Theology for Women

Well I’m back from Aussieland and I must say that I’m not too happy about it. The trip was INCREDIBLE and I am extremely tempted to pack up my things and move out there. Love the people, love the land, love it all. It was amazing! And you know, I think what made this vacation so good was that it refreshed me in almost every possible way–physcially, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. I didn’t go on this trip expecting to gain some fresh spiritual insight, but I found it in some unexpected ways.

The first spiritual refresher happened early on in the trip when I hung out with my best friend’s family. Most of her family lives in Sydney and they’re all pretty crazy and say insane things to her all the time. I would describe some of the hilarious things I witnessed during my time with them, but for her sake I’ll abstain. Just suffice it to say, it was like an Australian version of the family in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. They were a riot.

Amidst this family’s off the wall behavior, you can imagine my surprise when I met her 22 year old cousin, Justin, who is a born-again Christian. In college he’d done all the typical collegy things like drinking and doing drugs, but at some point he became fed up with it, and decided to change his life. Now, Justin is blissfully passionate about God and there is a glimmer in his eye whenever he talks about his faith. He’s been a Christian for 2 years now, but he still has that early-Christian glow. You know the one I’m talking about–when your faith is new and exciting and you can’t wait to read your Bible because every time you open it is like a new adventure, and talking about your faith is exhilirating, and each day holds a new surprise from God. I remember that time…it seems like it was long ago.

Meeting this guy was a great reminder of what my faith used to be like. But, I told myself, you can’t sustain that kind of enthusiasm forever. It’s sort of like the honeymoon period of a marriage–eventually reality sets in and it’s not as perfect as you thought. In fact, it’s a lot harder than you thought. As the harsh reality of this sinful world weighs upon your shoulders, the idea of getting back to that early-Christian glow seems unrealistic, if not impossible.

But then I met Laurent, who became my second spiritual refresher. After I left Australia I stopped by California to stay with a friend’s family, and the family has a woman who lives with them and helps out around the house named Laurent. Laurent is bubbly and full of life, and I guess someone told her that I had just finished seminary, because shortly after we met she sat me down and said, “So you’re a Christian, huh?” After I confirmed the rumors, she continued, “Well I just LOVE talking to other believers!!” and then she dove into a series of questions about how I got saved, what I wanted to do with my degree, why I loved college ministry, what I thought about Catholics (haha!) and she also told me about how she became a Christian. We talked for hours, and her enthusiasm for topics of faith never dwindled.

Laurent was just like the young man I met in Australia–same excitement, same early-Christian glow, same lens through which she saw *everything*. Everything, to both Laurent and Justin, is filtered through a Christian perspective. Everything can be traced back to Christ. Every topic, thought, attitude, anything at all, goes back to matters of faith. And the funny thing is–Laurent isn’t a new Christian. She has been a believer for 12 years.

So suddenly I find myself reminded of the reality that there are actually Christians out there who think about Christ all the time. And it’s not just the new Christians who do it–there are some people who have weathered life, the ups and downs, the mountains and valleys, yet they still have that glow about them, that shining love for God. Not everyone compartmentalizes their faith. For these people, it doesn’t take having a quiet time or praying or having a spiritual conversation to remember Christ, because he is everywhere and in everything, shaping every moment of every day.

Sadly, I am not like that, and I don’t know many people who are. People like Laurent and Justin are the exception to the rule. But because of these two people that I had the pleasure of meeting in these last couple weeks, I can no longer comfort myself with the lie that because other Christians don’t live, eat, and breathe Christ, that I don’t have to either. I cannot ease my conscience with the knowledge that just because I don’t pray all the time, seek God all the time, or direct everything I do back to Christ all the time, that I’m ok because that standard is unrealistic. That standard of whole-hearted, complete and total devotion to Christ is very realistic–we only think it’s unrealistic because we see it so rarely.

So yes, my vacation was refreshing, and in the best possible way. It was a wake-up call to the reality that I have been lying to myself, and that I have been settling. Like the saying goes, if He’s not Lord of all then He’s not Lord at all…I suppose that message, that God is not Lord of all, is the message we risk conveying to the world when we only worship God selectively. I suspect that is the message my life has been preaching, but I also suspect God sent me these reminders because He intends for me to change. Maybe you could hold me to that.

