Many years ago, our family unwittingly became tools of the quiverfull movement. I didn't know it at the time, and believed we were in the middle of a good church family, but we were young, and we homeschooled, and as we had children, we were encouraged to have more. In conversations, we heard terminology about "having a full quiver" and about God directing the size of our family that I would come to realize much later was part of a well organized propaganda campaign of the movement.
Now, don't get me wrong; we are and ever will be fully responsible for our own actions and decisions, and do not regret them. But ion the climate where I was a low paid factory with nothing more than a high school education, it was probably not best to encourage us to have more children. The ensuing years gave us challenges that I embraced, but they also saw us thin of resources that had to be spread carefully across the large family. And we find ourselves, mid career, holding our own, but without retirement savings with shorter years left to catch up.
As I watch people admire and emulate families like the Duggars and look back on our own lives, I have to recount that we weren't admired, we weren't emulated. As a matter of fact, in some of the same circles where families would turn on the Duggars faithfully, they held us at a distance. And while we struggled, we faced a general attitude that we had made our own bed, and we were welcome to lie in it. And in some cases, we even faced quite nasty retribution from church members who felt it their Christian duty to try to relieve us of the burden of so many children.
It is one of many reasons I do not trust the church any more. I have not abandoned my Christian faith, but experience is teaching me that a church body of Christians seeking to serve the Lord in sincerity is extremely rare; in my experience, in fact, it doesn't exist. I trust that it does merely out of hope.
But I am thinking of this and how it speaks to privilege. We worship large families who are wealthy, we hold them up as heroes. But large families that struggle through from paycheck to paycheck are chastised as entitlement seeking leeches, while the irony of church members that consider themselves "prolife" escapes them.
The Church will not escape the criticism of those who stand outside it as long as they remain inconsistent on their views of life. It is either sacred or it is not. And if it is sacred, it is always so, and working families deserve as much encouragement and support as wealthy ones.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
No Way Out
In my quest to break out of my hellish workplace, I dumbed down my resume. Because presenting myself as I am doesn't work.
Well, anyway, somehow I must have left clicked the box that submits the resume for a resume critique, and basically they said as much.
What I am discovering is I think too much. The solution, of course, would be "professional" help that would select the right pills to numb that part of my mind and help me accept that simply sitting, never questioning, is the best way to spend the remainder of my existence. I can't do that.
I've looked for answers in the church, but no pastor wants to help these days. They want to solve societal problems, but they don't want to connect one on one and deal with the very real problems quite literally looking them in the eye. They provide rhetoric, not answers, and they're quite good at discussing the finer points of theology, quite poor at healing the wounds that infect the body.
The reason I have compassion for the homeless is because I know them. I understand them. They've learned to numb themselves from the very pain that I feel, not to run from it, but to surrender to it. And I look at them and simply wonder, how long.
This is not a "pity piece"; I don't do pity pieces. This is my journal, my thoughts. I had a meltdown at work the other day, and I'm afraid it's just the beginning. And I'm afraid it will happen at the next job. And the next. And that eventually I will run out of answers.
But the only answers people want to give these days come at the bottom of a bottle. Either prescription pills or illicit drugs and alcohol, pick your poison.
Life should not be a miserable existence.
Well, anyway, somehow I must have left clicked the box that submits the resume for a resume critique, and basically they said as much.
What I am discovering is I think too much. The solution, of course, would be "professional" help that would select the right pills to numb that part of my mind and help me accept that simply sitting, never questioning, is the best way to spend the remainder of my existence. I can't do that.
I've looked for answers in the church, but no pastor wants to help these days. They want to solve societal problems, but they don't want to connect one on one and deal with the very real problems quite literally looking them in the eye. They provide rhetoric, not answers, and they're quite good at discussing the finer points of theology, quite poor at healing the wounds that infect the body.
The reason I have compassion for the homeless is because I know them. I understand them. They've learned to numb themselves from the very pain that I feel, not to run from it, but to surrender to it. And I look at them and simply wonder, how long.
