Check out my new review of After Evangelicalism. Dr. David P. Gushee makes a compelling case for Christian faith and piety outside of evangelicalism.
Enjoy!
Category: Book Reviews
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Nat Turner – The Would Be Hero
“Washington, who with our fathers purchased our freedom by blood and violence, are lauded as patterns of patriotism and Christianity. Nat Turner, and his associates, who endeavored to work out their own salvation from an oppression incomparably more grievous and unjust than our fathers endured, were treated as rebels, and murderous assassins, and were ruthlessly hung, or shot like wolves, and their memory is corrupt.” (February 13, 1836)
William Lloyd GarrisonStyron received plenty of heat for his novel on the cryptic phantom of the black Spartacus, Nat Turner.
I advise the reader to pick up the 25th Anniversary Edition where Styron expresses his sentiments on the backlash the book received from disenfranchised black groups who had made a god of Turner whereas Styron had made him a man, who as expected, struggled with rage, lust, and the other mundane things a man of that era might have struggled with. Styron adds almost fifty pages on his understanding of the critique, the analytical part yes, but admits a resolute head-scratching at the mindless distaste for his work from people who never read it.
I had not known that Styron had hosted James Baldwin at his home and even received advice and blessings from Baldwin to venture into this first-person narrative of Nat Turner’s life.
Styron admits the liberty he took in recreating the antebellum world so we could understand the multifaceted grievances Turner might have had against the slave trade.
In reality, we don’t need many reasons to understand why. Nat Turner and a group of seventeen slaves set off to kill fifty-five white people in the antebellum south. Their position in life was the only precursor necessary for their vengeance upon their slave masters.
It is, however, impossible to develop a most accurate understanding of Nat Turner’s life when his confession was undersigned by a white lawyer who had been appointed to him by a court that saw him as nothing more than ‘property gone rogue’ and property worthy of hanging, quartering, and burning.
Either way, it’s an expressive work of art and demonstrably true of the horrors of American history, which, retrospectively, was all deserving of Nat Turner’s insurrection.
Sadly, his bid for freedom is seen and described as an insurrection instead of a revolution. Why? You ask. It’s because Nat Turner failed. Unlike his predecessor George Washington, who fought with the same fervency and won, Nat has been relocated to the forgotten and dismissed recesses of American history where he remains a negro terrorist instead of the black Moses he was for his time.
One cannot help but wonder… what if Nat Turner had succeeded?
The bodies of those executed, with one exception, were buried in a decent and becoming manner. That of Nat Turner was delivered to the doctors, who skinned it and made grease of the flesh. Mr. R.S. Barham’s father owned a money purse made of his hide. His skeleton was for many years in the possession of Dr. Massenberg, but has since been misplaced.
Drewry, the southampton InsurrectionNat Turner’s original confession can be found and read in its entirety here. One must remember that Turner’s confession was transcribed and sealed by a white lawyer appointed to him by the court. We cannot rely on the accuracy of this confession because the court and his legal representative were, culturally, societally, and legally structured to work against him. We can only assume that some of what is undersigned and sealed about Turner’s undertaking are true, but how much, and exactly how accurate, we may never know. In 1831 a slave had little to no value other than the work he or she provided their masters and absolutely no rights or freedoms. We must, unfortunately, take T. R. Gray’s account down with us in history, hesitantly so, as it is the only account of this story recorded in history. We needn’t venture far to wonder why Turner’s insurrection was not as well recorded and disseminated through the Americas as was the stories and triumphs of George Washington. Some insurrections were acceptable while others were worthy of the highest levels of contempt and erasure. A military assault coordinated by negro slaves was the most horrifying news any slave owning and slavery favoring antebellum American could ever conceive of. Their worst nightmare came true in the enigmatic phantom of the black Spartacus, Nat Turner.
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Note: This journal entry was originally posted to Facebook on May 26, 2020. A minor edit was made to this post by replacing a quote originally attributed to late Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias with a similar quote by another late Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton.
A Journal Entry
The Old Testament prophet Haggai designated a word of admonishment for the Israelite people who had recently returned from exile. He reminds this religious nation that their temple, their main place of worship which was razed to the ground by the Babylonians remained in shambles, dilapidated to the point of shame. Mind you, to the Jew, the temple was second only to the Laws of Moses so forfeiting their attention to this structure meant they had forsaken their love for their divine law and their God.
The purpose of this post-exilic book is clearly stated in the first paragraph of chapter one from verses 2-6:
“Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”
Haggai reminds the Israelites, from the king to the priests and the people, that no matter how great their harvest, how much food they stock up on, how much drink they consume, how much clothes they have, or how much much they earn from their work, it will never be enough.
Like a man forced to repeat the same feat over and over without cause or ultimate purpose were these people who were fattened by the luxuries of life but could not enjoy these delicacies because their attention had shifted from God to the telluric, the mundane, the materialism that corrupts and vanishes with time.
Their ardor for God had diminished so God allowed their pleasure of life to dissipate with it.
How telling of our times.
Today we replace our relationship with God with just about anything that would distract us from our need for Him. In a sense, we have replaced worship with entertainment to dull our sense of God’s greatness with an amplified repetitious uproar mistakenly called worship music. Instead of melodizing orthodoxy, we are content with mind-numbing, cultic-like rhythmic cycles of man-centered songs that accomplish not the humbling of man in the sight of his Creator but self-glorification. We’ve transformed our worship of God into the amplification and gratification of human emotions.
Our politicians have become our priests, our political party is our religion, our primer ministers, presidents, and monarchs are our demi-gods. And none of these has to date been able to do away with the uneasy feeling in our gut that we are one term or one policy away from catastrophic doom.
Advancements in our technological age and the age of information have given us the ability to eradicate many maladies and diseases whilst creating new ones in the human heart.
We are a wealthier nation, people, and society today than any other that has ever existed yet we struggle with the reality of income inequality, corruption, bribery, bankruptcy, and homelessness.
Our affinity for life is blasted through social media but our forests, closets, rivers, and more are filled with the bodies of people who have resorted to suicide. For them, life was too painful to deal with or perhaps too dull to live through.
We are everything for everyone accomplishing all things in the name of life but are unable to determine when life begins, who gives it value, why it exists, and where it is destined to go once we close our eyes for good. This conundrum has caused more anxiety in the morally upright atheist who aspires to live a better life but doesn’t know why he should than it does the immoral cleric who thinks he understands the purpose of life but fails to live up to it.
