the Christian ethos of 'respect'

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I suspect what most Christian men using the "I want respect from my wife" line are saying, intentionally or unintentionally, is that they want to be an authority - they want to be "Christ to their church": unassailable, unquestionable, godlike.

Perhaps rather tellingly, though, I don't see 'treat a man as an authority' as a particularly Christian ethos. I mean, every man since Adam - be he Christian or not - wants to be the authority to the women in his life, whether he was a king with a thousand concubines or an indentured slave who was permitted to couple with a fellow slave (for the purposes of 'breeding stock').

Treating a woman as a person? As Jesus did to the women around him, not only teaching them (Martha) but challenging them (the woman at the well), declaring their faith beyond that of any man they'd met (the Syro-Phoenician woman) and sending them out as his missionaries (to proclaim his resurrection to the men around them)?

That is a unique Christian ethos; distinct in the history of the world before Christ and only existing since due to the influence of Christ on our society - divinity who sent femininity out to proclaim the comity of his resurrection.

transpeople and Christian reasoning

Truly told, I have yet to find someone who can explain to me the anti-trans message of Christianity that doesn't fall back on "male and female He created them". Because He makes, even now, does he not? He knows us in the womb - including those who turn up one gender physically but have the DNA of another gender. He knows and loves those who are hermaphrodite - he created them as they are. He knows and loves those who change sex at puberty through a biological shift (documented examples in many places). He knows and loves His people, whatever skin colour they have, whatever limbs they bear, whatever physical, genetic, or psychological differences they have from the two standard deviations of humanity.

I understand it from a financial POV: church-related schools will lose money and standing when they have to discipline non-Christian students for not toeing the Christian line against 'moral turpitude'.

I understand it from a gender-behaviour POV: if we can't determine who is male and who is female easily, simply, and early, then we don't know whether they're transgressing the 'appropriate behaviours' for their gender group.

But I can't find any reason other than "He created them male and female" - which certainly doesn't mention race or disability, intellectual capability, or anything beyond the basic genetic prototype needed for the reproduction of every person on the planet.

I used to think that maybe trans people were a 'mistake'. That they were a product of the fall, and that without sin everyone would have been born male or female. But that imputes a whole category of people who don't fit the mould into "you are the physical presence representing the existence of sin in the world" which...I can't think of anything less Christ-like, frankly. I feel like that dismisses the variety of humanity that God made, and the diversity of God's vision for humanity.

There's a whole conversation about disability in there, but I don't know how to have it. Yet.

the trauma of Susan Pevensie

People have a lot of trauma over Susan Pevensie.

A lot of trauma.

I just always figured that if Aslan let the young Calormen Tarkhan into The Everlasting Lands, then if Susan wanted to come, Aslan wouldn't stand in her way.

But Susan turns and walks away from Narnia off her own two feet - she doesn't even believe in Narnia anymore, so why would she want to come back - and everyone's on Aslan's case. (Or CS Lewis'.) Lipstick and nylons is the excuse she gives for walking away, not the reason that she was shut out: to Susan these things are more real to her than talking animals and a resurrected lion.

Did CS Lewis have issues with the 'lipstick and nylons' crowd? Sure. But even if Susan worked a perfectly boring job and was your standard 50s office drone, yet turned her back on Narnia, then she still wouldn't be interested in the everlasting lands.

For me, Susan's Choice is the simplest thing about The Last Battle. All the other stuff? The comparative metaphors of fake lions and donkeys and, oh, I can't even remember half of it all? The weird timelines? The stable and the dwarves trapped in their own minds? The talking creatures who ceased to talk? Actual Tash coming for the Calormene guy? That's the fucked up shit.

To me, it's not Susan Got Shut Out Of Narnia, Boohoo it's Susan Chose Something Else, That's Her Right. And Aslan respects that right. He doesn't go and drag Susan back to Narnia; he lets her make her own judgement and walk away from the door instead of stepping through it.

I mean, I have no obligation to leave a party invitation standing to someone who thinks I'm stupid and imaginary.

The other thing is that I'm not Aslan. Is the door still open for Susan? Maybe. But I think of all the times Aslan says "I am telling nobody's story but their own". Which is basically, "Mind your own biz, this is between me and the other person."

why we don't have room for anything they'd recognise as 'love'

There was a conversation over at MF's FB over the statement: "the church should be famous for its love".

And I noted

Where too often "LOVE" is translated a "you're dirty and awful and nasty and should be glad that the God of heaven cares for you (through the [self-]righteous mouthings of his people)..."

I've been wondering the last couple of years that maybe most of us Christians don't actually believe "in Christ alone". There's always a "and you must" clause.

