a new perspective
Note: This was originally posted on November 5, 2011, on my old blog, but I’ve put it here so that I have a record of it and a link to it.
This is a post that I’ve been contemplating for a long time, but have been scared to actually write. I’m scared to say this, scared of what people will think of me and say about me. (I know, I know — I should just own what I believe but that’s a whole other kettle of fish that I’m learning to deal with.) I don’t want to damage relationships or stir up trouble, which is something I worry about way too often in my ESFJ brain.
My fear about posting this is a big part of why I’ve posted purely fluff the past few days, and part of why I just didn’t post at all here for such a long time. I’ve felt compelled/called to say this, and haven’t known what to write in lieu of writing this post. So I’ve stayed quiet.
That said, let me preface this by saying that this isn’t about judging other people, or condemning, or pointing fingers. This is the story of my journey over the past few years, my experience, and the ways that I’ve grown and changed, and my growing discomfort with an ideology to which I once ascribed, and with that ideology’s leader. This is about ME — not about condemning anyone who still attends Mars Hill, or supports Mark Driscoll. I care deeply for all of you, and don’t wish to hurt you in the telling of my story. Please believe that.
All right. *deep breath* Here goes.
I used to attend Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Mark Driscoll’s church. The pastor who claims yoga is demonic, that men who stay home with their children while their wives work would be subject to church discipline and, in the same video, the implication that only women who stay at home are being mothers to their children, that the picture of a Jesus who embraces children and exhibits love above all else makes him “a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that … would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”
And I bought into his ideals hook, line, and sinker. Watching the video above makes me feel sick now. And it makes me question how I ever believed him. His arguments seem hollow and shallow to me, and seem to belie the depth and nuance and overarching story of redemption that I’ve found in the Scriptures over the years.
Since moving to San Francisco, I have realized that the culture at Mars Hill — in essence, the brand of New Calvinism to which they adhere, coupled with the narrow, complementarian view of gender roles, and rounded off with Mark Driscoll’s arrogance and judgmental attitude — has caused a great deal of damage in my life, not only for me as an individual, but especially in my marriage, as well as in my relationships with other people.
The past 2.5 years, essentially since we arrived in San Francisco, have been a huge time of growth and change in me — a time of detox, if you will, from the punitive, submissive, damaging paradigm in which we were enmeshed at Mars Hill.
But let me back up. I think the seeds of this change were planted when we were still living in Seattle and attending Mars Hill regularly. When we had Elanor, the balance shifted, and the questions about whether this was something I could support (or not) started percolating in my head at a rate which required me to think about them, and not just suppress them anymore.
While I was still pregnant, I’d read a wonderful book about parenting by Dr. William Sears, The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Childcare. By chance, I grabbed it off the shelf at the Ballard Library, and I believe that God guided me to read this book before Elanor was born. It set the tone for our parenting, and moreover, its philosophies meshed with our instincts to respond to Elanor’s cries and meet her needs — to see her as a person from the outset, someone to be loved and cherished and respected. (This article is essentially an excerpt from the book, and is totally worth a read.)
Now I’ll get into the sticky parts of this journey. At the time, Mars Hill’s official parenting book — sold in the church bookstore — was Shepherding a Child’s Heart, by Tedd Tripp, which advocates spanking — on a bare bottom — as being *necessary* for correcting negative behavior, and for “restore[-ing] him to the place in which God has promised blessing… . he has removed himself from the place of proper submission to your authority,” (Tripp, SACH, p173). I just…wow. I cannot wrap my mind around that.
I did know people who ascribed to Babywise, by Gary Ezzo, and some who were not as extreme as following Ezzo but who definitely believed in the idea of the father/mother maintaining control of the children and requiring submission to authority — and a crying baby or a toddler exhibiting age-appropriate limit-testing or exploration would be outside of that control. I also knew of others who were very, very attached and loving with their infants, but as soon as the infants started “rebelling,” (which I’d call “being an age-appropriate infant/toddler”) they turned to much more harsh, punitive — sometimes even pain-inflicting — interactions to try to get to the heart of their child’s supposed “sin.”
Yeah. I take huge issue with that. But more about all of this parenting stuff later.
I also felt somewhat uncomfortable with a sense that I had of parents indoctrinating children — this is something I’ve only realized lately, so my thoughts about it are less concrete and formed — but there was a clear air of “bring up children to believe THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY so we can make a new generation to continue to carry all of this out.” It was couched in more mainstream Christian ideas of bringing up children to know God, but it all seemed somewhat forced and coercive, and seemed to be more about continuing this RIGHT WAY of living and not about the child’s heart and/or relationship with God.