G.K. Chesterton put it this way in his book The Everlasting Man:
“Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless. We might almost say that in a society without such good things we should hardly have any test by which to register a decline; that is why some of the static commercial oligarchies like Carthage have rather an air in history of standing and staring like mummies, so dried up and swathed and embalmed that no man knows when they are new or old.”
We are fat. We are full. We are rich. We are bold. But all in all, we are empty because we have forgotten about the temple of God.
As God told the remnant of Israel then He tells us today: Consider your ways.
It is true that we need not visit a temple, a structure, a church by which to reach God for He is above and beyond the temporal establishment.
The new temple in which we worship God is in our heart, mind, and soul and we continue to ignore not just this new temple but the God who created it. This philosophical complacency irrevocably wrests our life in the plain of meaninglessness.
It is no surprise king Solomon alludes to the notion that life under the sun is meaningless, ad nauseam, in truth stating that life without God, without a Creator, purpose, meaning, morality, destiny; life without the Person who originates and culminates the reason for our very existence and pleasure becomes unequivocally without the slightest sense, notion, touch or idea of meaning.
I pray our people, our nation, our society may come to terms with this reality that replacing God with wealth, health, prosperity, pleasure, experiential bliss, spiritualism, Winfrey-ism, scientism, nationalism, socialism, capitalism, oligarchism, and you name it will result in nihilism.
The human heart is a vacuum and once you remove God from His rightful place in your life you replace that void with something else. Something less.
Consider your ways. It is time to rebuild your relationship with God.
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Chech out my brief review of my new favorite book – Life of a Klansman: A Family History of White Supremacy written by award-winning author, Edward Ball.
“White supremacy is not a marginal ideology. It is the early build of the country. It is a foundation on which the social edifice rises, bedrock of institutions. White supremacy also lies on the floor of our minds. Whiteness is not a deformation of thought, but a kind of thought itself.” – Edward Ball
Enjoy!
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An Idea
I’m in conversation with friends who believe that if they fail to fast for twelve hours straight they’ll lose their blessings. Some have even gone the distance to say they have fasted or abstained from food and drink for days at a time. Draining their body of nutrients and their soul of life a day at a time in hopes of attaining something from God in the process. Their purpose in bringing harm to their body was to convince God, perhaps, that they deserve something great. Why wouldn’t God bless someone who chastises their flesh?
Too often I find myself in these situations as well. What should I sacrifice so that I can manipulate the hands of the Divine to bless me? And, while in the process of attempting to convince Him of my goodness or devout pursuits, hopefully, I won’t fail or give up and thus lose that which I dream of. That which I ask for.
It could be a disease that I hope to be healed of. And an opportunity to write dozens of books and have at least half of them make it onto the NYT bestsellers list. Not that that makes the book any good but it would surely bring in a lot of cash. Perhaps the opportunity of a lifetime to work for the New York Times as a well-paid columnist or for the New Yorker as a go-to writer on observations of a Christianized culture. Perhaps as a writer for The Atlantic on the topic of cheese and watchmaking. I know very little about cheese and a thing or two about watches so I’d definitely qualify for their writing staff. And my mind sets off in hopes of using God, yes, I said ‘using’ because that’s what we like to do. Let’s be honest. Using God to get that which I want. And the problem arises when our means of ingratiating His Holiness we can give in to a state of mind that is not conducive to our spiritual growth or our mental well-being.
A Story
Take for example a person who is praying for a sick family member whose health is failing. This loved one has been diagnosed with a terminal disease of which there is no recovery or solution. Their time on this earth is shortened, their lifespan stilled, and their hopes and dreams are all decimated by this revelation. The Christian person in this family sets off to pray for change and a miracle. They make it their purpose in life to turn these events around because God is a God who operates miracles. And He does. He has.
Therefore our Christian friend places it in their heart to fast for the next six months. They set their heart and stomach to abstain from food three days a week, form water one day a week, and from sexual relations with their spouse for three weeks out of every month.
This in turn becomes a challenge in which the Believer willfully sacrifices pleasures and desires for the sake of pursuing God and a miracle. This isn’t, per se, evil or a bad thing, nor, can we resolutely conclude that such abstinence and ascetic tendencies are good in and of themselves. But either way, our Believer sets off. The first week, no food for three days, no water for one day, and complete abstinence from sexual pleasures with their spouse. All is well. The fervency of prayer alive, the reading of scriptures consistent, and the hopes of a miracle for that sickly family member intact.
As the days progress into weeks our believer is experiencing a rise in faith and spiritual growth where their persistence and discipline have become known to other believers and they commend this effort. Fellow church members join the fast because they see the immediate result of spiritual rededication and they too want to see this sickly family member recover, miraculously so.
Weeks turn into months and our Believers’ appearance begins to change, their muscles depleted, their waist has since slimmed, and their face is somewhat gaunt but their spiritual renewal is at an all-time high. Their bible study sessions beam with radiance and wisdom. Members flock to these sessions as their hopes are again elevated at the possibility that God will in fact bring forth a miracle and heal their ailing acquaintance.
The Believers’ spouse is proud, too, and possibly riddled with shame because they are willing to celebrate this new spiritual journey but feel their sexual needs and intimacy are falling behind. There is a persistence to maintain spiritual growth and also shame in feeling that their physical and emotional needs are not being met. The spouse, albeit in agreement with this pursuit, is divided in heart and mind.
Our sick family members’ health has shown signs of improvement. Their medical practitioner has produced tests and images of cells in remission, health in appreciation, and confidence in their treatment.
Applause and celebratory festivities are in stock but we’re only three months into the six-month fast challenge for a miracle. Our Believer has not given up hope. The Believer stands strong and reassured that God is on their side. Why else would God allow the sick family member to get better? He most certainly hears our prayers and petitions. He sees our sacrifice, our willful abstinence as a sign of commitment. So with great news in tow, the Believer strives for more consistency and dares to increase the level of sacrifice they are willing to endure so that God can come through with an answer.
For the next three months, the last three months that is, our believer has increased their fast from three to four days of out the week. They refrain from consuming water two days out of the week instead of one. And, seeing how the abstinence from sexual pleasures has produced some betterment of health in their sick family member they now abstain from sex with their spouse for the next ninety days.
This, you know, will bring the Believer closer to God because sex is earthly, fleshly, and perhaps, depending on the circles you move in and out of, it is considered dirty.
