Emotional abuse crossed my mind today for whatever reason.

"Abuse teaches a lot of terrifying lessons. It teaches you that your body is not your own. That your hopes and feelings are irrelevant. It teaches you shame. It teaches you to be bullied under the guise of protection. It teaches you to blame yourself for the harmful actions of others. It teaches you that some people are allowed to hurt those less powerful than them." -- Laura Gaines

One scary part of abuse is how subtle it can be. Another person can slowly take hold of you while giving you the impression that you are healthily opening up and trusting them. That is sometimes what makes abuse so hard to get away from. Although you know something isn't right in the relationship, you have opened up to the other party so much that you just can't walk away.

When Dr. Ono at Kaiser told me that what my fraternity did to me has a name--"emotional abuse"--I immediately tried to shut her down. I told her, "No, it wasn't that bad." I was defending my abuser--even while I was sharing about what it did to me. I had given so much of myself to the fraternity that when someone confronted me with its crime, I defended it.

A couple months later, I opened up to my fraternity roommate and told him that I had been emotionally abused. It was a side comment in a larger story about the awesome things God had done in my life. His only response to my story was, "That wasn't emotional abuse." He then proceeded to tell me that I didn't know what emotional abuse was. Needless to say, he completely missed the point of my story.

"Do you think a survivor is too angry about her abuse? Unless she’s personally threatening you, it’s time once again to get over yourself and listen. Discern the source of that anger. I cannot emphasize this enough: at no point do you ever possess the right to tell a marginalized person how to react to her marginalization…When you dismiss our anger at abuse, you dismiss the validity of our experiences, and that is itself an abusive deed. This isn’t about you." -- Sarah E. Jones

And I almost believed him, because he was someone that I loved and trusted.

They told me that my opinions and feelings were wrong. They treated me as inferior. They presented themselves as unimpeachable. They constantly punished me for arbitrary "shortcomings." They were unpredictable. They reminded me of my faults. They neglected my individuality, sometimes in the name of "tradition." They never apologized. They rationalized what happened, or even flat out denied what happened. They did not take responsibility for what happened, and sometimes put the blame back on me. They did not notice or seem to care how I felt. They never asked questions to hear my side of the story (even to this day). They showed little empathy. They minimized what happened to me. And sometimes, they used the Bible to back up what was happening.

That sounds like abuse to me.

"I want someone to look at me and listen to the horrors I have endured, and instead of telling me that all would be well if I just forgave my abuser – instead of telling me to pray…to seek healing, as if I haven’t spent years doing just that – instead of telling me that maybe what I suffered wasn’t actually abuse -just listen, hear me, and say, 'What happened to you should not happen to anyone.'" -- Becca Rose





All quotations taken from "Christians, Stop Shooting Our Wounded" by Suzannah Paul. http://deeperstory.com/safe-churches-abuse-survivors/

Update 7/1/15: the article has been taken down from the above location. It can be found here: http://www.missioalliance.org/christians-stop-shooting-our-wounded/

A follow-up to the last post

I think about this more often than not, actually. I briefly touched on it in the last post, so I wanted to talk about it more fully.

Our scope of the world--even the universe--is so limited. We only base our future discoveries on what we already know. But what if we began to look for things in creation that go outside what we already know?

When I was a senior in high school, a friend of mine threw out the idea that in heaven, things don't have to be made of atoms. The laws of physics and chemistry don't have to apply. That blew my mind. I still cannot wrap my head around that, simply because we as humans do not know any other way. Everything we know and see is made of atoms and follows the laws of physics and chemistry. Therefore, trying to imagine a new system of matter is nearly impossible.

This also extends to our quest for extraterrestrial life. We need to qualify that we are searching for life as we know it. Scientists look for evidence of running water on other planetary bodies to determine the possibility of life. But what if there was another system of life that wasn't reliant on water or oxygen for sustainability? We wouldn't know to look for it, because we only know what we experience. Who knows--life could very well exist out there that is completely impossible for us to even detect at all. Just like how for a long time, we never knew about all the different types of light emissions outside of the visible spectrum because we couldn't detect it. (Speaking of which, what if there are types of light beyond gamma rays and infrared?) But I digress. The point is, trying to imagine other forms of life which operate completely differently from systems on earth is nearly impossible.

But God can imagine it.

God could create it.

Maybe he already has.

God is so much bigger than our understanding of the universe.

It's interesting to see how our understanding of the universe frames, and therefore limits, what we can and will discover in the future.

Christians are so funny: The Series; Part V - Extraterrestrial Life

I came across an article which commented on Ken Ham's apparent belief on extraterrestrial life. I then was pointed to Ham's original article. I was amused.

Ham believes that funding space programs in search of extraterrestrial life is a waste of money. He claims that the earth is God's sole focus, and he cites verses which apparently support that idea. The logic goes that if there is other life out there, then it changes the meaning of the gospel. Also, "because they are not Adam's descendants, they can't have salvation." "An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race--human beings who are all descendants of Adam." Evidently, it is "totally wrong" to suggest that aliens could respond to salvation. He then closes his article by implicitly asserting that the Bible speaks about aliens, and then he tries to sell you something from his organization's bookstore. (You can even order it in bulk for "witnessing purposes"!)