Well, actually three days. That’s right, I’m about to hit the high seas for a few days to see the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands. So far Australia has been INCREDIBLE! Several days ago we spent some time at Manly Beach, which was given its name because the Aborigines there were the only ones who didn’t run away from the European settlers–they were “manly,” and hence the name. True story.

Yesterday we climbed the Harbor Bridge which was absolutely gorgeous. I also found out that my Austalian nickname is “Shazzah, ” which sounds kind of like “Shazam.” I hate it, but my climbing guide felt it was necessary to refer to me as Shazzah the enitre 3 and a half hours.

Today we flew out of Sydney for the Whitsunday Coast, named for its white sand, and it’s beautiful. Tonight we’re hopping on a boat for several days, so pray that I don’t get sea sick and that the boat doesn’t sink in shark-infested waters. That would be bad.

And thanks to all of you who contributed to me having “In the Land Down Under” in my head for the last couple days. Seriously…I hate that song now.

Cheers!

For those of you who don’t know, I’m in Australia right now, and will be for the next 10 days, so I won’t be blogging too much in that time. But as soon as I get back I’ll be starting back up again asap!

Til then, a brief summary of my time so far: Went to the sydney zoo, which overlooks sydney’s skyline and is amazing; went to a bar type place made entirely of ice (walls, chairs, tables, glasses) and they give you a coat and ugs and gloves to go in there because it’s so freezing; went to a ballet at the opera house; am currently at the beach.

Australia is awesome and I highly recommend it! Please pray for my safety, and I look forward to writing again soon!

This weekend my whole family came into town for my graduation, and it was a blast. Not only do I now possess a Master of Divinity (which makes me sound a lot more powerful than I really am) but I got to spend some truly quality time with a lot of my family members all weekend. Unfortunately, my brother’s wife couldn’t make it, and being the young married couple that they are, they missed each other a lot the whole time. Friday afternoon my brother described to me how difficult it was being away from her. He was somewhat surprised by this emotion, becaonse one would think that after being with someone every day of every week, time apart would be a welcome break. But it was not. And his wife was no different. The Friday night after my brother left, his wife missed him so much that she couldn’t sleep, so she stayed up all night watching videos of their wedding.

I think they might like each other.

But what is striking to me about their relationship is that they’re not the only married couple I know who is like that. There are a number of married women in my Bible study who will occasionally miss Bible study because they need to spend time with their husband if he is about to go out of town for a couple days, or if he’s been busy the whole week and they haven’t had much time together. After observing these various couples for some time now, I can see that they all dread even a brief separation from their spouse. In fact, this seems to be standard protocol.

Now to be perfectly honest, I struggle to sympathize with, or really even understand my married friends. After all, I have slept by myself for 26 years and I have been just fine, so the idea of agonizing over 2 nights apart is somewhat baffling to me. It sounds like the kind of thing a wallflower wife who has no identity outside of her marriage would do. It also sounds like the kind of wife that I don’t want to be. Don’t we, as Christians, talk about the fact that your spouse isn’t supposed to *complete* you, but to *complement* you? The only person who should complete you is Christ, so any marriage in which you are incomplete without your spouse is based upon a faulty foundation. That being said, doesn’t their behavior, their desperate pining while their husbands are away, sound more like a marriage based on dependence upon one another, rather than dependence on Christ?

Given that marriages are composed of two sinful people, I am sure that there is a degree to which this kind of spousal idolatry is, in fact, going on. Every married person probably struggles with trusting in Christ first before their spouse at some point during their marriage. But, I nevertheless think that the marital dynamic I have seen in so many of my friends indicates that their marriages are healthy, not unhealthy. Why? Because when you get married, you become one flesh, which means that separation from one another is as unnatural as cutting off your arm. Yes, there is a degree to which each spouse should depend on God alone, but that reality must be balanced with the equally important reality than in marriage, the two become one flesh. It is therefore a false category to describe them as being two distinct entities. On a temporal level they are two, but on the more real, spiritual level, they are one. So when the two are separated, the pain they feel is a reflection of truth–the truth that God did not intend them to be apart. It is right for their hearts to be grieved when they must endure something that runs counter to the spiritual reality of their union.

