Estimated Reading Time: 14 minutes
As I am in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing my faith, I am continually grieved by my sins against my beloved sisters. This is a letter of confession for the ways I chose to use my theological interpretations, my “standard” of modesty, and the inculcation of purity culture to objectify, vilify, and disparage women. Though written to women, these words are not solely for women. Brothers, please read this letter I've written to our dear sisters and join those who have been disrupting the dangerous ideologies that seek to rob women of dignity and worth, even in the name of Jesus.
Dear sisters,
Unfortunately I have much to confess. Even more unfortunate, I know this letter will not cover the full extent of my transgressions and that additional letters must follow. My thoughts, words, and actions have harmed you, have failed to honor the Imago Dei in you, and I am sorry. I offer no excuses. I simply offer my sincerest apologies as I desire to rectify the injuries I inflicted. This is deeply personal. For me, yes, but also for you. You do not owe me your understanding or your forgiveness as I know the content is heavy and distressing. Through tears clouding my vision as I type, I begin my list of confessions.
I'm sorry for the teaching I so confidently spouted out with little regard for additional interpretations that could be just as valid. I wish I had heeded the warning of James 3:1, which I now read as applicable to sisters, too, even if it is not translated as such. Teaching is a gift of the Spirit, and the Spirit does not reserve this gift for men, but I digress. Not many should become teachers, James explains, for teachers will receive a stricter judgment. I am responsible for the subject matter I teach and the consequences of it. Our orthodoxy matters, of course, because it affects our orthopraxy. There is an inextricable link between the two. I highly prized the doctrines I intellectually ascribed to, which were rarely accompanied by an emulation of the Jesus I now know more intimately. I call to mind the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:18. Jesus taught, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” What I teach can either tighten or loosen chains, both metaphorically and literally, spiritually and physically, currently and historically. There is still much I need to loosen. I cannot distance myself from the Christians who make statements that are clearly sexist. I cannot call those who are openly misogynistic “hyper complementarians,” for that would then absolve me of further exploration of the ways in which I, too, am part of the problem. I look at the fruit, and I must then examine the tree. (Edited to add: I must credit Jen Hatmaker for her insights on checking the fruit.) I was attached to a tree that bore rotten, death-inducing fruit. There is no way around it. It was the tree, the very tree of my brand of theology, that produced those I don’t want to be associated with when they speak of what I’ve internalized. It is the tree with roots sunk deep into the war that has waged from the time of our first parents, when as part of the curse, men think they rule over us. Please forgive me for my detrimental teaching.
I'm sorry for heaping burdens on you that you are not meant to bear. I think of the book Boundaries and the clarity Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend provided to me on Galatians 6:2 and 6:5. “We are responsible to others and for ourselves. ‘Carry each other’s burdens,’ says Galatians 6:2… On the other hand, Galatians 6:5 says that ‘each one should carry their own load.’ Everyone has responsibilities that only he or she can carry… The Greek words for burden and load give us insight into the meaning of these texts. The Greek word for burden means ‘excess burdens,’ or burdens that are so heavy that they weigh us down. These burdens are like boulders. They can crush us. We shouldn’t be expected to carry a boulder by ourselves! It would break our backs. We need help with the boulders - those times of crisis and tragedy in our lives. In contrast, the Greek word for load means ‘cargo,’ or ‘the burden of daily toil.’ This word describes the everyday things we all need to do. These loads are like knapsacks. Knapsacks are possible to carry. We are expected to carry our own. We are expected to deal with our own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as the responsibilities God has given to each one of us, even though it takes effort” (Cloud & Townsend, 2017, pp.32-33). The feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, values, thoughts, desires, and sins against you of someone else are not yours to bear. We are each to bear these as individuals for they are part of our knapsacks. I confess I tried to turn my knapsack and the knapsacks of our brothers into boulders for you, my dear sisters, to carry, which crushed you over and over again as you struggled under a weight you never should have been made responsible for carrying. I think of the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The yoke, or the teaching, of Jesus is easy. I, like the Pharisees, added to the yoke of Jesus. One example of this was in enforcing the Billy Graham rule, which equated avoidance with purity and hindered the flourishing of my brothers and sisters. Please forgive me for heaping burdens on you.