So our Believer is nearing the finish line of their challenge. All eyes are now on the Believer. They practice their fast with pride. They might even share the news of their fasting with coworkers and friends. Why shouldn’t they know? When the miraculous happens the world will know and people will come to God because of it. The smell of food no longer bothers our Believer, they’re tempted to forgo food altogether, forever possibly. They begin to look down on other believers who are a bit rounded on the edges, those who enjoy three steaks a week, bacon for breakfast and consume wine as a means of enjoyment. Our Believer thirsts for water but is confident and proud enough to forego it when the time comes. What else is sacrifice if not foregoing the self? And regarding sexual desires? That well has all but dried up. The Believer reassures their spouse that this is for God. This challenge, this pursuit, is so that others may come to believe in the Miracle Worker and thus, possibly, be saved as well. So, the sexual repression and sexual oppression within the marriage are at an all-time high. But, sacrifices are sacrifices and if it doesn’t hurt or cause us discomfort and pain then we’re doing it wrong.
Our Believer willingly admits to themself the idea of their want for sexual intimacy but continually shuns the thought of sexual gratification from their mind. They struggle, however, with thoughts of other persons in compromising situations, delicate situations that rekindle more debased desires, wanton desires for others, and this, is somewhat a surprise to the Believer but they keep it to themselves. Temptations are but the attack of the enemy to fault us and interrupt our pursuits, you know.
So, this fast, this challenge is full-blown downhill, a speeding train that cannot be stopped. Our Believer has witnessed a faint harvest of their efforts and cannot be dissuaded to stop, even when their medical practitioner advises against such austere measures of ascetic living conditions. The Believer spurns the medical advice and scolds the physician for not having enough faith.
They see their sacrifice as a call from God, a Divine purpose, an undeniable fact that God works in those who sacrifice the most, and our Believer will not relent.
The sickly family member whose health had improved in the first three months of this six-month challenge is now crippled with stomach pains, vomits blood, and defecates bloody stool. They are rushed to the emergency room where they can be stabilized, watched, monitored, and tested for further findings.
Our Believer gets news of this and immediately thinks the enemy, the Darkest Soul, the Ancient of Evils, the Deceiver, the Nefarious One, the Devil, as we call him, is on the rise against them and their challenge, and their family member who was on the track to a miraculous recovery. They consider this a direct assault on their faith and they are undeterred by this news and they perceive their efforts as Godly and unstoppable.
A visit is made to the ailing family member in the hospital, reassurances of miraculous recovery are made, prayers are offered, tears are spent, hours fly by, other church members visit, more reassurances are made, promises produced, prophetic utterances of longevity, long days of life, and family and dreams are given. Everyone in the hospital is aware of the ten, twenty, and at times forty church members who flood the hospital at any given time of the day in faith that this sick person will recover.
They have seen what a little sacrifice in the life of one member can accomplish so they all set off to fast and sacrifice a little in their own life for the benefit of this sick person.
Days pass, prayers are made, tests are done, and a physician gives the results. The disease is back with a vengeance, treatment has only worked to stall its progression but not deter or defuse it. All that could be done from a scientific perspective was done. The ailing family member will not walk away from this bed as they have all but a few days left to live.
Church members are now solemn but accepting of this final statement. Some linger about their church halls, family gatherings, and private prayer closets still hoping for the miraculous.
Our Believer, our favorite Believer in this story, however, is undeterred, albeit, confused. They sweat under the weight of this responsibility to be the only person of faith left in the family and church community who still believes in the power of the Miracle Worker.
Their stress levels are at an all-time high, there is continued fighting between them and their spouse which only increases in frequency with the unfortunate news.
This stress leaves our believer susceptible to more thoughts of sexual gratifications that can be accomplished through other means, other people. They push these thoughts away but they are more prominent now, more consistent. That other church member would be more understanding of their situation and would possibly be a better spouse, too. Perhaps befriending them in this challenge was the best thing possible. An opportunity to meet someone they could better fulfill themselves with later. It only makes sense that God would allow them to grow closer together as the bitter and bickering spouse distances themselves further and further. It is all making sense.
But for now, the Believer must give their undivided attention and willful sacrifice on behalf of the bedridden family member. More time is spent in the hospital than at home. God understands this sacrifice. More attention is given to the ailing family member than work and bills at home. God understands this too. Our Believer no longer attends church nor do they fraternize with fellow church members because their faith has soured. Rumors are they no longer believe in miracles. You see, their faith, because of their lack of sacrifice, consistency, asceticism, and discipline, has all but waned and disappeared. They’re too busy indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, with their daily meals, suppers, and deserts. They drink as much as they like without any prohibitions.
They give in to one another sexually, and this gives our believer a rise. How could they have so much sexual fulfillment and fruition in a time such as this? News of pregnant church members reaches our Believers’ ears but the Believer shuns it. How could we speak of new life when there is one that needs rescuing?
Joy, happiness, gladness, and gratitude are no longer terms that pass through our Nelievers’ lips. What is there to be joyful for? The miraculous has yet to take place.
Our sickly family member is on the doorsteps of the beyond, their body resembles a corpse, our Believers’ body resembles that of a corpse too, but they’re a bit more animated.
The dying family member calls the remaining family to their bedside to bid all farewell. Many are present, others cannot muster the courage to attend. The hospital limits the number of guests.
Our Believer is firm at their side, still, quietly persistent, fasting, abstaining still, trusting, and knowing God will deliver.
The dying family member shares a few memories of love, joy, and laughter, as many as they can because they are weak. A physician joins the procession only to advise the dying family member to use their words wisely and sparingly because talking will drain them of the little bit of time they have left.
Hugs are exchanged. ‘Get well soon’ balloons are removed from the room but flowers are left behind. Tears are spent and goodbyes are given. As the hours move on so do the visitors. Their hopes have all but vanished and we’re left with our Believer and the recipient of their prayers, the dying family member.
Here, the Believer comes to a crossroad. At this point, as the heart monitor begins to process the transition between life and death, the beating drum of life within a person’s chest that begins to cease, our believer is undecided, perhaps, on how to cope with this situation.
My God is a miracle worker and He hears my prayer!
And our family member succumbs to their terrible disease, expiring on this bed, the same one from which their physician said they would not walk away.
Our Believer is perplexed. Their six-month challenge has been cut short, not because the miraculous took place but because a disease took someone’s life.
Here, we know, is where an unraveling of the self begins to take place.
Questions are made in secret, in the mind, and in the depths of the soul as to what went wrong and where.
Perhaps our Believer should have done five days of fasting. That’s it. Five was the appropriate number. And water? Although it is dangerous to forego water, appropriate hydration for three, maybe four days at a time, but a sacrifice is a sacrifice and our Believer failed to trust God for sustenance. Christ relied on angels for reprieve but our Believer doubted. And doubt leads to missed spiritual opportunities, you know.
