Note: this was a post I wrote in response to my post “Victoria Secret vs. Proverbs 31” posted on Crosswalk.com. I was getting comments that made me realize I hadn’t given them enough background on my journey, so for what it was worth, put this forth.
I can certainly understand the comments that are appearing on this post, as this is a controversial subject…however, I feel that much of the comments are missing what I was aiming to convey with this post and that of the original post from Matt. I am realizing that perhaps I should have posted some of my older posts first in order to help you all get up to speed on where I am in my journey and where this post came out of. I’ll post a few links at the bottom of this.
This post specifically comes out of a desire, out of a realization that I was entrapping myself into a stereotype of what a woman should be. Before Christ, I was trying to be the VS model….after Christ I was trying to be the Proverbs 31. Both were deadly – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Both – as stand alones – were not allowing the fullness of my own individuality to come through…of integrating both my womanhood and my “Christianhood” into myself.
The point of this post, and if I may interpret Matt’s point as well – was about stereotyping women as either the VS model or just as a Proverbs 31 woman was damaging to individual women...not because being sexy for your husband or being a woman of noble character is bad….but because STEREOTYPING people is harmful. Stereotyping doesn’t allow us to see past the stereo type and into the person’s soul. This is something Jesus was so good at not doing….and it is perhaps one of the reasons people flocked to him.
I arrived at the main point of my blog quite indirectly. See, as a woman going through a divorce in the Church, I found some people didn’t agree with me and my stance about there being reasons for Biblical divorce other than infidelity. This led to loss of friendships and a feeling – on my end at least – of being judged.
Out of this experience, I realized how judgemental I was in my own heart. I realized how I felt I had the right to be the Holy Spirit for other people…yet when they did it to me I didn’t like it so much. I felt crushed and deflated…and I realized that the reason I was in this place was because I harbored pride and arrogance in my heart.
I held onto my beliefs and my thoughts about those beliefs like they were “do or die”…like you had to believe like me or else you weren’t a true Christian, a true follower…or had the right to call yourself an American. You were doomed to go to hell if you didn’t believe in coming to Christ just like I had. I might not have said this to your face, but I surely realize now that I believed this in my heart. It makes me shutter to think about my old self and how far I had gotten from the true love Christ lived daily.
This has been my journey these last 8 months on my blog: I found out I was very judgmental on one side, and very locked into believing I must be “a certain type of woman” on the other….and this was passed down to me – for better or for worse – from both the American culture I have grown up in and from my understanding of prevailing church doctrine. Because of my own thoughts – which were actually chains keeping me in bondage – I fell into very unhealthy cycles of abusive relationships. I was to blame for these unhealthy cycles just as much as the others….yet there was always hope for me and for the others.
My blog is about that HOPE, that journey OUT of bondage and into FREEDOM, through Christ. It is about asking myself hard questions, and then asking more questions and then more. It is about first dealing with the plank in my own eye and realizing I had a lot of self-confrontation to do….that for being a pretty good person and what most would call a good Christian – I was in fact very judgmental, opinionated and critical of most people who didn’t line up exactly to my way of seeing things.
I know we are all at different spots in our journey with Christ, and my intention is never to bring judgment or shame. I can understand how some might find my posts offensive or un-Christianlike. If I would have read these posts 10 months ago, I would completely agreed that I had gone off the deep end…that I had become too “liberal” and definitely too controversial to be any good.
In response to this all I can say is this: I coulnd’t explain this any other way other than I have lived this experience. I have continually prayed for God to remove the scales from my eyes, to open my eyes up to things unseen, to show me if there were offensive ways in me…and these posts are the outpouring of what I beleive has been the continuing answer to this prayer. In repsonse to that, God has shown me where I was harboring pride in my heart; where I was judgemental – even though He wasn’t; where I held onto false beliefs about myself that kept me in bondage to my old patterns and to harmful, down right spiritually-deadly relationships.
He has shown me were I was arrested in emotional development, where I was still acting/talking/eating like a child – and He has shown me how to “grow” myself up into adulthood. It hasn’t been an easy journey by any means. I had and continue to have to let go of my “creature comforts”; of my “go tos” in times of distress; of my old thought patterns that are so easy and comfortable to fall into time and again; and of my idols about marriage and family and my status as a woman.
To end, my prayer for my blog, for my writing is this: that every one who reads my personal journey will not jump to preconceived notions of what it seems I am saying on the surface. Instead, that each would take a moment, or two or more, to stop and really think and question themselves. To turn those thoughts about what I am saying and how controversial it might be and to turn them inwards on yourself and ask yourself why you believe what you believe. To ask the tough questions of yourself, of your faith and to spend time wrestling with yourself over – well whatever it is that keeps you in bondage:
* to inferiority
* to a lack of hope
* to depression
* to addictions (either external or internal, like fantasies and day-dreaming)
* to unhealthy relationships that continue to beat you down
* to living a life less than what Christ has called you to live – an abundant life in Him…not when you get to Heaven…but RIGHT NOWFor we are all wounded. For we all wound others we say we love….we wound them out of our woundeness. For this is why the world is in the shambles it is. For this is why Christ came, to bound up the wounded and heal the wayward soul.
I leave you with this: If Christ didn’t force stereotypes on the demon-possed, on the prostitute, on the lepers of His day..
if Christ didn’t even judge the adulterous woman at his feet even though he had every right to do so….
…then what right do I, do you or do any of us have to stereotype or judge another?
if Christ didn’t even judge the adulterous woman at his feet even though he had every right to do so….
…then what right do I, do you or do any of us have to stereotype or judge another?
I haven’t read the article you speak of so I can’t comment on that aspect, but I heartily agree with your view on the following:
“Before Christ, I was trying to be the VS model….after Christ I was trying to be the Proverbs 31. Both were deadly – physically, emotionally and spiritually.”
The pressure that comes from the world to be physically perfect is damaging, but so is the pressure the church or other Christians sometimes place on women to be the idealized Proverbs 31. woman.
Our call is to be like Christ anything else just boxes us in.
Thank you Julie for your comment. I agree…and would even add that within “becoming like Christ” that we are all still uniquely ourselves, unique individuals and God treats us as such!