Instagram Posts from the Week of Sept. 15, 2019

Account to Follow - Sept. 18, 2019

As you can see in Rachel Cargle’s IG profile, she is a public academic, writer, and lecturer. Rachel Cargle boldly and powerfully delivers truth, and she is deeply appreciated by so many people.

The first piece I read by Rachel Cargle was “When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels,” which I posted about on September 5th. The writing of Rachel Cargle makes me anything but comfortable, and I am grateful.

Follow @rachel.cargle if you aren't already, and support her work as she is “building an intellectual legacy through teaching, storytelling & critical discourse.”

#rachelcargle #accounttofollow #publicacademic #writer #lecturer #supportblackwomen #antiracism #antiracist #antiracismwork #dismantlewhitesupremacy #endwhitesupremacy #endpatriarchy #feminism #womensrights #feminist #womanist #empowerwomen #blackfeminists #dismantletoxicwhitefeminism #startingwithmyself #whitefeminismisnotfeminism #enddiscrimination #seekjustice #restorativejustice #lovemercy #walkhumbly #broadeningthenarrative



Additional Rec. - Sept. 19, 2019

Additional Rec. - “How Christian Rationalism Turned Me Into a Psychopath, or A Biblical Defense of Feelings” by Michael Minkoff, Jr.

On April 7, 2016, Michael Minkoff, Jr. posted an article about his experiences in Protestant Reformed churches that produced Christian rationalism in him while simultaneously diminishing the value of feelings. This had deleterious effects for him and those around him. I have included quotes below from the article.

“See, in Old Testament culture, the seat of the intellect was not the brain/mind. It was the heart (leb: לֵב), the 'inner man.' In fact, it continues to be the case that many Eastern cultures (at least in their language) use the heart as the organ of the intellect.”

“For instance, consider Jeremiah 17:9-10. These verses are central to why many Christians reject emotions as deceptive and untrustworthy: ‘The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.’ ‘See!’ they say. ‘God says it right there. The heart, the seat of emotions, not the mind mentioned in verse 10 is more deceitful than all else.’ Except the word 'heart' in verse 9 doesn’t actually refer to the seat of your emotions. It refers to the seat of your intellect and will: your inner man.”

“So I take issue with the notion that any one human capacity is not prone to fallibility, as if reason is more to be trusted than emotion. If anything, when properly interpreted, Jeremiah 17:9 indicates that the intellect is the most deceitful capacity of man. In modern terms, it could easily be translated: ‘The mind is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick…’ I would rather translate it here as ‘the inner man,’ but either way, the idea that feelings are less trustworthy or more fallible than reason is not biblical. Both feelings and intellect are important and equally indispensable. Lessening the value of one capacity over another within the church is bound to create dangerous and truth-distorting imbalances.”

“At a young age, I learned to view my emotions as a weakness and a vulnerability. I hardened my heart into a tablet of stone.”

“But right now, the church desperately lacks deeply feeling people with expansive emotional capacities. They are our conscience. They are central to uninhibited worship. They are vital to our empathy for the broken world. It’s time we hold feelings to the same standard we hold the intellect to, and we can do that only when we value feelings as much as we value the intellect. It’s time to topple the idol of Christian rationalism. It’s time we Westerners learn to love God with all of our human faculties.”

Many people probably don’t need a guy named Michael that they don’t know to tell them that it’s ok to feel their feelings. If that’s you, then great! When a friend posted this article last year, though, I appreciated it as it gave language to my experiences. If you’ve read this or if you do read it, comment below because I would love to know what you think.  

#additionalrecommendation #recommendation #michaelminkoffjr #howchristianrationalismturnedmeintoapsychopath #abiblicaldefenseoffeelings #emotionalhealth #emotionallyhealthy #empathy #loveyourneighbor #feelings #valuefeelings #feelyourfeelings #allthefeelings #hermeneutics #checkbiases #checkassumptions #humanity #learning #socialjustice #seekjustice #restorativejustice #lovemercy #walkhumbly #repent #repair #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative




Book Rec. - Sept. 21, 2019

Current Read - A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master" by Rachel Held Evans

“I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it’s up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God’s presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God’s presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner” (Evans, 2012, p.30).

