Tag: Christianity

Thoughts on Feminism

When I was twenty an older woman I knew said, about me, that I would make a good wife for somebody. She didn’t say it to my face, but it was gleefully retold to me by a mutual acquaintance. It was not meant as a compliment. The implication was that I was weak, submissive, and had no leadership qualities. The woman who said it was a successful businesswoman and ran a matriarchal type household. She was definitely the one in charge of everything. At that time, I did want to get married, and I think I shrugged off the insult part of the comment without much trouble. I knew that I had different goals. And the woman who said it was not someone I wished to emulate. But the core of what she was trying to say was I was not a feminist and thus inferior. 

I want to talk about feminism. This is the definition I’m going to use, found on humanrightscareers.com

At its core, feminism is the belief that women deserve equal social, economic, and political rights and freedoms.

To give you a little background, my Grandmother Picazo went to college as a math major and had a lifetime career in Christian radio missions, my Grandmother Rigby was a nurse and a career missionary her entire life. My mother was a missionary, and then went back to school and became a Physician Assistant and worked in the medical field until her retirement. My mother-in-law has her doctorate, is an ordained minister and was a career missionary. 

I come from a long line of strong, educated, women. When I was growing up there was always an assumption that I would go to college and have some type of career. I honestly didn’t think about kids too much when I was young. Just assumed I’d probably have two, like my parents did, but it was not something I gave much thought to. I went to a christian university right after high school and studied music. And then I had a breakdown, struggled with panic attacks and anxiety, and decided, with the blessing of my parents, to take a break from school for a while. I went overseas, spent four months in Haiti and then six months in Chile. All the time, wondering what I was going to do with my life. 

During college, I made a vow to God that I was going to follow him wherever he led me. I asked him to be the one to choose my husband for me and I approached life with open hands, trusting that God would take me where he wanted me. 

I ended up getting married at twenty and then shortly after that my husband and I felt that God was asking us to trust him with our family size so we went off birthcontrol. 

Twenty-five years later, ten kids later, I am sitting here, thinking about feminism. 

I homeschooled my kids for somewhere between twelve and fifteen years, depending on how you count it. The homeschooling community is a very diverse place and I ran into all kinds of teachings and belief systems that had me scratching my head. One of the belief systems that I ran into was that feminism was bad. Women should be under the protection of their father or their husbands at all times and should be content living out their role in the home, leaving all decision making to the men in their lives. 

I disagree. And when I hear people bashing feminism, I want to remind them that without feminism, women would not be voting in the upcoming election. We wouldn’t be able to have our own bank accounts. We wouldn’t be able to own property. We would not have freedom to pursue higher education and fulfilling careers. We would be essentially enslaved to the men in our lives. I don’t think this is a just, safe way to live. We live in a sinful world, and while the idea of being raised by a gentle godly man as your father, and then marrying a perfect man who always takes care of you exactly the way you need, sounds good in theory, in reality there are girls being raised by abusive fathers and women trapped in marriages to abusive men. Without feminism, these women would have very little recourse to escape these situations. And that’s not even addressing the women who do not want to be married in the first place. 

I believe in freedom. I am a stay-at-home mom. I have been for twenty-four years. My husband and I have a very traditional marriage. We hold to the belief that he is the head of the house. I have ten children. We felt that God asked us to trust us with our family size and when we felt that we had reached that size, we took measures to not have any more children. I feel that I have been especially blessed to have the privilege to stay home and raise my children. But, here’s the thing. I chose to have this lifestyle. I believed that it was something God wanted and so I chose to obey that. It was not forced on me. I had choices. I could have chosen to not get married. I could have chosen to insist on our marriage looking different. I had a choice about whether I would have children or not and how many I would have. I chose to hand that over to God, but it was still a choice. Without choice, it’s slavery. And for those who see my lifestyle as obedience to God, I would say that without choice, it’s not really even obedience. Can a slave be rewarded for obedience when they had no choice in whether to obey or not? 

I have five daughters. I have tried very hard to let them know they have choices. And at the same time, let them know that following God is always going to lead to the most fulfilling life. 

I hope that my daughters look at me and see someone who chose to follow where God led, and as a result has lived a blessed, fulfilling life. And I hope that they look at the examples of their grandmothers and great grandmothers too and know that following God looks different for each person. 

The Gospel PLUS

One of my pastors made a comment that if some act that you were doing caused you to feel more righteous than someone else, then you were adding on to the Gospel. The Gospel PLUS. The Bible tells us that Jesus’ death on the cross completely covered the debt we owed for our sins. We come to Jesus in faith, repent of our sins, and he forgives us. We then walk out our lives learning how to listen and obey him and through that process he changes us to become more like him. But it’s not our obedience and our listening that saves us. It’s Jesus’ work on the cross, a free gift to us. 

