Monday, November 26, 2012

A Couple Links to Start Out the Week

First a blog post with pretty piano music with the title:

A Song for all Women

Next a look at:

Twilight and Evangelical Christianity's Eternal Girlhood
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, Mara; sorry I've not dropped in for a while. I had a great excuse lined up, until I realised I don't like excuses. :-)

I read Linda Kay Klein's post with great interest. Especially the last part, differentiating between those women who found their adulthood to be an asset and those who were afraid of it. I use the word "adulthood" rather than "womanhood" because I have to say - it ain't just the women. Clinging to babyhood and infantility is endemic in sections of the professing church, at least here in the UK.

One sees this most clearly in the ideological warping of God's fatherhood and His relationships. This happens not only towards us (we are not a son or daughter of God, but a "child" of God) but even towards Jesus himself ("Abba" is routinely now translated as "Daddy", as though Jesus were regressing to babyhood when he prayed in Gethsemane).

I spent several years in a congregation where if a man wept, sobbed, asked for help and support in everything and declared himself weak, vulnerable and afraid, then he would be applauded and affirmed for being so brave and free in his emotions. But if he declared himself capable of meeting a task, or unafraid, or stated that no, he didn't need help on this occasion, thanks, then he was rebuked as "putting on a bold face" when "we know he's frightened underneath".

In the same environment belong many, many books on how the Christian life should be an endless procession of crying, healing and hugging from our heavenly daddy-waddy - or, in practice, our heavenly nursing mother. The summit of our aspirations should be to become perpetual infants, perfectly helpless, weak, incapable, sleeping babies… but oh, what precious babies, and what a beautiful picture that is! (Ahem - sorry, had to get that out of my system) ;-)

That kind of stuff creeps out a lot of folk - men and women. I don't think the alternatives offered by bragging, adolescent males (you know the kind I mean!) are any better. But it's no great surprise that they exist.

February 1, 2013 at 12:52 AM
Mara Reid said...

Yeah, I know exactly who you mean and was thinking of him and another guy as you were talking about infantile Christianity.

Why does so much of Christianity have to be a reaction to someone else's take on Christianity.

Instead of having reactions and building a theological house upon it (sand), people should be seeking the Source, the Bed Rock and building their house on Him.

Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.

(That other guy is Doug Wilson who would call those weepy guys feminized rather than infantile and would blame women. Yeah, these things get so old.)

(Are you a Dr. Who fan?)

February 1, 2013 at 8:56 AM

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