Now that is not to say that God will never call a couple to be apart for a season–there are certainly circumstances, such as military service, in which couples must be separated for a time. But even so, a couple must do everything within their power to guard their unity. They may not be together physically, but it is still important to protect their oneness by any means possible. This explains why my friends are so anxious to be with their spouses prior to a separation–they want to invest in one another in preparation for the time apart so that the integrity of their oneness is not compromised by geopgraphical separation. In this way, spending time with your husband before he goes on a trip does not mean you are a wife without an identity, but that you are taking the necessary steps to preserve that which God achieved on your wedding day–making the two into one.

So why am I going into all this? I mean, I am not even close to getting married, so what does this have to do with me? Well, I think that all Christians, married or single, can learn from this aspect of marriage because marriage is the model used to described Christ’s relationship with the Church. In the same way that a wife pines after her husband, we must pine after Christ. In the same way that a wife’s heart aches when she is away from her husband, our hearts must ache when we have not spent time in the Word or in prayer. And in the same way that a married couple does whatever it takes to guard its unity, we must also do whatever it takes to guard our unity with Christ.

Sadly, I rarely see the same kind of urgency applied to our relationship with God that I see in marital, or even dating relationships. We aren’t nearly as intentional about taking time out of each day to cultivate our relationship with God. Unlike my friends who would give up all prior commitments to spend time with their husbands, I can’t remember a time when i have given up going to a movie or hanging out with friends because I hadn’t spent time in the Word lately and I wanted to do that instead. And what is even more depressing and convicting is that I am more intentional about rearranging my schedule to take care of my dog than I am in my relationship with Christ.

So if nothing else, when we either witness the intense love and faithfulness of our married friends, or if we experience it ourselves, we must remember that this love is meant to be a faint echo of the love we have for Christ. That’s right, a faint echo! As much as we love the people in our lives, it should be nothing compared to the love we have for our Savior. So while an urgent love for a spouse is healthy and beautiful, and I should never think to belittle it, we should be concerned when that love is greater than one’s love for God. That, however, is an issue I must certainly work on in myself before pointing fingers at anyone else, so rather than dissect the lives of my married friends, my time is much better spent in appreciating the echo of Christ-centered love that i witness in their love for their husbands. Whether you are married or not, marital love gives us a starting point from which to love God more fully. That is a wonderful gift that my married friends give me in loving their husbands well.

You gotta love the King James Bible. Nobody can say it quite like the Old English. In my Bible study we have been reading a commentary on 1 and 2 Peter in which each chapter contains a section of Scripture written in the New King James version. This past week we talked about 1 Peter 1:13, which reads as follows: “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind…”

As soon as I read this phrase aloud, some of the girls in the group definitely giggled. Gird up your loins? Who even knows what that means? If anything, it sounds like the kind of sketchy thing that Christians *shouldn’t* be doing…not something we should actively pursue. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll keep my loins firmly girded.

It’s at times like these that we notice one of the difficulties of reading the KJV–its language doesn’t exactly relate to our present context. Translations like the NIV, which simply read, “Therefore, prepare your minds for action,” are much more accessible and easy to comprehend.

However, while the KJV is not always the best translation to study for a variety of reasons, in this particular case, the rendering of “gird up your loins” is actually superior to the modern translations we have today. The KJV gives us an important image of ancient Greek military attire that is lost in the translation “prepare for action.” There is much more to what Peter was saying than the NIV translation leads us to believe.

To begin, the phrase “gird up your loins” refers to the act of tucking in one’s tunic just prior to battle so as to facilitate movement. You didn’t want your tunic slowing you down or causing you to trip, so you had to “gird up your loins,” tuck in your robe, so as to be optimally prepared and agile for battle. That is what it means to “gird up your loins.”