That is a hard concept. We like to feel like we are earning our way. Let me work for that. Surely, I need to be doing something to deserve this. And then we take concepts like prayer and Bible reading, and service and we turn them into laws. Things we must do to earn grace. If I don’t get up every morning and read my Bible and pray for an hour, then I’m not really saved. If I don’t fast once a week then I’m not really holy. If I don’t take one day a week and spend the entire day devoted to church and rest then I’m not really following after God. 

All of these things, Bible reading, prayer, fasting, sabbath rest, all of these things are gifts that God has given us to enable us to learn more about him, to enter into his presence, to come alongside him in his work here on the earth, to keep our bodies and minds healthy and whole. They are gifts that we have been given, and the more we use them, the more blessed we are. But doing these things does not save us. Jesus’ work on the cross is what saves us. 

I think back to things that I have done that were good and healthy and blessed our family, but I know that deep down I did feel “more righteous” than others because I did them. Things like homeschooling, or eating super healthy, daily family devotions. All good things. All things that I’m glad that we did. But, I wish my heart attitude had been different. I wish that I had known to hold these practices lightly, to not feel the stress of HAVING to do these things in order to be righteous. But instead to just rejoice that God made these things possible for our family as a blessing to us. 

RIght now I find myself struggling a bit. I am not actively involved in any kind of ministry. My children are. And I help them get to and from the places they need to be. But I myself am not doing anything. And I remind myself that my family is my first priority. My main ministry. But I feel guilty for not doing more. And that is definitely coming from a Gospel PLUS mentality. If I’m not actively serving somewhere then I’m not earning my way. 

In the past, I have never actively sought out ministry. A need has simply arrived on my doorstep, so to speak, and I have responded to that need. And I keep waiting for something to be brought to my attention that I can help with and nothing has shown up. And deep in my heart, I’m thankful that nothing has shown up, because this has been an emotionally difficult summer as I’ve watched my kids scatter all over the place, pursuing their dreams, growing up, leaving the nest, and I’ve had to fight the duel feelings of overwhelming pride that they have grown up so well and have so much to offer the world, and deep sorrow that they are no longer little and no longer apart of my daily interactions. 

And so I have to learn how to trust that God does not need all my works in order to deem me acceptable to him. Jesus already took care of that. I am saved. I’m adopted in. I am loved. And I’m available. He will use me as he sees fit, and I can relax and wait on his timing. Keep doing the things that are set in front of me. Wash the dishes, fold the laundry, feed the family. Love on my babies that are still here. And just rest in the Gospel. 

Freedom

I just finished the book “Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s one of those books that make you think. It takes place in some far distant future on some far distant planet that has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. The planet has withstood all the typical human problems, mismanaging the planet, corruption, slavery, violence, changes of government. They are now settled into a system that sounds a lot like our current way of life, but with proper management of the planet and its resources. The rich rule, the poor survive. Class systems. A great focus on material possessions. In the story, about two hundred years before, a group of social dissidents gain enough power that the local government is afraid of their influence, and so they give them permission to leave the planet and settle on the moon, which is habitable, but barely. It has water and fish and some vegetation, but not a lot. It’s a very fragile system and in order to live there everyone has to be very careful with the resources. This group of dissidents call themselves the Odonians, after their leader, Odo, and they set out to create their own utopia. This utopia is centered around anarchism.

anarchism: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups Merriam-Webster

Their means of accomplishing this is to banish all ownership. Everything is commonly owned. People work together because in helping their community, they are helping themselves. And that is supposed to be the driving motivation to do the right thing. Their culture also helps promote this by disdaining and calling out any behavior that reeks of “propertarianism” or being an “egoist”.

There are all kinds of thoughts and ideas to dig into in this book, but one theme stood out to me, freedom. For the Odonians, freedom was being able to do whatever was best for yourself and the only way to achieve that freedom was to not be imprisoned by authorities or societal institutions directing your path or to be imprisoned by material possessions. There were no taboos for sex and no traditions supporting family units, though couples that wanted to stay together could, and parents that wanted to stay involved in their children’s lives, could, it was just not required. Work was seen as a fulfilling thing that everyone did, preferably in an area where you had obvious gifts and talents, but everyone also pitched in to help with nonglamorous jobs so that everything got done. And if someone chose to not work they could. But the people serving food could also choose to not feed those who didn’t work. And if a person behaved in a way that their peers found selfish or hurtful, the community could encourage them to move on to somewhere else. The underlying idea being that it’s our social structures and traditions and our material belongings that actually make humans not live in harmony with each other. And if you eliminate all those things, harmony will surely come.