And what about sexual intimacy? Here, our Believer, having gone so long without it, begins to believe they no longer need it. Because the relational part of their marriage has all but crumbled, and this a result of their spouse and not their own, the only reason to keep the marriage is for sexual gratification but because our Believer thinks it is not a necessary element of life they forego marriage altogether because what is the point of being married to a cantankerous spouse when one can be married to Christ?
Our Believer has the option of accepting their family members’ death as a result of life. Diseases are part of life, you know. Death too. Or, our Believer can come to the rationalization that this unfortunate loss of life came about as the result of the lack of faith and a lack of assiduous concern for spiritual matters in their personal life.
Our Believer begins to scold other church members because their carelessness caused this death. They leave their church body. They create a new church ministry under the benign name of miracles, wonders, and such, as a means to attract real believers, those who are willing to pay the price for miracles.
They disparage the lack of ascetic efforts of others. Set strict guidelines for fasting regimens. The enjoyment of other benign pleasures like attending sporting venues, playing sports, watching television, catching the newest flick in theatres, and drinking any beverage that is suspect of containing alcohol is strictly forbidden and prohibited in this ministry.
If one is not willing to sacrifice much for God then God will not answer prayers.
Sex is a byword and forgiveness is no longer extended to those who fail with sexual sins. They’re brought to the front of the congregation and shamed for the practices, made to confess in front of all, and then disciplined for the same. Married couples are to abstain from sexual intimacy at our Believers’ discretion. At times without cause and other times without end.
Our Believer is a full-blown critic of simple faith and cannot imagine a life without rigorous sacrificial efforts. Returning to a lifestyle without such limitations and rules would mean returning to a life without miracles and wonders.
We have yet to see any miracles take place in our Believers’ life. They presume that the challenges of running a new minister, of an impending divorce, of critique of their new ways of rigorous living as attacks from the devil so this pushes them further into their disillusionment.
Our Believer is trapped by the fear of letting go and letting God. They cannot allow for such a life without rules, regulations, sacrifice, fasting, and such, because if they give in to a spiritual life based on faith and grace they will have to dissolve the wall of works and sacrifices they have built around themselves.
What then, has become of our Believer?
They are not living by faith but by fear. If one fails to fast, they fail to receive. If one fails to sacrifice time, pleasure, sex, fun, entertainment, family, marriage, and the self, then one fails to receive the grander things of God.
How else might we get something from God if we do not give Him something first?
Therefore our Believer is trapped and blinded by their own desires, which are first were prudent and kindhearted but turned into something destructive and all-consuming because the approach was not to glorify God in all things, win or lose, life or death, miracle or no miracle, but to prove to the self that if we do something for God then God will do something for us.
Our Believer is consumed by fear. Fueled by it actually.
And at this point, there are only two true alternatives left for our Believer. They will either continue into this disillusionment, amassing a following so great, a group of disciples so attracted to this ascetic rigidity that our Believer will begin to think they are a mini-god who speaks for God at a moments notice. There is no medium of revelation. Any reading of scriptures that is not first translated by our Believer is wrong. The congregation and its adherents will then rise in numbers, persistence, and cultish behavior. Any attempt to dissuade them will only strengthen their resolve. Their end is in themselves.
The other alternative is that our Believer will dissolve under the weight of repressed sensualities, commit a number of financial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and sexual deviances and sins, and will be rightfully ousted from their position of power and prominence.
And it is there, in their wallowing and shame that they will have an opportunity to revisit their true faith, one of grace, mercy, love, and trust, or, in their undiminished pride, they will abandon faith and God altogether.
Our believer transitions from belief, to asceticism, to disillusionment, to cultic behavior, and finally, either a rekindling of true faith or a dismantling of all belief.
All this in pursuit of manipulating the Divine.
In Closing
Christians, it is our duty to rely on God no matter what. This reliance is based more so on His character and His essence than on what He can give us or get us through. Mind you, God can and has allowed, even preferred many of His own to face all sorts of ills for reasons known only to Him. Should it be health or sickness, life or death, wealth or poverty, our resolve must be to focus on the essence of who our Creator; how we can grow in His grace and in His knowledge.
It is tempting, yes, to believe that by doing a you can receive b but if b is not in God’s plan for your life then no matter how much of a you do, how much you invest into it, how many friends and family members you have join you in the pursuit to attain b by overdoing a, if it is not God’s will it will not happen.
We become enslaved by the doing of things for God to receive things from God. The drinking or the abstaining from drink. The listening or not listening. The eating or not eating not understanding that Christ has delivered us from these ascetic tendencies because they serve no purpose on the grand scheme of His master plan for our lives.
16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Colossians 2:16-23This is not to discourage the believer from prayer or fasting for their personal spiritual growth or for a miracle in any and all circumstances, but it is a warning for you to not become a slave of results or to think you can manipulate the Divine for your own selfish needs. To think that you can give enough to change the Divine is foolish.
Men and women have done so in the past, yes, but those were circumstances to help teach these people that God’s character, His faithfulness supersedes all else.
“if we are faithless, he remains faithful” 2 Timothy 2:13
We must find comfort in Him otherwise we live for these fasting sessions, these lengthy prayer sessions, these unnecessarily lengthy bible study sessions, and revival conferences that if we go without we believe we are missing out on something greater when in fact we fail to realize that the greatest thing has already happened to us and for us.
Christ has died to forgive our sins. Restore our brokenness and reconcile us to the Father. He has granted us eternal life and not just that but the power and grace and presence of the Holy Spirit to guide us through this one. Helping and assisting others, all this in the name of Jesus.
I’m being a minimalist here but that’s because I’m short on time, or rather, article length.
Christ is faithful even when we are not. Seek Christ in all things more than you seek to manipulate things in the name of Christ.
Love by faith and not by fear.
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Check out my new book review on this phenomenal book that tackles the emotionally and morally charged topic of reparations. It sheds new light on something we’re often too uncomfortable to look at, nevertheless discuss. Co-written by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson.
Enjoy!
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Repa-who?
I’ve been listening to Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson’s audiobook, Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair where they deal with, you guessed it, reparations. If you’re unfamiliar with the term it simply means bridging the gap between two parties or peoples, usually, by financial means. The offending party makes restitution for its offense. It repairs the situation. It reparates.
Lexico defines reparation this way:
“The action of making amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those who have been wronged.”
The conversation surrounding reparations has become controversial because when we delve into it we tend to allude to the possibility that the American federal government will have to compensate the people who they robbed of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for centuries.
Discussing reparations today is like diving into a pool of hostility and bitterness because too often the responses on either side of the discussion reach a stalemate.
