By "Use Your Words," I mean that you put into words how you feel. Don't expect the other person to "just understand," and if something is wrong, voice it. This also goes for asking people out (I've almost always been the one to do the asking, so let's just nip the "man does the asking" thing in the bud right now, shall we?). If you like someone and want to see them in a dating environment, ask them out. It's hard and scary, yes, but after you practice for a while, rejection can, oddly, get a little easier to handle.

2. A first date is not an invitation to marriage. This is an idea that's really tripped me up in the past, partly because in the church, we tend to treat people who are dating as immediately serious and immediately headed for marriage. This type of thinking can put a lot of pressure on a relationship and can destroy it before it starts (this, if I can admit openly and honestly, was the problem with my first ever relationship). We in the Christian community have a tendency to put a lot of importance because "OMG WHAT IF THIS IS THE ONE GOD HAS PLANNED FOR ME?" and let me tell you: thinking like that will more effectively scare off a potential person than almost anything else (besides, I guess, talking about how much you love stabbing things on a first date).

Take off the pressure. Don't go into a date thinking "this could be the one God has for me!" and instead approach it as "you are a cool person. I think I may like you. Let's hang out." Making dating fun, rather than a pressure filled race to the altar.

3. If your potential partner judges you based on your sexual history or lack thereof, they are not worth dating. I've spoken to a lot of straight women who tell me they can no longer date in the Christian realm because there's a lot of pressure to be virginal and pure and they're not, so a lot of guys reject them out of hand. But here's the thing: if someone holds a decision you made before you met them against you, they're not seeing you as a person, but rather as a set of histories. I know this is controversial, but your sexual history does not mean you are a damaged or sullied person. If your partner rejects you because of your past, then they don't respect you enough to try and understand you. They are looking for a set of ideals, not a human being.

And here's the twist to that: this same advice goes for virgins! If someone you're dating shames you for being a virgin, then they are letting their expectations of you rule over who you actually are. For example, I went on a date with a dude back in the spring and somehow sex came up in the conversation. I ended up explaining about my virginity. His reaction was "But, dude! No, I don't believe that! Someone as awesome as you? Noooo, sex is awesome! You should totally get on that!" Instead of my lack of history being respected and understood, he instead shamed me for not being more experienced.

If a person does that to you, no matter your history, that's a red flag.

4. You don't owe anyone anything in a relationship, especially not access to your body. This is the point that's probably going to cause the most controversy, as a lot of Christians have the belief that "my body belongs to my husband and I to him." And I'm telling you here: your body is yours. Your partner does not own you, and you do not own them. Consent is mandatory, and especially important to remember in a dating relationship. You do not owe them sex if they bought you dinner; they do not have a right to touch you if you do not want to be touched. It is a basic level of respect that all dating relationships should maintain, and if your date does not respect those lines, then they do not respect you.

I think I've told this story before, but my first kiss happened when the boy I was dating turned to me and said, "Okay, this is awkward, but can I kiss you?" Readers, I was over the moon. We get this image that literally grabbing a person and sweeping them up into a big fat kiss is romantic, but, honey, it's so much sexier to just ask, because respect and consent are sexy.

5. Be yourself and find ways to date that work with that. If you're an introvert, this may mean online dating (which is a little bit of a minefield sometimes, but it can also be fun and low-risk). If you're an extrovert, maybe meeting people out in public or whatever works (but keep in mind your environment and their comfort level with you). Basically, what this boils down to is "don't lie about yourself to get a date." For some reason, in the Christian world, women especially get a lot of advice to be passive and mysterious in order to give the guy a chase. I'm here to say, that's bullshit. Not all guys want a chase, not all women want to be pursued (and hell, not all relationships are guy-girl!). If you're more comfortable doing the asking, do it (that's mainly directed at the heterosexual women in the group). God's not going to smite you dead because you gave your number to someone at a coffee shop. Remember that you're dating to get to know a person, not a set of gender roles, so don't let worries about who does what interfere.

6. Talk about the big things. This may seem to contradict my point two, but it's not - talking about the big things doesn't mean you start planning your wedding at date one, but dating is supposed to be an exercise for figuring out whether or not someone fits into your life for the long term. It's not good to date someone for a long time and then discover that you're not compatible in a very important area, like wanting or not wanting kids, or having a certain sexual kink, or whatever. Talk about kids. Talk about sex. Talk about travel.

This, of course, doesn't mean you have a list of interview questions that you go through on the first date and hope to tick off all the right boxes, but once a dating couple starts heading toward a more serious relationship, discussing those big things is very, very vital to the health of the relationship.

And I'm going to add here that you need to talk about sex, even if you're waiting until marriage. What are your expectations? What forms of protection would you like to use? How do you orgasm (many cis-women don't orgasm from traditional penetrative sex)? What counts as "sex" for you? How do you feel about giving or receiving oral? Have you been tested for STDs and are you clean? After all, you plan on having sex with this person, right? It's probably important to know what their views are about bedroom activities before you actually get to the bedroom. (And if they at all resemble Doug Wilson's, run far, far away).