I'm sorry for judging your motives when you wore something I thought was too revealing or form fitting. Oh if only I had more effectively used that wasted time to focus on eradicating the logs in my own eyes rather than attempting to extract what I thought were specks in the eyes of you my sisters. Please forgive me for judging you.
I'm sorry for being suspicious of you and for seeing you as a threat to my marriage. I’m sorry for believing the worst about you, as if you didn’t care about your integrity as much as the men around us care about theirs. We all lose when men are insulated from friendships with women. Empathy is fostered when men have meaningful relationships with women. You enrich Stephen’s life and make him a better human. Please forgive me for my suspicion as if you are suspect just by nature of being a woman.
I'm sorry for shaming you, particularly for what you do or don’t wear on your body. My judgment of you and suspicions that I left unchecked and unconfessed festered to the point of making you responsible for the sin of someone against you, whether that was a man who lusted after you or the insecurity I projected onto you. You are in no way responsible for my sin or the sin of another person. Rather than repenting of the harsh judgments I harbored against you, I delivered messages that I deemed from the Lord to mask that I really just wanted to mold your modesty to mirror mine, as I self righteously and erroneously assumed my standard was worthy of imitation. And instead of calling the one who sinned against you to repentance for his objectification of you, I tried to make you responsible for his sin. Please forgive me for shaming you.
I'm sorry for upholding damaging ideology about women, our purpose, and sex. My limited understanding of Genesis 2 trickled down and infected everything else, as Nate Hanson and Tim Ritter explicated in episode 9 of Almost Heretical, “Taking Responsibility for Our Theology.” I confess I reduced the creation of the first woman as an ezer kenegdo to mean women function as secretaries for men. I confess I believed that the purpose of women was wrapped up in the bearing of children, as if the woman was primarily created to help the man “be fruitful and multiply” through having children, completely neglecting God’s call on the woman to exercise dominion over creation. This belief is false and excluded women I love dearly, particularly my single sisters. I confess that I thought “burning with lust” was a valid reason to get married. The words of Carolyn Custis James in her book Half the Church helped me gain more understanding into God’s plan for women. “Focus on the wife as her husband's helper has led to the belief that God gave primary roles and responsibilities to men, and secondary, supporting roles to women. It has led to practices that communicate that women are second class citizens at home and in the church...For starters, kenegdo needs rehabilitating. ‘Suitable’ can be taken a lot of different ways that don't do justice to the meaning of this word. Kenegdo indicates the ezer is the man's match - literally, ‘as in front of him’)...‘[Kenegdo] suggests that what God creates for Adam will correspond to him. Thus the new creation will be neither a superior nor an inferior, but an equal.’...Long before I started digging, scholars tallied up the twenty-one times ezer appears in the Old Testament: twice in Genesis for the woman (Genesis 2:18, 20), three times for nations to whom Israel appealed for military aid (Isaiah 30:5; Ezekiel 12:14; Daniel 11:34), and here's the kicker - sixteen times for God as Israel's helper (Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; Psalms 20:2; 33:20; 70:5; 89:19 [translated strength in the NIV]; 115:9, 10, 11; 121:1-2; 124:8; 146:5; Hosea 13:9). This last piece of information created quite a stir as you might imagine, prompting the upgrading from mere ‘helper’ to ‘strong helper.’ What followed was a divided (and at times heated) discussion over the meaning of ‘strong’ - How strong is strong (a debate yet to be resolved)? I decided to look up each of the twenty-one references. What caught my attention - and completely changed how I think of myself - was when I read all those verses and discovered ezer is used consistently in a military context...Putting the facts together, isn't it obvious that the ezer is a warrior? And don't we already know this in our bones? God created his daughters to be ezer-warriors with our brothers. He deploys the ezer to break the man's aloneness by soldiering with him wholeheartedly and at full strength for God's gracious kingdom. The man needs everything she brings to their global mission. Other factors confirmed my conclusions. Of course, the strength God brings as ezer to his people should be sufficient to convince us that as ezers we must be strong, resourceful, alert to the cries of the needy and oppressed, and proactive too...Thinking of the ezer as a warrior is entirely consistent with how Scripture views us...Descriptions of the woman as dependent, needy, vulnerable, deferential, helpless, leaderless, or weak are - to put it simply - wrong. Such definitions betray cultural biases and I fear a deep-seated misogyny. The ezer is a warrior. Like the man, she