“Pay us back. If you don’t you’re racist.”
Or,
“We want five trillion dollars! Now!”
Or,
“My family never owned slaves and I’m not racist so why should I pay for what white people did centuries ago?”
Or,
“Yes, my family owned slaves but that was centuries ago.”
Or,
“Why should they be compensated? They’ll just squander the money and waste it and then they’ll ask for more.”
Or,
“They’re forcing us to pay for something our ancestors did. Who is the racist one now?”
The scenarios are endless but you get the gist.
The call for reparations is not new, in fact, I found out that the federal government is very much in favor of reparatory compensation as a means to maintain the peace, stability, and unity of the United States of America. History will show that the federal government leads this discussion by example.
The only problem is that the reparation made regarding the emancipation of the negroes in the United States was not made toward freed slaves but toward former slave owners.
“Wait… wait wait wait wait wait wait a minute. Pause. Rewind. Redux. Whatever redux means. And say that again.”
You heard me the first time loud and clear but I’ll elaborate.
The District of Columbia Emancipation Act
In the year 1862, president Abraham Lincoln signed a bill called the District of Columbia Emancipation Act that benefited the Union favoring slave-owning southerners by granting them up to $300 for every slave they set free.
A little bit of math here for context.
The New York Times pulled up an old newspaper from the golden civil war era. In this article, they find that a slave could be sold for anywhere between $40 – $400 depending on the slaves’ age, sex, and quality of health. Prices varied and later escalated toward the start of the civil war as I imagine slaves became a commodity as valuable as gold itself.
Either way, let’s pull up the value of a cheap slave at $40 and the value of a great slave valued at $400 and ultimately the highest priced slaves around $1,000 and compare them with today’s evaluation system.
Adjust for inflation, time, and all that mambo jumbo stuff, were we to purchase slaves today, this ‘investment’ would set us back a lot of money.
$40 in 1862 would amount to $1,048.02 today.
$400 in 1862 would amount to $10,490.18 today. That’s a Django kind of slave.
And, for the ultra optimal performing slave, you know, the kind that can work like a bull twelve hours a day, is built like a tank, and able to produce an offspring like non-other the price would be around $1,000.
$1,000 in 1862 would amount to $26,225.45 today.
Now, do you understand why slave-trading and slave-owning Americans were so resistant to the idea of abolishing slavery? Plantations would own and house anywhere between fifty slaves and the larger plantation companies would house hundreds of slaves. So do the math. It was a multimillion-dollar industry that if one were to ‘invest’ in the property of slave-ownership they were either rich or on the road to becoming rich simply by procreating his slaves. Two slaves today. Seven in ten years. The value adds up. Procreate them. Work them. Sell them. Buy them. Repeat. Amass wealth.
Anyway… back to reparations.
So with this District of Columbia Emancipation Act signed by American favorite, Abraham Lincoln, allowed the federal government the power to easily dispense $300 dollars to slave owners for each of the slaves they released from bondage.
$300 in 1862 would amount to $7,867.63 today.
If you were a Georgian slaveowner who wanted the civil war to end sooner than later but were lacking in your financial stability you could release your slave and be awarded $300 by the US government as a means to help you in your dire predicament.
If you had ten slaves and you wanted to release all ten, well, guess what, Abraham Lincoln’s war-torn Union would pay you for releasing those slaves.
But…. but the slaves, however, well, it’s America you see and in America, the one thing Americans cannot do is help former slaves or the descendants of said slaves rise up from their miserable predicaments.
In fact, the American government suggested freed blacks emigrate to Liberia and offered them up to $100 if they left the country altogether.
$100 in 1862 would amount to $2,622.24 today.
So, if you were a slave and you worked for forty years, day and night, back-breaking, whipped-up back, denigrated dignity, no education, no reading or writing skills, and psychologically damaged for life and here, in 1862, the US government says it plans to set you free and will pay your master $300 for your liberation and will pay you $100 if you leave the country and head to Liberia.
If you stay, however, you get nothing.
You’re just… well… free?
But if you leave, to a country from which you did not originate, to a land you do not know, to a people who are not your people, they will pay you $100.
Eight months after Abraham Lincoln gave out ‘free money’ to slaveowners he signed the Emancipation Proclamation to abolish and end slavery in the United States of America once and for all.
And here, with this monumental edict, blacks, and indigenous peoples went without reparation whereas Americans of European descent and whose sole rise to fame and luxury arose from the plundering of black and indigenous bodies went on to amass a little more wealth with the help of the US government.
Some will say that Lincoln’s District of Columbia Emancipation Act was a war tactic to destabilize the Confederacy and bring the war to a swift end without further loss of life.
It was Lincoln’s good heart that sought to pay white slave owners for their slaves with federal funds just so they could help bring this unnecessary war to a conclusion.
Possibly. But possibly isn’t good enough.
The Issue: Hypocrisy
The issue here is that the American Government paid slaveowners reparations for disrupting the slave trade but refused to financially, culturally, socially, and geographically structure and stabilize black and indigenous peoples during and after the civil war. And they refuse to repair these two communities to this very day.
I understand that in wartime, government leaders make drastic decisions to advance their position and hopefully win a war not worth the loss of life. I get it. Drastic times call for drastic measures. Whatever. But either Lincoln or his defamed successor could have worked for this effort but failed to because the issue in America was more endemic and pervasive than just slavery.
We know that white supremacy is the issue here but they were too blinded by their racial superiority to consider it.
Either way, I was shocked to find that the same government that today dares not dip its fingers into the conversation of reparations is the same that pushed for reparations for slaveowners 150 or so years ago.
And understand this, reparations are not an issue relegated to financial restitution alone.
It’s about restoring relationships, acknowledging wrongs, giving back that which was taken and stolen, without limits!
Whole states were wiped of their indigenous peoples. Wiped clean. Certain governments paid citizens for the scalps of Native Americans.
State-sanctioned violence toward Native Americans, y’all. You could make a living by killing Native Americans and collecting your bounty from federally funded locations.
What… the…. Hell.
I’m losing my cool here but that’s okay because no one should be calm and collected when discussing the rise of this great nation whose sole identity is based on its patriotic endeavor to liberate people from oppression and give them new liberties and freedoms here, in the West.
The same group was responsible for razing indigenous peoples, responsible for immoral and unethical land seizures, unlawful colonization, and unwarranted violence in that endeavor. They removed millions of black lives from one continent and subjugated them to race-based slavery and inferiority in this ‘new nation.’ It wasn’t new because there were other groups already there. They amassed international financial dominance off of slave labor only to repay slaveowners for disrupting the slave trade and then giving native Americans a little patch of land somewhere in the plains where the buffalo are gunned down by white Americans for sport.