But Peter takes this image a little further. In 1 Peter 1:13 we are told to gird up the loins of “our minds.” So within the context of this miliatry imagery, what on earth are the loins of my mind, and how the heck do I gird them?

What I think Peter is referring to is the nature of your thought life, but let me explain how I came to this conclusion. To begin, a soldier’s tunic was a helpful part of his armor in that it served a basic purpose, namely, to keep you from being naked.

However, there are times when this tunic could get in the way. Though the tunic is not, itself, a bad thing, it could be a hindrance once you entered battle. You could trip on it or it could get caught on something. It could hold you back in a variety of ways. For this reason, while the tunic can be helpful at times, it was an expendable part of the armor that needed to be reigned in if necessary.

Similarly, a person’s thought life can be very helpful at times. You might be thinking about how to run your errands efficiently, or about the people that you need to e-mail during the day. Our days are filled with this kind of day dreaming, so just because a thought is not centered on Christ does not mean it is inherently sinful. BUT, there is a time when we need to put these thoughts away, because, like the tunic, they can also trip us up when it is time for battle.

I think that’s what Peter is getting at here–girding up the loins of your mind means disciplining your thought life. No, not all the thoughts you have are bad, but they are not preparing you for battle either. And since we live in a world of powers and principalities with which we are constantly at war, this is no small point. Our thought life may seem harmless now, but if we are not in the habit of disciplining our thoughts and focusing our minds on Christ, then we will be unequipped to do so when we really need to. During those times when anger, bitterness, hate or lust try to dominate your thought life, you will not be ready to redirect your mind onto Christ if you were not even able to do so in the face of harmless day dreamining.

So in light of this instruction to “gird up the loins of your mind,” I encourage you to find a way to discipline your thought life. When you’re in the car and your mind starts to wander, work on memorizing Scripture or listen to sermons. When you’re walking to class, talk to God instead of talking to yourself. These are very simple disciplines but they will prepare our minds for battle when the time comes. Yes, girding up your loins sounds incredibly socially awkward, but it’s actually pretty cool when you think about it, and more importantly, it’s what we as warriors are called to do.

Today I want to know your thoughts on something, because I have a question that I am not entirely sure I know how to answer. This morning I was reading through Ezekiel (and fyi, if you ever want a light, encouraging read, Ezekiel is not it), and if you’re not familiar with the book, it is basically a long string of severe judgments against Israel’s unfaithfulness. And I mean severe–it almost hurts me to read it. Over and over again God condemns their unfaithfulness and metes out terrible punishments for their actions. If you want a picture of God’s wrath, this is it–it’s seriously frightening.

But what I found to be interesting about this book is the way in which God concludes His descriptions of these awful judgments. He will describe these gruesome ways in which Israelites will suffer and die, and then He will say, “Then they will know that I am the LORD.”

I find this statement to be quite baffling. Israel is God’s chosen people, so they are the ones through whom God has promised to to bless the world. With that in mind, one would assume that the world will know God is Lord when He causes the Israelites to thrive, not suffer and die. After all, israel lived during a time when a deity’s power was judged by a nation’s prosperity, so if anything, Israel’s suffering would seem to indicate to the world around them that their God was not powerful enough to help them, or that they had no god at all. This statement that the world “would know He is Lord” by Israel’s hardship seems counter-intuitive.

What I think this statement is getting at is that the world will know God is Lord by his justice. God will not sit idly by and let His own people defile His temple and desecrate His name. Oh no, He will be swift to defend His glory. Any nation that crosses God will inevitably lose, and it is for that reasons that, through the punishment of Israel, we know He is truly Lord.

But here’s the question I am left wondering–would God ever do this to the Church? If God would punish Israel, His chosen people, so severely, and we are the New Israel, could a similar forsaking happen to us if the Church were to engage in widespread unfaithfulness? The book of Ezekiel is not written to individuals, but to a group of people, so instead of reading it as warnings against individuals, it seems that in order to be faithful to the context, we must read it as a warning directed agains a group, and more specifically, God’s chosen group, which in today’s context would be the Church.