This is not a "pity piece"; I don't do pity pieces. This is my journal, my thoughts. I had a meltdown at work the other day, and I'm afraid it's just the beginning. And I'm afraid it will happen at the next job. And the next. And that eventually I will run out of answers.
But the only answers people want to give these days come at the bottom of a bottle. Either prescription pills or illicit drugs and alcohol, pick your poison.
Life should not be a miserable existence.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
This is My Hell, And I Must Live In It, Alone
As I grow older, I am becoming less and less convinced of the reality of Hell. For the mere reason that the miserable nature of my existence must surely be punishment enough for any of the bad things I have done.
For the past several years, I have genuinely tried to stretch my boundaries, to reach out professionally, to grow, only to discover that a drone will always be a drone and it is ours to accept that lot, and not upset the system. I had a taste, however briefly, of a middle class existence, and it's clear I do not belong there.
So here I sit, in the middle, awake enough to know just how terrible conditions are around me, but powerless to do anything to change it. My job is not to think, only to do, and to be guided solely by the orders of others whom society has dictated my betters.
It is a disgusting condition, and I loathe it. But it is my job to do, not to think.
I only regret that I have brought children into this existence, because my duty is to them, however wretched the world around me might become.
I have dumbed down my resume, removed my degrees, deflated my job titles, in the hopes of getting anything better than the $10 an hour that is barely survival level. I am done.
For the past several years, I have genuinely tried to stretch my boundaries, to reach out professionally, to grow, only to discover that a drone will always be a drone and it is ours to accept that lot, and not upset the system. I had a taste, however briefly, of a middle class existence, and it's clear I do not belong there.
So here I sit, in the middle, awake enough to know just how terrible conditions are around me, but powerless to do anything to change it. My job is not to think, only to do, and to be guided solely by the orders of others whom society has dictated my betters.
It is a disgusting condition, and I loathe it. But it is my job to do, not to think.
I only regret that I have brought children into this existence, because my duty is to them, however wretched the world around me might become.
I have dumbed down my resume, removed my degrees, deflated my job titles, in the hopes of getting anything better than the $10 an hour that is barely survival level. I am done.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
When the Church ENABLES the Exploitation of the Poor
I spent a lot of years in fundamentalist, evangelical churches. I don't regret that time, although I do regret my silence in the face of some social issues.
As the topic turns to payday lenders, and another predatory lender is exposed, though, I think it behooves us to have the conversation about how the church enables these predatory lenders, rather than speaking out against them. And why it must change.
I spent a year in Bible college, and in the churches I attended, tithing was not optional. It was mandatory. Before you eat, before you pay rent, before you pay utilities, you pay that money to God. And yes, you tithe on the gross, not the net, because that's what it means to give of the "firstfruits".
I took it in, hook, line and sinker. I was so afraid of God that I didn't take time to truly disseminate the meaning. Because, after all, a perch in a very very hot place awaited me even as I didn't. Even as these same churches, ironically, declared that we were saved by grace through faith, and not works.
I tried it. And it ruined me financially. In fact, I must admit with some chagrin that when I didn't tithe and the car died, I honestly believed that to be God's punishment. And so I tithed with greater fervor.
My family suffered for that in many ways. But if I went to the church to ask for help, I was chided for not being faithful and supporting my family. The same family they insisted it was my duty to create. I literally could not win as I went from depressing dead end job to dead end job, including 9 months working 750 below the fiery surface of Death Valley California in the mines.
So who do you turn to when the inevitable things happen? Not your savings, you put that in the offering plate. Not your pastor, he has bigger things to worry about like a broken projector or how to bring in a big name Christian star for an outreach event. Nope, in fact the only ones waiting with money were the predators. And so, yes, in desperation, we turned to them. Our credit was terrible, but things had to be done. And in one instance in Nevada, I literally drove a car with no brakes for six months. Not bad brakes, mind you, NONE. I learned to be very skillful about using neutral and park.
We rarely went anywhere because I could not risk literally endangering my family's lives every time we took that car out.
But that tithing, that tithing had to be paid.