Bruh….
And the same government is hostile to the idea of repairing and restoring that which they took? Barely admitting to its wrongs, quickly alluding to how long ago these things happened, and ignoring the reality and continuity of these harms that are still present in our nation today?
By our nation, I mean the United States of America and the western hemisphere that was affected, one way or another, by the transatlantic slave trade and the Doctrine of Discovery which initiated a church-sanctioned call to conquer the lands to the West.
But none was more complicit in moral and international hypocrisy than the land that swore that they stood for freedom but enslaved others. Stood for freedom of expression but silenced others. Freedom from unlawful forfeiture of their property but considered black people property and seized the lands of those native to that same land.
I believe it’s time for the second District of Columbia Emancipation Act to be signed into law but this time the money, the financial stability, the property allocation, and respect must go to the right groups. The black and indigenous groups.
It is true that none of our federal employees own slaves, and possibly, most of them have ancestors who may have never owned slaves but the thing is that they’re still responsible for repairing the damages done to the colored communities centuries ago.
Of Blessings and Curses
Americans today benefit from the sacrifice Americans made centuries ago. Those who crossed the Atlantic in pursuit of a better life, those who ventured deep into the bush in hopes of finding better land, those who ventured west in pursuit of gold and wealth, those who fought in wars and built the nation that exists today. We’re all benefactors of their sacrifices, their pain so we could live in comfort, their loss of life so we could be alive and live freely.
But, this same system created evils and damages that linger to this very day, that have settled into how the culture operates and how even our communities are set up, how some of us come from money and others don’t, and those who don’t are normally people of color.
Shall we accept only the good our ancestors committed but shy away from their evils?
Are we are shocked when descendants of slaves and indigenous peoples seek that which is rightfully theirs?
An Illustration
Duke Kwon uses an example in his book that makes sense but even this simple example is not encompassing enough to demonstrate or explain just how complex this situation has become.
Imagine I steal your car and drive it for twenty years, it’s a Toyota so it’ll last that long, and I pass it down to my children. They didn’t commit grand theft, they simply inherited something from their father, unknowing of its origin or acquisition. But years later the true owner of the vehicle shows up demanding their car back and my kids say, “Well, I didn’t take anything. I’m just driving it. It has been passed down in my family! I’m no thief, are you mad? If you take my car away now you’ll disrupt my life! There’s a very good chance you’ll wreck the car if I give it back to you now. Why should I have to pay for my father’s mistakes?”
Do you see what I mean?
Whose car is it in the first place? Right.
Who gets a say on what happens to the car? Me, my children, or the owner or the owners’ children?
Native Americans want their land back.
African Americans want reparations for all their hard work as descendants of slaves.
That incentive should have never made its way to former slaveowners or the children of these slaveowners who amassed wealth first from slavery and later from emancipating their slaves.
Sighs…
Either way, much work to do, perhaps, with a more diverse nation, one more aware of its history and one with a willing heart to repair and reconcile this issue will rise up in the near future to fix these wrongs. To make amends for the wrongs committed ages ago.
We’re not there yet but one day we might be.
Perhaps the United States of America might become something other, something else. Part United States and part Turtle Island.
Part Wakanda.
People of color will have the chance to remove confederate terrorist symbols and statues from government buildings and public spaces the same way Germany removed Nazi symbols and criminalized them after the war.
The Confederates prided themselves as rebels, you know. A violent insurgency that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. An army and pseudo-nation that plagued the world by fighting for the preservation of white supremacy and slave trading. And we still see their battle flag wave about here and there as if over time it has come to mean something other than seditious terrorism.
Reparation demands that the offending party or the group or agency that benefited from this offense admit fault, repair that which was broken, replenish that which was robbed, reconcile that which was severed, repent of the white supremacist ideations that caused these evils in the first place, and rebuild that which was destroyed over time. It is a call to do all these things under the banner of collective responsibility to do what is just and what is right.
This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish but if this nation has survived this long through so many wars and troubles it can survive a necessary reparations act that will benefit the descendants of peoples who were wronged.
Because what was taken from black bodies and indigenous bodies was not just money but land, identity, culture, a right to voice their grievances, to vote, citizenry, protections, futures, posterity, education, religion, and dreams.
We’re still struggling with the legacy of white supremacy within the United States and we will continue to struggle against it further but the calls for reparations have gone unanswered and ignored for too long.
The time for restitution and reconciliation is now.
Or we could just stick with $300 for the children of former slaveowners and call it a day.
The Christian Conscience
In Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, the authors speak primarily but not singularly to Christian conscience. They appeal to Chrisitan holy writings to drive the point that is it a Christian’s duty to repair and restore things broken and stolen. We’re to be the Good Samaritans in a situation where many have walked away from a demanding task. A task that requires we sacrifice personal comfort and experience public scorn. We’re to take time away from our comfort to suffer a little so that others may be comforted. As followers of Christ, we are obliged to live as Christ lived, calling out injustice where He saw it and giving our lives for one another.
Mind you, it was a supposedly Christianized nation that enslaved and pillaged these lands for centuries and again a supposedly Christianized people who sought to abolish slavery. Again, a supposedly Christianized conscience sought to bring equality between the races and the dignity of colored people back from the chambers of darkness.
Therefore, it must be a Christian conscience that spears this fight for reparation because we created this mess and we must fix it.
We are supposedly the sole guardians of a clear conscience, a clean heart, and clean hands. Therefore let us use these for good.
If we fail then another institution, secular or religious, will lead this project and their means and ends may be more disastrous than our complicit participation in slavery and our complicit silence on the topic of racism, white supremacy, and reparations.
Go and reconcile men and women unto God but do not leave the same destitute, naked, and abandoned in the process. That’s not our purpose on this earth. Restore the entire man or restore nothing at all.
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My reading list for 2021 is daunting and hopeless but that’s the fate of anyone who dares to read and read at length about history. I’ve spent the better part of the 2020 and now 2021 looking into the history of Christianity, say, with a focus on its first 100 years, then its first 500 years, and lately, its first 1000 years, as it spread west, north, east, and south of Jerusalem eventually becoming a multi-national superpower (empire) for good and, and later, for evil.
Either way, I’ve been reading, a lot. Just to get a grasp on how the self-less, self-sacrificing, redemptive and love-centric teachings of the Incarnate Son of God could lead people to commit such heinous atrocities in the name of Christ, wielding sword and shield with a red cross painted on the front in Holy Wars to reclaim ‘stolen lands’, enslave millions, later shipping them across the Atlantic to keep them in bondage on the basis of racial superiority under the Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny.