Anyway.
Elanor would never stay in the church childcare, and while small babies were welcomed into the church service, and while there was a nursing moms’ room with a feed of the service, there wasn’t much accommodation for older babies and/or young toddlers who were loud and mobile and not willing to go in the childcare room. I always felt somewhat judged by some of the childcare workers for not leaving Elanor even though she was hysterical every time I tried. I had one say to me once, “Oh, we’ll just let her cry it out. She’ll be fine.” Uh. No.
And once, because I felt pressured, I did leave her there in hysterics, only to be completely unable to focus on the singing. About 2 songs later, I turned to Brett and said, “I cannot stand here and try to worship when I know she is screaming in there,” and walked out and got her. It took her a long time to calm down, and I don’t think I tried to put her in the childcare again. So we pretty much stopped going to church, and because we weren’t actually members of the church our lack of attendance went largely unnoticed, although if we had been members it would not have been acceptable.
When we moved here to San Francisco, we had a very ill-fated attempt at attending church, wherein we were asked to leave because the church didn’t allow children in the sanctuary. (I had a post about that, but it was lost when my blog crashed. Maybe I’ll try to get it back up again soon. Edited 1/6/11 to add link: Here it is!)
We tried one more church after that, which was okay, but they didn’t have a nursing moms’/family room where I could hear the service, and all I did was wind up chasing Elanor around the foyer for an hour while Brett sat in the service. It just wasn’t worth it.
And then we took a break from church, for about 6 months. It was incredibly freeing. At first we felt guilty we weren’t in church every week (as we had when we skipped church in Seattle, while attending Mars Hill) but soon, the feeling faded. We were just…living, and thinking, and processing why we weren’t in church, and why we felt so anxious about returning to a church, given how we got kicked out of one here and never, in all the many, many years we were at Mars Hill, felt like we really belonged there. In retrospect, I realize that I needed some space from churchiness of any kind, to process what I actually believe. For a while, I couldn’t listen to worship music (I still don’t choose to most of the time) and I had a hard time reading the Bible to Elanor, or reading it myself. I was trying to separate the things I really believe about Christianity from the way they were presented at MH and I just had to take about a thousand steps back and, for the most part, disengage entirely, except for praying/carrying on conversations with God within my own head — something I’ve done since I was a small child.
During that time of non-church, I also talked with two dear friends from college whose perspectives I have always respected and trusted (CMC and KSH — I’m talking about you) about our time at Mars Hill and the conflicting feelings I was having after leaving there. They both said the same thing, that they were surprised Brett and I had gotten so involved there, and were surprised that I’d bought into the ideas of complementarianism especially. They both knew me as a freshman at SPU, and knew how opinionated I was, what a strong woman I was, and were pretty surprised to see me turn that off for several years in an effort to follow Mars Hill’s paradigm of a submissive woman.
Their words carried a lot of weight with me, and nourished the sprouting seeds of change in my head.
In January 2010, through a series of events truly orchestrated by God, we found our house church. We attended one Sunday, and knew it was our home. Brett and I didn’t even hash out afterward whether it was the right place for us. We just went back the next week, and the next, and the next.
This group of people, the makeup of which has changed significantly since we began meeting with them, has been a huge force for catalyzing these changes. Their love, their grace (and simultaneous ability to speak hard words of truth), their example — it’s been so meaningful for Brett and me.
Each and every person currently in the group (and I count in this number a couple who remains in our group’s heart although their physical location is far removed from San Francisco) is an example of Christ in such beautiful, real, raw ways — and yet not ONE of them ascribes to Mars Hill’s view of what a family or marriage or relationship should look like. Women work. Men clean. Women make decisions. Men cook. Men and women together lead our times of worship, reflection, and prayer. Husbands and wives make decisions together, and defer to one another when the other partner has more expertise in something. Children are respected and given a voice in their families, in our community, in our worship. And yet. We are all REAL with one another. We’ve seen — and I absolutely include our family in this — spouses fight, parents yell at children, children disobey and melt down, big drama unfold. And in those times, we have seen God’s beautiful grace come down, time and time again, to sustain us and uplift us, to aid us in continuing each of our journeys through life.