Earlier on, I left a truck by the wayside in Washington, an issue that caused a lifelong rift between myself and a man I once considered a mentor and my dearest friend. Because I did not even call to have someone help me out.
But what he didn't understand, and what I in my pride failed to convey, is that I DID call. And I heard the background conversation as the phone lay on the counter, the repeated sighs as here I was again asking for another favor.
Lesson learned. I learned then and there NOT to call upon people.
The church should be in the job of building up the people, not exploiting them. And laws can only do so much. A church that does not STRENGTHEN the hand of the poor and the needy is not serving God, they are serving themselves. And a church that does not properly convey that you have a responsibility to your own physical care before you give to the offering plate is sending an improper message.
The illustration of the widow's mite is often given to show that we are to give sacrificially. Yet nowhere in that verse does it say that widow was living homeless on the streets before she gave that mite. Nowhere does it say she did not have food in her pantry. We cannot read into the passage things that are not there to suit our greed.
Nowadays when the subject of tithe comes up, my response is: "get it from my boss. I am working full time making below the poverty level, so it's his to pay, not mine". Not a completely spiritual answer, mind you, but I am done trying to prove my spirituality. I think it's about time to start being real!
As the topic turns to payday lenders, and another predatory lender is exposed, though, I think it behooves us to have the conversation about how the church enables these predatory lenders, rather than speaking out against them. And why it must change.
I spent a year in Bible college, and in the churches I attended, tithing was not optional. It was mandatory. Before you eat, before you pay rent, before you pay utilities, you pay that money to God. And yes, you tithe on the gross, not the net, because that's what it means to give of the "firstfruits".
I took it in, hook, line and sinker. I was so afraid of God that I didn't take time to truly disseminate the meaning. Because, after all, a perch in a very very hot place awaited me even as I didn't. Even as these same churches, ironically, declared that we were saved by grace through faith, and not works.
I tried it. And it ruined me financially. In fact, I must admit with some chagrin that when I didn't tithe and the car died, I honestly believed that to be God's punishment. And so I tithed with greater fervor.
My family suffered for that in many ways. But if I went to the church to ask for help, I was chided for not being faithful and supporting my family. The same family they insisted it was my duty to create. I literally could not win as I went from depressing dead end job to dead end job, including 9 months working 750 below the fiery surface of Death Valley California in the mines.
So who do you turn to when the inevitable things happen? Not your savings, you put that in the offering plate. Not your pastor, he has bigger things to worry about like a broken projector or how to bring in a big name Christian star for an outreach event. Nope, in fact the only ones waiting with money were the predators. And so, yes, in desperation, we turned to them. Our credit was terrible, but things had to be done. And in one instance in Nevada, I literally drove a car with no brakes for six months. Not bad brakes, mind you, NONE. I learned to be very skillful about using neutral and park.
We rarely went anywhere because I could not risk literally endangering my family's lives every time we took that car out.
But that tithing, that tithing had to be paid.
Earlier on, I left a truck by the wayside in Washington, an issue that caused a lifelong rift between myself and a man I once considered a mentor and my dearest friend. Because I did not even call to have someone help me out.
But what he didn't understand, and what I in my pride failed to convey, is that I DID call. And I heard the background conversation as the phone lay on the counter, the repeated sighs as here I was again asking for another favor.
Lesson learned. I learned then and there NOT to call upon people.
The church should be in the job of building up the people, not exploiting them. And laws can only do so much. A church that does not STRENGTHEN the hand of the poor and the needy is not serving God, they are serving themselves. And a church that does not properly convey that you have a responsibility to your own physical care before you give to the offering plate is sending an improper message.
The illustration of the widow's mite is often given to show that we are to give sacrificially. Yet nowhere in that verse does it say that widow was living homeless on the streets before she gave that mite. Nowhere does it say she did not have food in her pantry. We cannot read into the passage things that are not there to suit our greed.
Nowadays when the subject of tithe comes up, my response is: "get it from my boss. I am working full time making below the poverty level, so it's his to pay, not mine". Not a completely spiritual answer, mind you, but I am done trying to prove my spirituality. I think it's about time to start being real!
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