“Somewhere between the chicken soup and the butter-bleeding pie, I’d made peace with the God of pots and pans-not because God wanted to meet me in the kitchen, but because He wanted to meet me everywhere, in all things, big or small. Knowing that God both inhabits and transcends our daily vocations, no matter how glorious or mundane, should be enough to unite all women of faith and end that nasty cycle of judgment we get caught in these days” (Evans, 2012, p.43).

“The irony of course, is that while advocates of biblical patriarchy accuse everyone else of biblical selectivity, they themselves do not appear to be stoning adulterers, selling their daughters into slavery, taking multiple wives, or demanding that state laws be adjusted to include death sentence for rape victims...at least not yet. Those who decry the evils of selective literalism tend to be rather clumsy at spotting it in themselves” (Evans, 2012, p.52).

“Old Testament scholar Ellen F. Davis notes that the [Prov. 31]  poem was intended ‘not to honor one particularly praiseworthy woman, but rather to underscore the central significance of women’s skilled work in a household-based economy.’ She concludes that ‘it will not do to make facile comparisons between the biblical figure and the suburban housewife, or alternately between her and the modern career women.’ And yet many Christians interpret this passage prescriptively, as a command to women rather than an ode to women, with the home-based endeavors of the Proverbs 31 woman cast as the ideal lifestyle for all women of faith...No longer presented as a song through which a man offers his wife praise, Proverbs 31 is presented as a task list through which a woman earns it” (Evans, 2012, p.76).

“In Jewish culture it is not the women who memorize Proverbs 31, but the men. Husbands commit each line of the poem to memory, so they can recite it to their wives at the Sabbath meal, usually in a song...We abandoned the meaning of the poem by focusing on the specifics, and it became just another impossible standard by which to measure our failures. We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description” (Evans, 2012, pp.88-89).

“At the last Christian women’s conference I attended, several speakers mentioned the importance of keeping a beauty routine so that husbands will not be tempted ‘to look elsewhere.’ The message is as clear as it is ominous: Stay beautiful, or your husband might leave you...and if he does, it’s partially your fault” (Evans, 2012, pp.100-101).

“It seems that most of the Bible’s instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality...I’ve heard dozens of sermons about keeping my legs and my cleavage out of sight, but not one about ensuring that my jewelry was not acquired through unjust or exploitive trade practices” (Evans, 2012, p.128).

“Both Jesus and Paul spoke highly of celibacy and singleness, and for centuries the Church honored the contributions of virgins and widows to the extent that their stories occupied the majority of Christian literature...The pendulum would swing back during the Reformation, when, as a reaction to the cloistered life, Luther and the Reformers elevated the virtues of homemaking and domesticity above those of rigid asceticism...Perhaps someday, all women, no matter their marital status or procreative prowess, will be equally honored by the Church...As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ. And following Christ is something a woman can do whether she is married or single, rich or poor, sick or healthy, childless or Michelle Duggar” (Evans, 2012, pp.179-180).

“The breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, leaders, and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision. And right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever. Right now thirty thousand children die every day from preventable disease. Right now a woman dies in childbirth every minute. Right now women ages fifteen to forty-four are more likely to be maimed or to die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined...So my advice to women is this: If a man ever tries to use the Bible as a weapon against you to keep you from speaking the truth, just throw on a head covering and tell him you’re prophesying instead. To those who will not accept us as preachers, we will have to become prophets” (Evans, 2012, pp.280-281).

“When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our tastes...More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says...The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth. Among the women praised in Scripture are warriors, widows, slaves, sister wives, apostles, teachers, concubines, queens, foreigners, prostitutes, prophets, mothers, and martyrs. What makes these women’s stories leap from the page is not the fact that they all conform to some kind of universal ideal, but that, regardless of the culture or context in which they found themselves, they lived their lives with valor. They lived their lives with faith...there is no one right way to be a woman...not if Deborah, Ruth, Rachel, Tamar, Vashti, Esther, Priscilla, Mary Magdalene, and Tabitha have anything to say about it” (Evans, 2012, pp.294-295).

Y’all, go read, or re-read, this book!

#currentread #ayearofbiblicalwomanhood #bookrecommendation #bookrec #rachelheldevans #becauseofrhe #rememberingrhe #biblicalwomanhood #eshetchayil #womanofvalor #proverbs31 #proverbs31woman #reading #learning #doubting #loving #growing #love #lovegod #loveneighbor #broadeningthenarrative