Combined with the examples of Christ I’ve seen in our house church, another huge catalyst for change has been an online fellowship of Christian moms I’ve been a part of since just before we moved to San Francisco. I found this community through a friend, and it’s been amazing in helping me to work through the things I believed while we attended Mars Hill, and to discover why I let myself believe them in the first place, and to dig into the Bible and discover what I actually believe. To hear from moms who believe what I do about parenting, whose instincts matched mine, and who set out on the same journey of discovery and grace, and who have made it to the other side, living grace-filled, Christ-filled lives as mothers, wives, employees — whatever role God has called them to fulfill.
Here’s the heart of it. I believe God loved us so, so, SO much that He sent Jesus to die for us. We did not deserve this. In Scripture, God time and time again extends grace and mercy to humankind. Does he shield us from the consequences of our actions, our sins? Absolutely not. But does he punish us harshly and unduly? No. Ultimately, he is always, always there for us as his children. He will never leave us or forsake us, and he will always listen to the cries of our hearts, whether from pain or sadness or in praise. He LOVES us. Above all else, he loves us and deeply desires a relationship with us.
If I want to help Elanor to understand God, if I want her to someday choose to follow him, and even if I just want her to experience grace and love, then how on earth can I spank her, as Tripp recommends, or leave her to cry, as Ezzo recommends? No! She is a person, loved by God just as much as I am — who am I to treat her as lesser than, to treat her with a lack of respect for her personality and needs? And how can I be a part of a church where the pastor preaches things like yoga being demonic, or that the Jesus who embraced the children was “limp-wristed,” or that a dad who stays home or who divides household duties equally with the mother is sinning? Or that because in this season of life, I’m choosing to work outside the home — for the greater good of our family — that I am less of a mother, that I’m sinning, that I’m not correctly following Jesus.
Bull.
I cannot reconcile those things with the Jesus whom I know. And I do not want Elanor to grow up believing that Christianity MUST be this way, and if you don’t fit the mold (which Brett and I most decidedly do NOT, and trying to do it almost broke us — but more about that another time), you are sinning and going against God’s word. I don’t think so.
Mark Driscoll/Mars Hill is, in part, so attractive because of the acceptance of tattooed/pierced/jeans-wearing members, the hip music, the lights, the scene, the acceptance of movies like Fight Club, etc. But in being lured in by these things, the people at Mars Hill are trading this surface acceptance for something very dangerous. Because all the acceptance of tattoos and piercings and smoking comes with a very, very subtle undercurrent: a view of the One Right Way to live, to raise children, to function in a marriage. If a member or even an elder questions certain elements of the church’s beliefs or structure, they are disciplined and asked to leave. It is subtle. It is couched in admonitions that this is God’s way. And it is damaging.
God understands us. He understands who we are, and he desires to connect with us. In doing so, we will follow his commands and become more like him. In the same way, I believe that my job as Elanor’s mom, and Brett believes that his job as Elanor’s dad, is to connect with her, to understand her. To TEACH her, not punish her. To help her understand that her actions have consequences. To help her learn how to make better choices. To teach her empathy and compassion for others. But always, always, ALWAYS — we want to show her that we are there for her, that we support her, that we love her, and that we have grace for her — all of that, as a reflection of the beautiful grace God has shown to us.
Following this line of thinking, I cannot continue to believe in complementarianism. If I believe that Elanor is a valid and vested member of our family, worthy of respect, then I am just as valued and worthy as she is. God wants each of us to be fulfilled in our purpose, in what he has called us to do. For Brett and me, to ascribe to complementarianism is to defy our very natures and, I believe, our callings. I am not a submissive woman. I am an intelligent, opinionated, strong, talented woman — and these are not qualities or sins to be subdued, as those at Mars Hill would argue, but gifts from God that I am to embrace and develop.
This post has grown very, very long, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Now that I’ve broken the ice, I want to come back and talk through some specific issues I mentioned here: to delve more into parenting, to talk about the damage to our marriage from the things we learned at Mars Hill, and to talk more about some of the general attitudes as well as specific things I’ve seen at Mars Hill that cause me concern.
Thank you for reading, if you made it this far. This is not an easy thing for me to post. As I said, I’m scared to even post this, but I these changes are a huge part of who I have become in the past few years, and my identity as a person, as a mother, as a woman, as a wife, as a Christ-follower, and I cannot ignore this or behave in a way that belies this burgeoning freedom, this embracing of grace, in my life.
Ultimately, like I said at the beginning, this is about my story, my journey, the place where Jesus is leading me — a place of grace, of hope, of love, welling up in me and spilling out to the people I encounter each day.