"And you must prioritise the unborn, the nuclear family, the legality of the gospel, the rights of Christians and the church, the moral Christianising of the law, and your life must look like an western middle-class aspirational life...

Do all this in the name of Jesus Christ and you will surely inherit the kingdom of God!"

The bit that I didn't add was:

I am starting to wonder if it's a by-product "fear of losing their salvation by too-close association with The World"? Even (especially?) in certain Christian circles (*coughs*SydneyEvangelicalism*cough*), the implications have persisted that if you follow the "wrong" path on opinions of everything from homosexuality to abortion to transgenderism then your very salvation is imperilled. And yet at the same time, the leaders attempt to reassure me that "my hope is built on nothing less..."

If my salvation is in Christ's hands alone - if nothing I can do or think other than repudiation of His gift of grace will keep me from the love of God (in Jesus Christ) - then I have no fear of walking out into The World and dispensing the love and support that God has graced me with no matter to whom, or even whether it enables further sinfulness in those I love in my actions. His grace is sufficient for me, and also for them, and I trust in that as I witness to others in ways that 'The Church' may not generally approve.

However, if I feel like my salvation (and, indeed, my church acceptance) is based on my reputation within the church, on the way I vote, on my policy opinions regarding hotbutton culture topics, on my association with the right kind of people in a world of sinners...then, yes, I will not just reject the worldview of the world, but reject the people of the world because they represent my likely rivening from the grace of God.

Australians, Australian Christians, and the shape of water

There's a strong theme of "Australians care about Australians (only)" in our politics, right now. Honour, decency, generosity, thoughtfulness, can all be discarded with the glib phraseology of "For Australia and Australians". It's an alarming mentality of self-interest, particularly coming from a self-admitted Christian PM and the party that conservative Australian Christianity has (at least at a hierarchical leadership level) hitched its wagon to.

Water takes on the shape of that which it inhabits. If we inhabit a space where political expedience says that our yes need not mean yes, (and a woman's no need not mean no), then after a while it's not longer political expedience but who we are.

I am aware that many Christians are worried about religious freedoms and privileges and will vote with that in mind in the coming elections (local and federal).

Me? I'm more worried about who Australians - including Christian Australians - are becoming as a people: the behaviour we espouse in our leaders, the things we'll allow in the name of holding onto our political rights and freedoms.

utterly and totestally perssikuted

There's a persisting irony in the, shall we say, religiosity with which we cling to our "WE BE UTTERLY AND TOTESTALLY PERSSIKUTED" cross.

It is only equalled by the insistent demand that news sites treat us with respect and dignity and in a positive light all the time.

Logic, peoples! If we're being persecuted for our faith, then part of that is going to involve the reported news (which is the world's perspective) about us being negative.

Additionally, the church (broadly speaking) hasn't done any particularly standout works worth reporting on. Large-scale advocation for refugees? Nope. Large-scale advocation for social support? Nope. Large-scale advocation for mental (and spiritual) health? Nope.

The three large-scale advocations that I can think of - for the Sydney Anglican diocese, which is hierarchically led (so a single speaking voice from the top) and biblically based - have been:
1. against gay marriage ($1m put towards the 'No' campaign for marriage equality; the archbishop's statement that gay ministers who want to be married should just leave the Anglican umbrella),
2. for the 'Religious Freedom/Religious Discrimination Bill' that allows organisations to hire and fire people in line with their core beliefs
3. for Religious Education in Schools (my church was personally encouraged to send a positive postcard to our local member about it, and I think the encouragement came from the diocese leadership.

Question: do these things benefit anyone other than the church and the church community?

Like, are we advocating on behalf of the ordinary people around us? Or are we advocating solely with an element of self-interest?

And if we're not advocating on behalf of broader society, rather than in our own self-interest, then how are we being any different to any other self-interested, non-Jesus-led organisation out there in society?

"But the gospel needs--"

Whoa, there, Nelly! Hold it right there. The gospel doesn't need us. God doesn't need us. He graciously allows us to be involved. But he doesn't need us.

"If every voice was still, the rocks themselves would cry out." ~ Jesus ~

What have Christians done for others lately? As a whole, not in the charitable arms, and the small groups that do their work on the sides. Those are good things to do - no doubt about it - but they're also out of sight, out of mind. SHould they be? No. But that's not the way that 'news' works: so far as broader society think - and so far as Christians seem intent on repeating - the only thing we have is TO TELL THE GOSPEL. Which is fine, but we really need to be using actions before we use words. And in hierarchical organisations (such as the Anglican dioceses), they need to come from the top, big and showy and positive - so far as the world is concerned.