There are several issues that make this question difficult to answer. The first is distinguishing between the Old Testament and the New Testament withouth making the Old Testament irrelevant. On the one hand, we are the new Israel, so we are the continuation of the promises God made to Abraham. On the other hand, the way God talks about “punishment” in the Old Testament and the New can be very different. In the OT, punishment almost exclusively refers to temporal punishment; in the NT, punishment almost exclusively refers to eternal punishment. What makes this distinction important is Christ–as Christians, Jesus has already suffered our punishment, so for God to punish us even more would indicate that Christ’s sacrifice is somehow incomplete. For this reason the NT speaks of “discipline” for Christians, but not punishment. And with that in mind it would be theologically problematic to read this passage as a warning against God “punishing” the Church, as opposed to disciplining the Church.

A second difficulty in interpreting this passage is how the Church’s identity as the Body of Christ plays in. On the one hand, the Church is composed of millions of fallen individuals, so churches make mistakes all the time that warrant discipline. But on the other hand we must be wary of referring to the Church as being itself fallen. The Body of Christ is not fallen, though members of the Body are. It would therefore seem possible to read this passage as a judgment against individual members of the Church, as opposed to the Church as a whole, unfortunately that is not the context of the passage. It is spreaking to a group, God’s chosen people–they are collectively responsible. To read this passage individualistically would more likely be a reflection of the fact that we don’t understand the concept of corporate sin than it would be an accurate interpretation of the Scripture.

So I am left wondering–how are we to read Ezekiel, and what implications does it have for the Church? I look at the Church in Europe and think that is a good example of what happens when we are unfaithful to God–perhaps God does not smite us, but He takes away our power and effectiveness. But even that conclusion seems to undermine God’s promise to work through the Church as one of His primary means of grace in the world. Then again, in the interest of defending His character, God must show the world that He will impart justice if the Church is doing injustice. Perhaps by severely disciplining the Church when we go astray, God will be declaring to the world that He truly is the Lord.

No matter how we read this passage, I think it serves as some sort of warning for us all, but the question is what kind of warning. Does wrath await the Church that forsakes God, or merely discipline? Would God nearly destroy the Church that is unfaithful for the sake of defending His justice, or do churches naturally die when they stop preaching the Gospel, so God’s wrath is unnecessary? How are we to read this passage in a way that is both faithful to its context and to ours? I am not entirely sure, so I would love to hear your thoughts…

I have never fit that well in the Southern Baptist tradition. Don’t get me wrong, I love my church, my pastor and my friends, but I’ve never felt like I totally fit in. In fact, I hate telling people I go to a Southern Baptist church. Whenever I do I always cringe for a moment, and then quickly explain that it’s not like your “stereotypical” Southern Baptist church. Because of this, I have thought for some time now that sooner or later I would leave the Southern Baptist denomination and find a church full of people who are more like me. Sooner or later I would settle down at a nice church where I am not a theological black sheep.

But perhaps it’s not that simple. As I reflect on my past involvement with churches and other Christian groups, I see that I’ve had similar feelings of isolation long before coming to a Southern Baptist church. I was raised at a Presbyterian USA church, which tends to be a very liberal denomination. The church is definitely not evangelical, so even though I care greatly for the people there and have felt very loved by them, I was very uncomfortable with their theology, and never totally felt like I was one of them. And then there’s Duke Divinity School. I have loved my time there, and I have been shaped in my faith so profoundly that I think my ministry will be forever strengthened because of it. However, people at Duke Div tend to be very suspicious of ultra-conservative churches and mega-churches–churches like the one I currently attend. And oftentimes in class I was the “conservative girl” who said things that no one else ever seemed to agree with, so I left class many days feeling discouraged and alone. I certainly didn’t feel like I fit in there either.

So now I am left wondering–given that I have never felt totally at home with any of the Christian bodies in which I’ve been a part, should I be so sure that there is such a place? As I look to my future and consider where I might go to find a church of people “just like me,” does such a place even exist?