7. Don't be afraid to seek outside advice. This is actually something I need to do more, though I'm getting better at it. Talk to not only your married friends but your friends who are dating. While the relationship can only really be decided by the two of you, having outside input is never bad. Christian dating advice would phrase this as accountability, but that usually means a chaperone on a bowling date or whatever. Instead, what I mean by it is to have people outside the two of you. You should never be at a point where you have no one else to talk to about problems in your relationship - you should always have outside friends and family who know you and to whom you can go vent. It's healthy to have someone other than your partner to share things with, especially as an outside perspective can help solve an issue both of you were too close to see an answer to.

So there you have it. Feel free to add your own advice in the comments! Many thanks to somaticstrength, Ally Clendineng, and Sarah Moon for helping me with this list!

In Boxes: Why Christian Dating Advice Sucks

In the course of my research, I’m spending a lot of time reading Christian Dating Advice books and blogs and posts by churches. I’m positively inundated with messages about how dating relationships are supposed to look and do and be like. There was a time when I would have gobbled up this advice, especially the kind that told me all I had to do was wait and he would come, Field of Dreams-like. It was practically promised to me that if I concentrated on God, if I became a good godly woman, then Christian men would positively flock to me! It had to work!

After all, if you’re a woman, and you’re actively looking and seeking out a mate – no matter what age you are – then you’re not focusing on God and letting him in his sovereignty bring a guy into your life! I mean, Mark Driscoll’s online church ministry, The Resurgence, says as much:

Submission is not only for wives. God asks for a submitted heart now, one that trusts in his provision and plan for your life, including dating. Ultimately, dating, and all of life, is about submission—waiting and trusting God and saying as Jesus does, “Not my will but yours be done.”

This does not, however, leave you helpless, hopeless, and hamstrung in the relationship department. A godly woman can express friendly interest in a brother in Christ.

• It is OK to mingle—but don’t manipulate.
• Peruse—but don’t pursue. Let him initiate.
• Take notice of the godly men serving Jesus around you—but never stalk. It’s creepy.
• Cross paths with a man who interests you—but don’t tackle him.

You see, as a woman, I’m only allowed little subtleties, passive interaction. If I attempt to take the lead, then I’m somehow sinning and not submitting. A woman who takes the lead is a signal to Godly Christian Men ™ that she’ll have trouble submitting to you in marriage (beware the whores!).

The Resurgence’s tips for dating for guys say as much – take the lead, be intentional, etc. The woman in the advice is merely a placeholder, someone who can be rotated out. Notice that in the advice for what to say in a relationship, asking what the woman thinks is never a part of it. From the first point, it advises a forceful approach: “I’d like to take you out a date.” Not, “Would you like to go out with me sometime?” or even “Would you like to have coffee with me?”

From the first interaction, the woman does appear to have a say. Sure, she could say no to “I’d like to take you out on a date,” but the language advised there does not help men develop an attitude in which the woman and her will are considered. It is presumed that, if you say things intentionally, then she won’t say no. And hey, since she’s a passive woman just waiting for you to ask her out, you, as the man, have every expectation that she would say yes, because you’re the leader.

Some of this advice can be useful – being honest and open about your intentions is important for BOTH sides of a dating relationship. But the way this advice tells men to approach relationships elides the will or even humanness of the woman they’re supposed to be dating.

That, ultimately, is at the center of my problem with most Christian dating advice: not only does it quite frequently encourage passivity on the part of the woman, but it quite often – in a good-faith attempt to get men to be more confident – dehumanizes the role the woman plays in a relationship.

I am not a passive woman upon whom a man can expect to say things and have me follow along. I am an active partner, with a life, a genuine humanity, and life goals and dreams that aren’t going to be dropped because some man says jump. But that’s what Christian dating advice frequently commands – be prepared for him to lead, let him take the lead, your life is the one that’s going to change, etc. etc.

Sorry, dating advisers: I’m not a “follower” just because I’m a heterosexual woman. When you forget the unique nuance that characterizes every single relationship – the way different personalities come together and the ways different people interact – your advice rings hollow and dehumanizes both men and women.

Some men don’t lead, and some women don’t follow. The boxes you put men and women and their God into are more harmful than whatever worldly influence you can imagine.

Christian Dating Advice Bingo

I’ve been single a long time. With the exception of one three month relationship, I’ve spent my entire adult life (from 18 on) single. This is partly by choice (dating while in graduate school? Are you insane?) and partly by circumstance (living in a rural town in Japan will do that to you). Because I’d been raised in a heavily Christian environment and went to private Christian schools for both undergrad and grad, I had no shortage of dating advice from well-intentioned (often married) people. Almost none of it was actually helpful. Some of it was outright damaging. And, being a female who reads a lot of Christian blogs, it can sometimes spring up where you least expect it – this article, from the CT Women’s blog, for example, suddenly turns into random dating advice, which seems to me, beside the [poorly thought out] point the author was getting at.

For some women (and men), this advice may be helpful – I don’t want to discount that. But, for me and the vast majority of my friends, this advice was totally useless, and, if received at the wrong time, quite hurtful.

And some of it is just plain nonsensical (like advice about dating Jesus – does that mean I break up with Jesus when I get married, or am I cheating on my husband with Jesus? I’m so confused!).

So, I’ve bingo-ified it for your reading pleasure. I suggest printing off a copy and keeping it by your computer for when you read blogs aimed at Christian women, or when you have that inevitable conversation with your parents about why you're 26 and still single. It may just help keep you sane!

Update: At the suggestion of my friend Aubrey, I have added an enthusiastic title!