Except, spoiler alert, we also learn that humankind is just bent to form bureaucracy and hierarchy and fall into power struggles, and it takes constant effort to remain in a “free” state.

I finished the book last night and then this morning I went to church and we sang a bunch of songs about being “free” . And that really grabbed my attention since I’d just been reading about this theme.

For a Christian, we understand that we have all been affected by the entry of sin into the world which happened in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Sin came into the world and the end result of sin was moral decay, rot, and death. And no matter how many structures we put into place, religions, sacrifices, moralism, structured civilizations, strict laws, none of these things had the power to free us from sin and its end result of death.

Then Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth and was killed on a cross and he took the punishment for all our sins, for all mankind for all time. He abolished death. He fixed the problem and made it so we could be free from sin. But in order to enter into that freedom we have to accept the work he did on the cross, repent of our sins, and submit ourselves to his authority. We become slaves of Christ. His will be done, not ours.

Christianity is a paradox. In order to be free, we become slaves. We serve the Lord of the Universe, and that Lord, lay down all his power and sacrificed himself for us. And then Jesus said, if you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you must learn to be a servant. And then he proceeds to lead by example and serves us, his people. We live in a utopia of being loved and held by God, slowly being changed by him, but we also look forward to the true “utopia” of heaven where everything is finally made right and all sin and pain are abolished.

The difference between finding freedom in Christ and finding freedom in anarchy is that Christ actually takes care of the original sin problem that makes humans not live in harmony. Anarchy is at best a bandaid that offers a temporary solution, but it can never deal with the root problem, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

God’s Poem

 

I learned an amazing thing today at my women’s bible study. We were discussing

Ephesians 2:10:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Did you know that the word that is translated into “workmanship” in this verse is the Greek word, poiema which is the same word that we get the word “poem” from? 

That really made me pause. I am God’s poem? That sounds so lovely. 

Back up a couple days ago and I was lying awake in bed, insomnia visiting me once again. Over the past year as God has been doing an overhaul on my thought life, I have started learning how to put my imagination to good use when I have insomnia. Instead of making up all kinds of complex stories in my head to entertain myself while I’m just lying there, I have started imagining heaven. Imagining the throne room of God, and imagining myself there. Just inside the door. Worshipping. And just basking in God’s presence. 

So, it had been a long week of sleeplessness hitting me in the middle of the night, and that night I was awake but tired and I just wanted to sleep. I went back to my imagination and I felt like a child who had gotten out of bed and wanted to go sit in their parents’ room because they couldn’t sleep. I imagined myself walking into the room where God was, and I asked, can I just sit here and watch you work until I can go back to sleep? 

And then I was really awake because I had never thought about watching God work. And while I was lying there I felt like God said yes, and then he started showing me all kinds of people that I know, and showed me how he had changed their lives. How he had taken them from broken, angry people to people who were whole and healed and loving. How he had taken families torn apart by generations of abuse and helped them to reach a place of forgiveness. He showed me how he had taken the timid and afraid and made them bold. He gave me a small glimpse of his workmanship. 

Back to my woman’s Bible study. We finished up our nine weeks study of the book of Ephesians and then we went out to eat together as a kind of celebration for finishing. While we ate our leader asked us to share how God had taken us from being dead in our sins to alive in Christ,

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—Ephesians 2:4-5

And as I listened to these beautiful women share how God had taken them from the place where their lives had been dark, broken and empty, to the place where they are now, joyful, living full lives of love, I found myself in awe as I realized I was in the presence of some of God’s poems. Beautiful, complex, nuanced, sometimes easy to understand, sometimes too complicated and mysterious for comprehension, everything a good poem should be. 

Listening to these women was just like my nighttime vision except I was seeing God’s work in the flesh. Beautiful walking poems showcasing God’s rich mercy and love and grace. And I love the idea that I too am one of God’s poem’s walking around the earth, a living testament, an in-the-flesh example of God at work. 

I am God’s poem. That makes me happy. 

Happy at Home

Today is a beautiful day in East Tennessee. The sun is shining brightly, there is a nice breeze, the temps are cool, but not too cold to sit outside. All the trees have grown their new leaves for the year and everything feels bright and fresh. 

I’ve been thinking about my future goals for the next several months. What I want to work towards, things I want to see happen, things I want to see my kids accomplish. 

Things like, start exercising regularly again, keep practicing piano, keep teaching. Help my husband with his business. Have people over to my house often. Keep being a mom and wife. Keep writing. Nothing big and mind blowing. Just a collection of little things that make up my life.

What is making me happy right now is the fact that I can live this simple life and it’s enough.

Romans 12:4-8 says, 

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;  if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach;  if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

I love that when you ask Jesus to forgive your sins and make a choice to follow him, you become part of a family. I love being in church and looking around at everyone and knowing that these are my brothers and sisters and together we are the body of Christ. What I also love is that we all have different roles to play. I love that I can be a stay-at-home mom and know that I am doing my part in the kingdom of God. 