is also God's creative masterpiece - a work of genius and a marvel to behold - for she is fearfully and wonderfully made. The ezer never sheds her image-bearer identity. Not here. Not ever. God defines who she is and how she is to live in his world. That never changes. The image-bearer responsibilities to reflect God to the world and to rule and subdue on his behalf still rest on her shoulders too. God didn't create the woman to bring half of herself to his global commission or to minimize herself when the man is around. The fanfare over her is overblown if God was only planning for her to do for the man things he was perfectly capable of doing for himself or didn't even need. The man won't starve without her. In the garden, he really doesn't need someone to do laundry, pick up after him, or manage his home. If Adam must think, decide, protect, and provide for the woman, she actually becomes a burden on him - not much help when you think about it. The kind of help the man needs demands full deployment of her strength, her gifts, and the best she has to offer. His life will change for the better because of what she contributes to his life” (James, 2010, pp.111-115). I also want to add that if “burning with lust” is the driving force behind a marriage, the marriage will surely suffer until this is brought to the light and the couple receives counseling to heal those hurting areas. If a man is primarily interested in entering a marriage with you because he thinks that marriage will in some way quell his unholy desire to have your body whenever he wants it, he needs to seek help and is not ready to be married. For my sisters who think they cannot say no to sex with their husbands without being seen as unsubmissive, a husband who wants to dominate you sexually and make you feel as if you exist for his sexual pleasure is not loving you as Christ loves His Bride, and I apologize for not confronting this sooner. Please forgive me for upholding damaging ideology.
I'm sorry for perpetuating stereotypes through misogyny. Viewing women as adulteresses and temptresses taught me that the primary power of women rests in our sexual prowess and ability to manipulate and seduce the men around us who, I was told, were just too foolish to realize what was happening or too weak to control their desires. I vilified and dehumanized you, siding with powerful men over you, the women they violated. Please forgive me for my misogyny.
I'm sorry for doing nothing to hold our brothers accountable for the ways we are objectified and held responsible for the sin of those who disregard the image of God in us with their lust. For too long, I allowed men to get away with the excuse that they are “wired” to be visually stimulated sexually and could not control their thoughts. Of course this is a lie, which I now know, but I let the men in my life hide behind this facade, though they would argue that women are “wired” to be more emotional yet would never give a “pass” to women for “lacking self-control over their emotions.” Both men and women can be visual. Both men and women can be emotionally expressive. When we sin in either of these areas, we must repent. Men cannot garner empathy for having a “rolodex of images” they flip through of the women they have chosen to objectify. They must exchange those images for images that honor women. Please forgive me for my lack of action in holding our brothers accountable.
To my brothers, I am sorry for thinking that men lack self-control. I confess I thought men couldn’t be trusted to not take advantage of women in certain circumstances or to decline a woman who makes an unwelcome sexual advance. These, too, are dehumanizing assumptions. For the brothers I know who have loved me and their other sisters well, I know that a lustful and ravenous beast is not who you are. Please forgive me for believing you lacked self-control over your sexual desires.
These are my confessions. I cannot speak for anyone else. Sisters, I confess my many sins against you. I repent of these multitudinous grievances. I open myself up to rebuke for any transgressions I did not acknowledge, welcoming the opportunity to repair the wrongs, whether done intentionally or not.
My dear sisters, you are valuable. Your presence matters. Your gifts matter. I love you for who you are, exactly as you are. This letter is a look at my past sins that I battle presently, but I want to close by gazing ahead, eyes transfixed on our good God. I think of the comfort provided in 2 Cor. 3:17, that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Here’s to walking where the Spirit of the Lord is, in freedom and flourishing together.
As I am in the process of deconstructing and reconstructing my faith, I am continually grieved by my sins against my beloved sisters. This is a letter of confession for the ways I chose to use my theological interpretations, my “standard” of modesty, and the inculcation of purity culture to objectify, vilify, and disparage women. Though written to women, these words are not solely for women. Brothers, please read this letter I've written to our dear sisters and join those who have been disrupting the dangerous ideologies that seek to rob women of dignity and worth, even in the name of Jesus.