Stuff like that. I’m figuring that stuff out. Much to read. Much to learn. Much weeping and lamenting to do. Much forgiveness to give and forgiveness to receive. Yada yada.
Anywho, here’s what I have on my non-fiction list for the year 2021. Hope there’s something on it you’ll find interesting enough to pick up and read in your free time.
Let me know if you do or if you have anything you believe I should add to my list. Please, only suggest material you (personally) consider the best of the best.
On History, Christian History, American History and Christianity and Culture:
It’s a lot, but… you’ve got to start somewhere.
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Just finished this painful but historically accurate and necessary book co-written by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.
Here are some words from its final chapter – Conclusion: Truth and Conciliation
“George Erasmus, an aboriginal leader from the Dene people in Canada, says, ‘Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.’ The United States of America has a white majority that remembers a history of discovery, opportunity, expansion, and exceptionalism. Meanwhile our communities of color have the lived experiences of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow laws, Indian removal, ethnic cleansing, lynchings, boarding schools, segregation, internment camps, mass incarceration, and families separated at our borders. Our country does not have a common memory.
[…] Because the problems our nation are facing are systemic and corporate, because our problems are rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery and the heresy of Christian empire, and because the American church still broadly accepts the national identity of Christendom, the church in America literally has nothing to offer. Its only solution to our national problems is to ‘make the nation Christian again.’ But that is precisely what caused our problems in the first place.”
Wow.
Mark and Soong-Chan do not hold back on the dark and bloody history of a theologically confused European society that ravaged the lands west of the Atlantic, formerly known as Turtle Island but sapped of its resources and peoples to be renamed, the United States of America. An imperialist, colonialist, and exceptionalist push westward that benefited those created in the image of God but in practice that God only resembled white land-owning men of Protestant English descent. This discovery of an already inhabited land was a sign of the immoral compass of a state-church of the past and also lingering avarice of the newly independent American colonies that instead of seeking fellowship and fraternity with the indigenous people they were so near to they instead vowed to erase them and their name from the lands they inhabited. A history lesson so grim that one must look back and wonder if America was or is truly the land of the free and the brave. Because for the most part, all that was accomplished in the inception of this great nation, was the construction of a state on the blood and bones of another nation that lived there before them. The authors ventured into the psychological effects of colonialism on victims and perpetrators. Hence, historical trauma, complex PTSD, and lastly, perpetrator-induced trauma. The whole of the nation is enduring signs of trauma, some, unable to cope with the presence of their perpetrators still surrounding their already diminished and scandalized lands, and others, experiencing the guilt of their ancestors’ crimes and dealing with the denial and culpability of the same.
This nation has yet to grapple with its inception and the lingering trauma it has caused the world. It will one day.
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Check out my book review of this revelatory tale of the theological crisis surrounding the American Civil War and the American church. It covers the beneficial ramifications of rigorous biblical hermeneutics concerning the damnable institution of slavery in the American South and how challenges to abolish slavery were rebutted by Southern American theologians and ministers. What began as an appeal to conscience turned out to be a theologically rich argument against slavery in the abstract and later slavery in practice in the American Deep South by theologians and abolitionists worldwide. Written by historian Mark A. Noll.
Enjoy!
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I’m working my way through Rachel Joy Welcher’s book, Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality and it’s a work of art.
Rachel covers the rise of “traditional values” taking over the American Christian culture in the 60s and 70s as a reactionary effort to combat the explosion of sexual liberation and the spike in sexually transmitted diseases. What began as an effort to stave off unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, financial instability, broken families, and homes ended up becoming a culture of virginity idolization, shame, sexual repression, and sexual misinformation that to this day continues to harm men and women within religious circles.
She covers the rise of purity rings and abstinence pledges, the idolization of virginity, female responsibilities, and male purity and the rhetoric of lust. These topics are covered in the first four chapters alone.
Purity Rings and Abstinence Pledges
Rachel makes mention of the proliferation of purity rings and abstinence pledges that swept the teen and youth markets, as youth leaders and itinerant panelists collected pledges from unassuming adherents as if they were trophies. Mind you, purity rings and pledges were made so that adherents, teens, mind you, could pride themselves in abstinence in hopes of making it to marriage without dipping their fingers into the cesspool of sexual depravity (my words). Teens found greater spiritual comfort in the ring on their hand than in the words of God and the grace afforded them through the efficacious work of Jesus on the cross. One woman reported that after getting married and bedding her husband she took her ring off, only to feel impure and unclean from removing the ring and resorting to wearing it again as if it were some mystical talisman that kept her spiritually clean. The ring and the pledge are what kept her spiritual purity intact.
The Idolization of Virginity
Then comes the idolization of virginity. How many of us are still struggling with the visuals of flowers being crushed, a sheet of paper being crumbled and then ripped to shreds, or a clay vase being shattered, as visual examples of what we would be like if we lost our virginity before marriage. We are all delicate creatures whose virginity must remain intact, pure, undefiled, and if we so much as submit to the heat of intercourse our lives are from there on blemished and our worth tainted forever. Like bruised roses, our beauty is dimmed. Like a ripped sheet of paper, our utility is lost. Like a shattered vase, we are forever deformed, even when put back together our life is deformed forever. And under this guise, teens and young adults went to lengths to engage in every form of sexual activity for extended periods of time to alleviate the tension of youthful sexual awakening inasmuch as they did not engage in intercourse itself. From manual stimulation to oral gratification, everything went, inasmuch as intercourse was left out of the equation. The idolization of virginity created a duality within Christendom where boys and girls who remained virgins until marriage were considered pure and holy, whereas those who had relinquished theirs were depraved and lost souls who no longer deserved a healthy and fulfilling marriage. People were not classified as saints saved by Christ and made righteous by His work. They were classified as holy and coveted because of their virginity. A culture of shame and ostracization bloomed in this era, making millions of sexually and spiritually uneducated youth feel like the possibility of having a successful and fulfilling marriage was gone because they had premarital sex. Being a virgin until marriage was the only way for one to be sexually fulfilled and maritally successful. No other metric is needed.
Female Responsibilities and Male Purity and the Rhetoric of Lust
Rachel delves into the disillusioned and harmful mindset that festers within this culture where a woman has the responsibility of controlling a man’s desires and lust. She must dress a certain way, independent of how robust and curvacious her God given body is. Her modesty and purity, and her male counterparts’ purity is dependent upon how she looks and behaves. Hence, whenever a woman is a victim of sexual violence and rape at a university campus, a train station, at home, a church, or anywhere in the world, the generic and demonic question usually is: What was she wearing?