Sometimes I look at my lfe and it feels like I must not be doing enough. Surely I should be striving towards more lofty goals. The world tells me that if I don’t have titles after my name, if I am not out in the thick of things, making money or saving the planet, I’m really not doing anything. I need to get myself out there and start making a difference! 

But the truth of the matter is, by having my life centered in my home, I am serving God. When I spend my day cooking and cleaning, I am serving the body of Christ. When I arrange my schedule so that I have time and energy to have people in my home, I am sharing the love of Christ.  When I putter around and think about things and then take time to write down what I’m thinking about and share it with others, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing and fulfilling God’s purpose for me. 

I love that being part of the body does not mean I have to strive to become someone that the world would say is noteworthy. But instead I can just be myself, using the gifts and talents that God has given me in the circle of influence that he has placed me in. And it’s enough. 

Not everyone is called to be a stay at home mom, obviously. And we all play different roles in the family of God. I feel very strongly about social justice issues and sometimes wish that I could be out on the frontlines meeting the physical needs of the low and downtrodden.  And the Bible says that taking care of the widows and orphans is what true religion is about. But, I’ve learned over the years that I can help people from the position that I’ve been placed in, in my home. I can take in homeless people, foster kids, teenagers who need a couch to sleep on. I can feed the hungry who knock on my door. I can provide the safe place for latchkey kids to come and play. And I don’t even have to leave my neighborhood. I just have to get up every morning with my hands open, in a posture of willingness. And as my day meanders along, I know that God will use me however he sees fit for that day. 

As I have come to know myself better over the years and understand my passions and longings better, I have realized more and more that God put me in the exact perfect place where I could be myself and use my talents and gifts most fully. As a teenager I never even thought about being a stay-at-home mom. But my Creator who made me knew better and today I feel joyful and peaceful as I serve Him and the Body of Christ from the wonderful place of my home. 

The Record Player

I have a record player in my head. Any time I am feeling down, or insecure, the record player starts playing. It’s a voice that goes over all my accomplishments. In high school you did this…When you were in college you did this…Remember that time you did that one thing? And all these things are the “good” things that I feel like I have done. Places where I have excelled. Things I have mastered. Memories of me being great. Basically a list of all my righteous deeds. 

The other day I was having an interesting conversation with someone about different religions and the main point that we landed on was “good works”. I was explaining that in Christianity, we don’t believe that our good works save us. The only thing that saves us is the work that Jesus did on the cross. His forgiveness of our sins. All the good deeds in the world won’t get us into heaven. Just the grace of God that is offered us through belief in Jesus. 

Now, I know these things. I’ve been taught these things for a long time. But that record player still exists. My list of good deeds makes me feel better about myself. Boosts my confidence, soothes my low self-esteem. Justifies my behavior. (Maybe I messed up here, but look, usually I’m a good person!)

Last night I heard the record player turn on, but instead of listening to the voice, reliving all the good memories, I stepped back a pace, and questioned why this record player even existed? Why do I do this? 

I have been trying to take these thoughts captive today. Bring them to a halt. All those good things do nothing to give you worth. Your worth comes from being loved by Jesus. He is one that has done all the work, not you. 

This last Sunday I watched the first episode of the second season of THE CHOSEN. If you have not watched season 1, I highly, highly, highly, recommend it. You can get The Chosen App, free, in your app store and see all the episodes free. Season 2 is just starting to come out. 

Something that really stood out to me was the foreignness of Jesus. He said and did things that the disciples were not expecting, took them off guard, had them constantly guessing what was going to happen next. This stood out to me because I feel like now, so many years later, we think we have Jesus figured out. We have the scriptures to read, we know the stories, we have developed elaborate traditions around the life and work of Jesus. He fits very comfortably inside a beautiful box. We are very comfortable with the Jesus that exists in our heads. And that comfortableness makes us complacent, stuck in our ruts. 

Watching The Chosen brought home to me that I don’t have Jesus all figured out. He is his own person, God in fact, and I do not understand all of his ways, nor do I perfectly walk in all of his ways. And I feel empathy with the disciples. They didn’t get it right away. In fact, even after three years of walking with Jesus, (in person!) they still messed up sometimes. And my heart feels full of thankfulness at the grace Jesus gave the disciples and that he gives me, now. Yes, I’ve been walking with him, most of my life, but I still sometimes completely miss the point. My record player turns on and I cling to my own good works, completely forgetting that I am saved by Grace, Jesus’ work on the cross, His Forgiveness. My worth comes, not from being a “good” person, but from being a child of God.