Dear sisters,
Unfortunately I have much to confess. Even more unfortunate, I know this letter will not cover the full extent of my transgressions and that additional letters must follow. My thoughts, words, and actions have harmed you, have failed to honor the Imago Dei in you, and I am sorry. I offer no excuses. I simply offer my sincerest apologies as I desire to rectify the injuries I inflicted. This is deeply personal. For me, yes, but also for you. You do not owe me your understanding or your forgiveness as I know the content is heavy and distressing. Through tears clouding my vision as I type, I begin my list of confessions.
I'm sorry for the teaching I so confidently spouted out with little regard for additional interpretations that could be just as valid. I wish I had heeded the warning of James 3:1, which I now read as applicable to sisters, too, even if it is not translated as such. Teaching is a gift of the Spirit, and the Spirit does not reserve this gift for men, but I digress. Not many should become teachers, James explains, for teachers will receive a stricter judgment. I am responsible for the subject matter I teach and the consequences of it. Our orthodoxy matters, of course, because it affects our orthopraxy. There is an inextricable link between the two. I highly prized the doctrines I intellectually ascribed to, which were rarely accompanied by an emulation of the Jesus I now know more intimately. I call to mind the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:18. Jesus taught, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” What I teach can either tighten or loosen chains, both metaphorically and literally, spiritually and physically, currently and historically. There is still much I need to loosen. I cannot distance myself from the Christians who make statements that are clearly sexist. I cannot call those who are openly misogynistic “hyper complementarians,” for that would then absolve me of further exploration of the ways in which I, too, am part of the problem. I look at the fruit, and I must then examine the tree. (Edited to add: I must credit Jen Hatmaker for her insights on checking the fruit.) I was attached to a tree that bore rotten, death-inducing fruit. There is no way around it. It was the tree, the very tree of my brand of theology, that produced those I don’t want to be associated with when they speak of what I’ve internalized. It is the tree with roots sunk deep into the war that has waged from the time of our first parents, when as part of the curse, men think they rule over us. Please forgive me for my detrimental teaching.
I'm sorry for heaping burdens on you that you are not meant to bear. I think of the book Boundaries and the clarity Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend provided to me on Galatians 6:2 and 6:5. “We are responsible to others and for ourselves. ‘Carry each other’s burdens,’ says Galatians 6:2… On the other hand, Galatians 6:5 says that ‘each one should carry their own load.’ Everyone has responsibilities that only he or she can carry… The Greek words for burden and load give us insight into the meaning of these texts. The Greek word for burden means ‘excess burdens,’ or burdens that are so heavy that they weigh us down. These burdens are like boulders. They can crush us. We shouldn’t be expected to carry a boulder by ourselves! It would break our backs. We need help with the boulders - those times of crisis and tragedy in our lives. In contrast, the Greek word for load means ‘cargo,’ or ‘the burden of daily toil.’ This word describes the everyday things we all need to do. These loads are like knapsacks. Knapsacks are possible to carry. We are expected to carry our own. We are expected to deal with our own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as the responsibilities God has given to each one of us, even though it takes effort” (Cloud & Townsend, 2017, pp.32-33). The feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, values, thoughts, desires, and sins against you of someone else are not yours to bear. We are each to bear these as individuals for they are part of our knapsacks. I confess I tried to turn my knapsack and the knapsacks of our brothers into boulders for you, my dear sisters, to carry, which crushed you over and over again as you struggled under a weight you never should have been made responsible for carrying. I think of the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The yoke, or the teaching, of Jesus is easy. I, like the Pharisees, added to the yoke of Jesus. One example of this was in enforcing the Billy Graham rule, which equated avoidance with purity and hindered the flourishing of my brothers and sisters. Please forgive me for heaping burdens on you.
I'm sorry for judging your motives when you wore something I thought was too revealing or form fitting. Oh if only I had more effectively used that wasted time to focus on eradicating the logs in my own eyes rather than attempting to extract what I thought were specks in the eyes of you my sisters. Please forgive me for judging you.