And if they're not big and showy and positive as far as the world is concerned, then they're going to be scornful and negative, because that's all they see from Christians. And whining about it doesn't make it any better; an attitude of "they should appreciate us because we're nice people!" Not when the 'nice people' who are like us have treated them badly - individually, collectivally, societally - and aren't willing to take a stand on something that matters to them.

Basically, maybe they don't report anything positive about Christians, because - from their view at least - there is no positive about Christians.

lesser humans, choices and consequences, fears and freedoms

I remember after Trayvon Martin was shot a dozen years back. And hearing about a white mama who said, "His mama can't have loved him the way I love my kids. Black women just aren't capable of that kind of depth." And that was the first time that the idea that some people truly believe "all humans are equal, but some are more equal than others" smacked me in the face. I've seen it since in the dialogue around migrants and refugees, indigneous parents whose kids were taken from them, around asylum seekers, in the dialogue around religious vs non-religious people, and quite notably in many Americans' views of non-Americans.

"They're not like us; they don't pain or hurt or grief the way we do. They're less than | not really | incapable of being human."

Sometimes I think about everything that I am and have and known and own.

Sometimes I think about the fact that I am an unmarried, childless woman, owning property, earning her own wage, respected in her communities, broad in her education, expansive in her reach and influence.

I don't think people always realise just how precarious my existence as me is. Unmarried and childless puts me on the female discard heap of all societies back six thousand years of human community save western ones of the last thirty years. Owning property in my own name wasn't possible for a middle-upper class woman like me until forty years ago in the west, and was only occasionally allowed of upper-class/noblewomen in the thousands of years before. Earning a wage several times the human median - at least twice the male median wage in my society? Extremely rare (guildmistresses, maybe), if not unheard of.

I'm of Asian descent - visibly, undisguisably so - in a western/caucasian society. A citizen of that society, with all the legal rights that a white male of equivalent age born into the same society has.

When people talk about their rights and freedoms being taken away, I always reflect on the rights and freedoms I have, and which women like me have not had for generations upon generations upon generations. I think about me existing a hundred years ago - neither a citizen of China nor one of Australia, someone's household dowd, or a slanty-eyed slut, with no property and no rights and no chance to better myself and my life through any path that anyone will let me take. In that world, I am lesser, and every person I interact with sees me as lesser and treats me as lesser and that's just the way it is/the way God ordained it.

Rights? Freedoms? My existence as a respected and respectable person surfs on a wave that is barely as old as I am, compared with the solid ground of thousands of years of western manhood and masculine dominance. It may yet take me and others like me to a sandy beach from which we can reach solid ground; it may yet dump us in the surf and leave us gasping.

So, to be honest, I find it hard to sympathise with the 'my rights, my freedoms' crowd. I understand what they're feeling - panic and fear at the loss of the certainties that they thought they'd have: time to prepare for the end of the world, time to live in sumptuous excess without thought for tomorrow, time to slowly let go of their beliefs that technology can save us or the arc of human history bends towards justice. It's just a lesser concern in my lights.

Choices and consequences.

There are countries where people have lived as the powerless minority for so long, where victimhood is the norm and self-empowerment is a pipe dream. There are countries where people can't talk about their beliefs or their interests or they'll get locked away and 'reconditioned' - as though humanity is something that others can fix. There are women still alive who were sterilised to keep them from having "the wrong kind of children", and at this moment there is a child-bride weeping in the bed of her husband who is literally old enough to be her father.

These people don't get a choice. They only get consequences.

We get the choice and in that choice we get to bear the consequences. A government can mandate vaccination, and you can still choose not to be vaccinated and take the consequences of not vaccinating. One can argue that the unvaccinated shouldn't have to bear consequences for their choice, but then who bears the consequences when the unvaccinated get sick and take up time and space in the society that could go to someone who didn't get as sick from something that was eminently preventable?

A government can say 'you can't gather and protest' and people can choose to ignore that dictate and gather anyway - and face the consequences of being arrested and getting sick and losing their job for their participation. But the price is also paid by people who weren't at the anti-masking protests: the health professionals who have to deal with those who got sick, the family members who subsequently got sick, the co-workers who had to pick up the slack when their colleagues were let go.

Does this mean we just sit down and shut up and be good little automaton droids in the capitalist system? Don't be so extremist. It's not a one or the other. But there are times and places and spaces to rebel against the system, and there are times and places and spaces to let the system do best what it can do: deal with the processing of large volumes of humans in matters that affect state and national outcomes.

Sometimes I sympathise quite fiercely with the anthropomorphic personifications of Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: THERE IS NO JUSTICE; THERE'S JUST US.