I’m discovering that the answer to this question is “no.” Why? Because I have actually begun to *like* setting myself apart. I have come to relish my rebel status. By not embracing any one denomination or group of Christians, I have maintained a level of deniability when Christians do something embarrassing or hurtful like boycotting Disney. I may attend a Southern Baptist church, but I have still distanced myself enough that I can say, “Don’t worry, I’m not like them. I’m different.” In this way I am never truly connected to a group, so I have a nice buffer in case I need to distinguish myself from them. I won’t ever have to be labeled with their mistakes, or their sin.

The problem with this mentality is twofold…

First, it sets the standard for church membership at an impossible level. There is no perfect church, so as long as perfection is my standard for committing to a church, then I will never join one, at least not whole-heartedly. I actually have a lot of friends who are Christian but never join a church for that exact reason–they love Jesus but hate the church, so they treat the church like it’s an expendable part of the faith. Nevermind that the Church is the very Body of Christ–they don’t want to be hassled with annoying Christians, so they ignore the inconvenient parts of Christianity that they don’t like.

What is ironic about this mentality is that it’s extremely hypocritical. It points fingers of judgment at everyone but yourself. I think C.S. Lewis makes this point the best in his book “The Screwtape Letters.” He explains that as we sit in church and silently judge everyone else around us, we never pause to consider, “If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?” Thus we have a double standard for ourselves–we can be Christian and still be sinful, but others cannot. And so we judge the church in a move that can only be labeled as illogical at best.

The second problem with distancing ourselves from the church is that we are actively denying our identity in Christ. When we decide to place our identity in Christ, we must accept the reality that we are now one with every other person who has done the same. We now have more in common with every Christian that has ever lived than with some of our own family members because we’ve got the same spiritual DNA. But when we distance ourselves from other Christians, we deny that we share an identity with them, which means we are ultimately denying our identity in Christ. To be in Christ is to be united with other Christians. You cannot split the two–they are one in the same.

But in addition to denying our identity in Christ, we also deny the ability of Christ to work through his own Body. We feel the need to distance ourselves when Christians do stupid things because we don’t *really* think Christ is capable of defending his own reputation, or ours. We feel that we need that distance so we can tell people, “Don’t worry, those aren’t the best examples of Christians, but just look at my life instead.” But at the bottom of this thinking is a works-based righteousness. We are unwilling to surrender our reputations, or our churches, into Christ’s hands, and trust that He will work redemptively through them. Instead, we fend for ourselves and we practice Christianity the way we think it should be be practiced so that we don’t get labeled with those other bad Christians. And when we do this, we deny that Christ is at work in them. Somehow we know what’s better for Christianity than God does.

So this mentality of believing that I don’t fit in anywhere is not so much a commentary on the Southern Baptist church, or even the universal Church, as it is symptomatic of my hypocrisy and pride. It reveals that I think I am better than everyone, and it reveals that I trust myself more than Christ to defend my reputation and the reputation of the Church. I think those two elements are a good litmus test for whether or not our condemnations of various denomination are legitimate. I suspect that oftentimes they are not. It is much more difficult to choose unity in Christ than to opt for division, because unity requires humility when other Christians do stupid things. It also requires trusting that God is fulfilling His promise to work through the Church, even when it feels like He’s not. Hopefully I can get to that point, and start embracing this Body of Christ that I am a part of, instead of being embarrassed by it. What a tragedy to be embarrassed by the hands and feet of my Savior…

Once again I find myself feeling mystified as to why women do what they do. A guy treats a woman badly, yet she sympathizes with him. Men come on to women in flagrantly demeaning and sexual ways, yet women are flattered by it. The culture objectifies women in every way possible, yet women think that dressing immodestly empowers them. What in the world is going on here? How is it that this kind of insance behavior has become common practice?

Well before I share with you my conclusion, let me tell you the strange but true story of a young woman named Patty Hearst. In case you have never heard of her, Patty Hearst was a millionaire heiress who was kidnapped from her California home in 1974 by an organization called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). SLA was a band of American terrorists who promoted their radical ideas through violence, murder, and bank robberies, in addition to kidnapping Hearst and holding her for ransom. What is particularly striking about this story is that several months after her kidnapping, Hearst was photographed holding an assault rifle in the midst of robbing a bank in San Francisco. It was later revealed that Hearst had come to sympathize with the goals of SLA, and was now fighting for them.