For whatever reason, Ham seems unnecessarily antagonistic about the idea of extraterrestrial life. And he wants to be sure to drive home the point that this life, if it were to exist COULD NOT receive salvation.

I just want to ask him, "How do you know?" And he would respond by saying something like "God's Word says so" or whatever. Yeah, but God's word doesn't explicitly say anything about extraterrestrial life. How do we know there aren't other non-human forms of "life" out there that have a similar salvation story, where Jesus became one of those creatures as well? We have no way of knowing.

But, I guess if you base your entire life around what the Bible says, and ONLY what the Bible says, then you would think that way. The thing is, the Bible is not holistic. It doesn't cover absolutely everything that we encounter in life. Truth manifests itself in forms other than the Bible as well, and God has given us those other forms to discern more of life. So let's use them. Let's not just disregard them and treat only the Bible as worthwhile.

And let's open our minds and consider the possibility that maybe God has created more than we will ever know about.




Ken Ham's article here: http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/20/well-find-a-new-earth-within-20-years/

Christians are so funny: The Series; Part IV - Marriage (post also entitled "What brings us together today")

Marriage.

The sacrament of marriage is something that Christian culture latches onto like no other. Which is why they get so upset when anyone tries to tell them that maybe they have too narrow a view of what is and what isn't marriage. Christians would like to think that they have the monopoly on "true" marriage.

However, the irony is that Christians have let marriage be defined by the state. They claim to have a monopoly on marriage, but they are letting the state dictate when marriage occurs. This in turn affects how Christians approach relationships prior to marriage.

What do I mean? In Scripture, the marriage relationship is simply defined as two people being united to one another--emotionally, spiritually, and in particular, physically. There is no mention of a wedding ceremony, no mention of getting legal documents signed, etc. Essentially, sex is marriage.

The Christian argument, however, states that sexual relations are something that should only be reserved for marriage and afterward. And when does marriage happen? Some kind of ceremony must occur, whether that is a church service or a signing of legal documents. Then, and only then, is it okay to proceed with sexual relations.

However, the church has inverted this process. If the sanctity of marriage is something that belongs to Christianity, then there is no need for a ceremony or for documentation to serve as the hurdle to jump over. A couple commits to each other for life and has sex--they are married.

Suppose an engaged couple has sex for the first time two nights before their official wedding ceremony. And this is the first sex that either of them has had in their lives, and neither will have sex with anyone else. Christians would label this as "premarital sex" because they had sex before their ceremony. But Christians have let external factors determine when the couple is married. The couple must be wed by a minister ordained by the state; and until then, the couple is not married.

False.

The couple was married when they had sex. A ceremony with a state-ordained minister is not how God recognizes marriage. By making a ceremony something necessary, Christians are actually releasing their monopoly on marriage to the state.

If we think about it that way, it actually makes a lot of sense. It explains why Christians are so particular about same-sex marriage legislation.

This is an example of how American Protestantism has been wedded to American politics.

I want someone

I want someone who enjoys being with me.

I want someone who thinks I’m attractive.

I want someone who takes as much initiative as I do to plan hang outs.

I want someone who makes time for me and makes me a priority.

I want someone who nerds out about academic topics of interest in the same way I do.

I want someone who respects the fact that I hate the world in the mornings.

I want someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously.

I want someone who laughs at my pathetic jokes.

I want someone who laughs at my good jokes.

I want someone who will gently place his hand on my shoulder when I’m stressed.

I want someone who softly kisses my forehead while we watch a stupid rom-com.

I want someone to be my cuddle buddy.

I want someone to be my big and/or little spoon.

I want someone who holds me as I cry.

I want someone to hold as he cries.

I want someone who reassures me that he loves me in my moments of self-doubt.

I want someone who just sits with me while negative thoughts swirl in my head.

I want someone who feels safe to share his anxieties with me.

I want someone who is my equal because he is just as broken as me.

I want someone who knows when to give advice and when to listen.

I want someone who doesn’t expect me to solve his problems, but can still trust me for support.

I want someone who pushes me to try new things, but knows when to back off.

I want someone who doesn’t think birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries are that important.

I want someone who doesn’t have to go out to have fun.

I want someone whom I can go with anywhere, do anything, and still have a good time.

I want someone who loves me as I am.

Is that too much to ask?

"Stop being such a girl!"

I took an extended lunch the other day. One of my coworkers in the cubicle next to me invited me to watch the USA-Germany World Cup match in another building with him and one of the FAA's contractors. So I went.

There was a point where a US player fell over in pain. And then someone who was watching the game in the room with me called out, "Stop being such a girl!"

That line rang around in my head for so long afterward.

How is "Stop being such a girl!" supposed to be motivating? Because we don't respect femininity, and we idolize masculinity, particularly in the sports sector. From a young age, femininity as bad and masculinity as good are engrained within us, particularly for boys. One of the most detrimental things for a boy to hear is "Be a man!" or "Man up!" It teaches boys that being a real "man" (whatever that is) is the ultimate goal, and whoever they might be otherwise must be cast aside. Being a "girl" is an insult and is shameful, even to grown men who play in the World Cup, apparently.

Of course, gender norms is a massive can of worms. I was just focusing on that one line that I heard a couple days ago.