I'm sorry for being suspicious of you and for seeing you as a threat to my marriage. I’m sorry for believing the worst about you, as if you didn’t care about your integrity as much as the men around us care about theirs. We all lose when men are insulated from friendships with women. Empathy is fostered when men have meaningful relationships with women. You enrich Stephen’s life and make him a better human. Please forgive me for my suspicion as if you are suspect just by nature of being a woman.
I'm sorry for shaming you, particularly for what you do or don’t wear on your body. My judgment of you and suspicions that I left unchecked and unconfessed festered to the point of making you responsible for the sin of someone against you, whether that was a man who lusted after you or the insecurity I projected onto you. You are in no way responsible for my sin or the sin of another person. Rather than repenting of the harsh judgments I harbored against you, I delivered messages that I deemed from the Lord to mask that I really just wanted to mold your modesty to mirror mine, as I self righteously and erroneously assumed my standard was worthy of imitation. And instead of calling the one who sinned against you to repentance for his objectification of you, I tried to make you responsible for his sin. Please forgive me for shaming you.
I'm sorry for upholding damaging ideology about women, our purpose, and sex. My limited understanding of Genesis 2 trickled down and infected everything else, as Nate Hanson and Tim Ritter explicated in episode 9 of Almost Heretical, “Taking Responsibility for Our Theology.” I confess I reduced the creation of the first woman as an ezer kenegdo to mean women function as secretaries for men. I confess I believed that the purpose of women was wrapped up in the bearing of children, as if the woman was primarily created to help the man “be fruitful and multiply” through having children, completely neglecting God’s call on the woman to exercise dominion over creation. This belief is false and excluded women I love dearly, particularly my single sisters. I confess that I thought “burning with lust” was a valid reason to get married. The words of Carolyn Custis James in her book Half the Church helped me gain more understanding into God’s plan for women. “Focus on the wife as her husband's helper has led to the belief that God gave primary roles and responsibilities to men, and secondary, supporting roles to women. It has led to practices that communicate that women are second class citizens at home and in the church...For starters, kenegdo needs rehabilitating. ‘Suitable’ can be taken a lot of different ways that don't do justice to the meaning of this word. Kenegdo indicates the ezer is the man's match - literally, ‘as in front of him’)...‘[Kenegdo] suggests that what God creates for Adam will correspond to him. Thus the new creation will be neither a superior nor an inferior, but an equal.’...Long before I started digging, scholars tallied up the twenty-one times ezer appears in the Old Testament: twice in Genesis for the woman (Genesis 2:18, 20), three times for nations to whom Israel appealed for military aid (Isaiah 30:5; Ezekiel 12:14; Daniel 11:34), and here's the kicker - sixteen times for God as Israel's helper (Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; Psalms 20:2; 33:20; 70:5; 89:19 [translated strength in the NIV]; 115:9, 10, 11; 121:1-2; 124:8; 146:5; Hosea 13:9). This last piece of information created quite a stir as you might imagine, prompting the upgrading from mere ‘helper’ to ‘strong helper.’ What followed was a divided (and at times heated) discussion over the meaning of ‘strong’ - How strong is strong (a debate yet to be resolved)? I decided to look up each of the twenty-one references. What caught my attention - and completely changed how I think of myself - was when I read all those verses and discovered ezer is used consistently in a military context...Putting the facts together, isn't it obvious that the ezer is a warrior? And don't we already know this in our bones? God created his daughters to be ezer-warriors with our brothers. He deploys the ezer to break the man's aloneness by soldiering with him wholeheartedly and at full strength for God's gracious kingdom. The man needs everything she brings to their global mission. Other factors confirmed my conclusions. Of course, the strength God brings as ezer to his people should be sufficient to convince us that as ezers we must be strong, resourceful, alert to the cries of the needy and oppressed, and proactive too...Thinking of the ezer as a warrior is entirely consistent with how Scripture views us...Descriptions of the woman as dependent, needy, vulnerable, deferential, helpless, leaderless, or weak are - to put it simply - wrong. Such definitions betray cultural biases and I fear a deep-seated misogyny. The ezer is a warrior. Like the man, she is also God's creative masterpiece - a work of genius and a marvel to behold - for she is fearfully and wonderfully made. The ezer never sheds her image-bearer identity. Not here. Not ever. God defines who she is and how she is to live in his world. That never changes. The image-bearer responsibilities to reflect God to the world and to rule and subdue on his behalf still rest on her shoulders too. God didn't create the woman to bring half of herself to his global commission or to minimize herself when the man is around. The fanfare over her is overblown if God was only planning for her to do for the man things he was perfectly capable of doing for himself or didn't even need. The man won't starve without her. In the garden, he really doesn't need someone to do laundry, pick up after him, or manage his home. If Adam must think, decide, protect, and provide for the woman, she actually becomes a burden on him - not much help when you think about it. The kind of help the man needs demands full deployment of her strength, her gifts, and the best she has to offer. His life will change for the better because of what she contributes to his life” (James, 2010, pp.111-115). I also want to add that if “burning with lust” is the driving force behind a marriage, the marriage will surely suffer until this is brought to the light and the couple receives counseling to heal those hurting areas. If a man is primarily interested in entering a marriage with you because he thinks that marriage will in some way quell his unholy desire to have your body whenever he wants it, he needs to seek help and is not ready to be married. For my sisters who think they cannot say no to sex with their husbands without being seen as unsubmissive, a husband who wants to dominate you sexually and make you feel as if you exist for his sexual pleasure is not loving you as Christ loves His Bride, and I apologize for not confronting this sooner. Please forgive me for upholding damaging ideology.