Eventually Hearst was arrested and put on trial. During the proceedings Hearst explained that her captors had locked her in a closet, blindfolded her, and sexually abused her during her imprisonment. For this reason her legal defense argued that Hearst had been brainwashed during her captivity, thus explaining the surprising shift in allegiance toward her kidnappers.

Now as strange as this story may sound, Hearst demonstrated a not uncommon phenomenon among victims of violence called Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome occurs when a person in an abusive relationship develops a kind of sympathy or love for their abuser. Rather than condemn the abuse, or flee from it, the victim feels an intimacy with her abuser, and remains in the abusive relationship, thereby enabling it to continue.

Now the story of Patty Hearst may confound our senses, for it is nonsensical at best, but there is a specific reason I bring it up here. As strange as the phenomenon may sound, a similar development has occurred within our culture. Women are not only wounded by both men and culture, but women have come to sympathize with them. Mimicking the actions of Patty Hearst, women have begun facilitating and even perpetuating unhealthy relationships with men, instead of fleeing from them. Likewise, women frequently partner with the culture in its objectification of them, actively turning themselves into objects of lust and sexual fantasy, wearing short skirts and revealing necklines in the name of feminist power. We feel as though we have control when we dress this way because we can command the attention of a room when we walk through the door. Yet these actions are no different than the crime that Patty Hearst committed against herself. In such a situation, your power is only an illusion, because you are doing nothing more than enabling the victimization, rather than freeing yourself from it.

So the reason I bring up this story is that we have got to name these unhealthy influences in our lives for what they really are–our captors. They are holding our self-worth in bondage, so we will never be free as long as we sympathize with them. For this reason, the next time a guy treats you badly, remember Patty Hearst. The next time you feel flattered when a guy comes at you with some totally sketchy line, remember Patty Hearst. And when you are tempted to embrace the lie that we are most attractive, sexy, and powerful when wearing the least amount of clothing, remember Patty Hearst. Because all of those mentalities are just as insane as Patty Hearst siding with her kidnappers. When we think and act that way, we are doing nothing more than sympathizing with our captors when we should instead be fighting for freedom.

I thought I would procrastinate with the following post. I don’t have time to think deep thoughts because I’m funneling all of my intelligence into a 16 page paper, but I found some bumper stickers that I thought were kind of funny, so if you need to procrastinate as well, then enjoy! (And p.s.–these bumper stickers don’t necessarily reflect my religious views, but I think sometimes it’s healthy to laugh at ourselves…I hope you agree).

Get a Taste of religion. Lick a Hindu.

God’s true name is unpronounceable…because God is Welsh.

If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?

God please grant me chastity, but not just yet. - St. Augustine

If you were made in God’s image, how did you get to be so ugly?

The Big Bang theory: And God said ‘Pulleth my Finger’

And now, the TOP TEN THINGS PEOPLE WON’T SAY WHEN THEY SEE A CHRISTIAN BUMPER STICKER OR FISH ON A CAR:

10. “Look! Let’s stop that car and ask those folks how we can become
Christians.”

9. “Don’t worry, Billy, those people are Christians. They must have a
good reason for driving 90 miles an hour.”

8. “What a joy to be sharing the highway with another car of
Spirit-filled brothers and sisters.”

7. “Isn’t it wonderful how God blessed that Christian couple with a
brand-new BMW?”

6. “Dad, how come people who drive like that don’t get thrown in jail?
Can we get a bumper sticker like that, too?”

5. “Stay clear of those folks, Martha. If they get raptured, that
car’s gonna be all over the road!”

4. “Oh, look! That Christian woman is getting a chance to share Jesus
with a police officer.”

3. “No, that’s not garbage coming out of their windows, Bert. It’s
probably gospel tracts for the road workers.”

2. “Oh boy, we’re in trouble now! We just rear-ended one of God’s
cars.”

1. “Quick, Alice, honk the horn or they won’t know that we love
Jesus!”

I put this up there because I used to have a fish on my car and yet I drove like a maniac. I think people might have noticed the inconsistency…