Rachel states that within this culture, a woman has to dictate to a man what is and what is not acceptable, sexually speaking, within a relationship. She must dress modestly, whatever the culture, usually run by men, dictates is modest enough for her to wear so as not to tempt men. And here, men are seen as savage sexual beasts who have no control or restraint over their sexual appetites and women are to prevent and control this animalistic side in them. Therefore behaving seductively is prohibited because such behavior is an invitation for sexual assault. Women are not to tempt men. Women are to set boundaries. Women this. Women that. There’s an unforgiving weight of responsibility placed on women and women alone to be the pillar of a man’s sexual purity or the sole responsible agent of sexual assault.
What. The. Hell.
Not just that, but women are to be sexually rigid vessels, frigid and cold to the thought of sexual activity until their honeymoon where they are to know everything a man wants, unleash themselves as often and liberally to whatever her husband wants, protect him from seeking sexual gratification outside the home by offering herself up as a sexual opiate to him as much as possible, even if there is pain, exhaustion, dissatisfaction, and no pleasure derived from the act.
A woman is to be like a light switch, sexually inactive for the better part of the first two to three decades of her life and at a moment’s notice, without her consent or understanding, become the most sexually active being on the planet.
She is a machine and at the same time a princess on a pedestal. Her worth is valued by her virginity before marriage and by her sexual prowess and promiscuity with her husband once married. She is not allowed to think freely about what healthy sex life is like before marriage because thinking like that gets her tagged with unmentionable monikers.
Girls aren’t supposed to talk about sex before marriage. That’s uncomely of them. If they do then their sexually active, depraved, and filthy.
All this without evidence, of course.
Rachel explains that within purity culture, a man is an animal who struggles with insatiable sexual lusts that can only be tamed by a wife and if she is unavailable for any particular amount of time he will be forced to seek that gratification through pornography or adultery. And the person left with the blame of the husband’s infidelity is the wife for not, as Rachel states, “being sexually available enough.”
Closing Remarks
Purity Culture creates an unbiblical and psychologically damaging atmosphere where our worth is dictated by our sexual choices, whereas, a virgin is pure and someone who is not a virgin is sexually filthy and spiritually sick. We’re measured not by our stance before a Redeeming God but by a Christianized Culture’s idea of what purity is: virginity.
Rachel does not dismount or dethrone the bible but she elevates its worth when it comes to sex and sexuality. She amplifies how the bible speaks that a man should not withhold sex from his wife and vice versa. That sexual fulfillment goes both ways. Both men AND women are sexual beings who truly enjoy and find peace in fulfilling sexual experiences within marriage. She dismantles the idea that women are but vessels of man’s gratification. A place where a beast goes to alleviate its ramped-up hormones and then moves on to its more mundane tasks, returning to a civilized state until it needs sex again.
This is dismissive of God’s true intent in human sexuality.
And purity culture has done more damage to Christian youths and adults today than the sexual revolution ever did in the 60s. Millions of people thought that all they had to do was hold out until reaching their honeymoon and voila, they have a successful marriage, but so many have found that this purity culture was all a lie. They were cheated of a healthy education about what true biblical purity really is, what sex is supposed to be like, what body autonomy really is, what God says about sex, and etc.
Thinking that if they got the ring, made the pledge, set boundaries, dressed appropriately, behaved correctly, and then suddenly became sexually available for their husbands/wives in the blink of an eye once married that they need not worry about anything else, ever again.
It’s a myth. An unbiblical myth. It’s ungodly and unChristian teaching that creates an aura that praises and elevates legalism and self-righteousness within the body of Christ.
I’m only four chapters into this revelatory book and I’m hellbent on writing more about this topic because I’ve lived in and through, and thankfully, survived the purity culture. I was there. I took the ring. Made my pledge. I always thought the girl I was dating or pursuing had to set our sexual boundaries. I believed that we could reach every base on the field inasmuch as we did not consummate our relationship with intercourse.
Thanks to Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye (which he has since denounced, divorced his wife, and abandoned Christianity) millions of teens and young adults avoided dating because the concept of engaging the opposite sex romantically was deemed an unholy venture. Holding hands, exchanging kisses, hugs, discussing a future together whilst dating was deemed unchristian and millions of people entered marriage without any sort of social or relationship skills thinking that their absence from the dating scene early in life would accentuate their marriage in the future. Little did they know is that they entered into a lifelong commitment with someone they were and are incompatible with, whose temperant is childish, whose maturity is nonexistent, whose ability to communicate, disastrous and here, in this holy union they are bound to shame, guilt, and ungratifying sex life.
I’m not saying this to make the reader believe one should be as sexually promiscuous as possible before entering marriage for the sake of acquiring sexual “skills” whatever that means, but that there are two extremes to this topic, and Christians were taught to believe that purity culture was not an extreme when in reality it was just as harmful as having no boundaries whatsoever in one’s dating and sex life.
The difference between the sexual revolution of the 60s and the Purity Culture that began in the 70s and continues to this day is that one of these extremes is supported, unbiblically so, by bible-believing Christians.
I cannot wait to finish Talking Back To Purity Culture to further understand how proof-texting the Bible and adhering to cultural standards of purity, instead of biblical standards of purity, sanctity, and righteousness, is one of the greatest blemishes of the 20th and 21st-century church.
We must recoup a healthy biblical and psychologically healthy understanding of the beautiful and complex bodies God has given us and how they are made for procreation but also sexual gratification. We must not shy away from the beauty of intercourse but we mustn’t destroy this divine gift by exploiting it either.
There is danger in exploitation as much as there is in repression.
The sexual revolution was but the reaction of repressed people rediscovering sex in the public square. The purity culture was but the reaction to the sexual revolution. If we keep on being reactionary about sexuality we will get to a point in history where we no longer know what normal sexuality even is.
We can do better. We should.
One healthy hermeneutic at a time.
Read Rachel’s book, people! Read it and weep! Weep from the joy that you’re free from an ungodly purity culture and free to serve God, forgiven, renewed, righteous, and made in His image.
Now go on about your business.
Featured Image belongs to Rachel’s book. It was modified to fit into a collage in order to become the main image for this post.
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Check out my book review of this 500-plus page behemoth of an expose about homosexuality, power, and hypocrisy within the Vatican and the Curia. Written by French author and journalist, Frederic Martel.
Enjoy!
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Check out my book review of this heart-wrenching story of escape, survival, and self-discovery written by Canadian author Esi Edugyan.
Enjoy!
Olivet Theory 