I'm sorry for perpetuating stereotypes through misogyny. Viewing women as adulteresses and temptresses taught me that the primary power of women rests in our sexual prowess and ability to manipulate and seduce the men around us who, I was told, were just too foolish to realize what was happening or too weak to control their desires. I vilified and dehumanized you, siding with powerful men over you, the women they violated. Please forgive me for my misogyny.
I'm sorry for doing nothing to hold our brothers accountable for the ways we are objectified and held responsible for the sin of those who disregard the image of God in us with their lust. For too long, I allowed men to get away with the excuse that they are “wired” to be visually stimulated sexually and could not control their thoughts. Of course this is a lie, which I now know, but I let the men in my life hide behind this facade, though they would argue that women are “wired” to be more emotional yet would never give a “pass” to women for “lacking self-control over their emotions.” Both men and women can be visual. Both men and women can be emotionally expressive. When we sin in either of these areas, we must repent. Men cannot garner empathy for having a “rolodex of images” they flip through of the women they have chosen to objectify. They must exchange those images for images that honor women. Please forgive me for my lack of action in holding our brothers accountable.
To my brothers, I am sorry for thinking that men lack self-control. I confess I thought men couldn’t be trusted to not take advantage of women in certain circumstances or to decline a woman who makes an unwelcome sexual advance. These, too, are dehumanizing assumptions. For the brothers I know who have loved me and their other sisters well, I know that a lustful and ravenous beast is not who you are. Please forgive me for believing you lacked self-control over your sexual desires.
These are my confessions. I cannot speak for anyone else. Sisters, I confess my many sins against you. I repent of these multitudinous grievances. I open myself up to rebuke for any transgressions I did not acknowledge, welcoming the opportunity to repair the wrongs, whether done intentionally or not.
My dear sisters, you are valuable. Your presence matters. Your gifts matter. I love you for who you are, exactly as you are. This letter is a look at my past sins that I battle presently, but I want to close by gazing ahead, eyes transfixed on our good God. I think of the comfort provided in 2 Cor. 3:17, that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Here’s to walking where the Spirit of the Lord is, in freedom and flourishing together.
Love,
Nicki
#dearsisters #imsorry #theology #modesty #purityculture #misogyny #sexism #antisexism #antisexist #feminist #jesusfeminist #whitefeminismisnotfeminism #endpatriarchy #equality #empowerwomen #loveyourneighbor #lament #repent #repair #seekjustice #restorativejustice #lovemercy #walkhumbly #blog #blogger #newblogpost #carolyncustisjames #exvangelical #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative
#dearsisters #imsorry #theology #modesty #purityculture #misogyny #sexism #antisexism #antisexist #feminist #jesusfeminist #whitefeminismisnotfeminism #endpatriarchy #equality #empowerwomen #loveyourneighbor #lament #repent #repair #seekjustice #restorativejustice #lovemercy #walkhumbly #blog #blogger #newblogpost #carolyncustisjames #exvangelical #challengethenarrative #broadeningthenarrative
