A Mothers perspective on the cross

I wrote this a couple of years ago and the wonderful @God_Loves_Women posted it for me on her blog. Anyway feeling emotionally able to post it here now and since its recently been child loss day I thought I'd put it up. Hoping it helps some.



Ever heard a preach on the Father heart of God? Ever heard a father preaching about how horific it would be for him to loss his son.  Probably. Ever heard a mother preach about child loss? I suspect if you have it will have been less often.

I find it hard to spend any length of time in worship at present without experiencing substantial amounts of pain. God is gracious and let's me run away and run back and slowly I grieve.

God chooses to reveal himself in scripture in both terms of father and mother imagery. So here is a mothers perspective on the cross.

I had a child wrenched from my womb, I watched as I lost all ability to nurture, care and grow this precious being, watched it poor out of me. I lost the possibility of holding that child to my breast, to nurse it with its ear next to my heartbeat to stare into its face and see my own emotions mirrored back. I lost the oppertunity to suuround them with love, joy and goodness.

I had nothing to hold or bury so vast was the seperation raught between us so I buried a box of memories in a garden I will never walk with my child in. But I have hope. God gave me a picture of the future and when I get to glory there's a child waiting ready to run towards me arms wide open shouting 'mummy'.

Because God's love can reach right down into the depths of this broken world. Right down to a collection of cells that could never have lived, that had the 'wrong' collection of chromosomes that lacked what it took to be a viable human. Yet still God breathes life.

Both my children have taught me so much about the love of God for us. What my unborn Eden has given me is a glimmer of is the cataclismic pain God bears when his children are taken and the eager anticipation with which God longs to be reconciled.

Two Books on Women

 

I recently read 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran followed fairly immediately by 'A year of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans. I'm glad I read them this way round! It struck me that there were some interesting differences and notable contrasts that I wanted to share with the world.

I think I might start backwards. Both authors conclude that there is not and shouldn't be a prescribed way to be a woman. For Evans book this felt like the natural conclusion to her discussion. I felt the narrative learnt from the experience of other women from a diversity of cultural experiences and approached such learning with a humble heart. Yet it stayed authentically itself and gave me as the reader permission to do so as well.

Moran's book however irritated me most of the way through. It was essentially an autobiography but despite it's beginning and conclusion about the diversity of female experience I couldn't help but feel I was being told that this was or should have been my experience as well. Especially the stuff around adolescents. 

Both books reference other women who have fought similar battles before and have begun to forge a way and in who's path we follow as well as contemporaries. Evan's does so with great respect and gratitude to those 'Women of Valour' both past and present. One of her final resolutions is to identify and praise women of valor. 

Moran by contrasts dismisses most of her contemporaries, including Object and even Greer as having become irrelevant.  The only woman who comes of relatively well is Lady Gaga.  While Evans writing humbly acknowledge's the work of those who have gone before. Moran writes 'When Simone de Beauvoir wrote one is note born a woman one becomes a woman - she didn't know the half of it.' Hmm.

Moran repeatedly says that woman have done very little (even nothing) over the last 100,000 years, while men she claims have made great achievements in science, art politics and repeatedly in her long lists she includes empire. I find it very problematic to list empire in with a list of great advancements without any deconstruction or critique of the very idea of empire. Evan's by contrast retells the stories of many great women's achievement both biblical and extra biblical. She also on occasion broadens her critique not just to hierarchy between genders but the idea of hierarchy at all in any context.

Both repeatedly use the word 'Lady'. I have written about my dislike of the word here. Evans however only ever used it in contexts where, had she been talking about men she may well have said gentlemen. Generally when she was talking about people and only once directed to the readers. Moran however got right up my noise by continually giving instructions to her readers preceded by calling them to attention with 'Ladies!'. 

Both authors while not writing a book about violence against women and the global situation do reference it. Evans to put her own struggles and difficulties in perspective. Moran to explain that the problem with modern feminism is that it is focused on these things while ignoring things like glossy magazines and pants being too small.

Both authors once mention the Vietnam war, both use it for illustrative purposes. In the case of both books I have forgotten what was being described! Evan's I remember said that some group of people discussed something - "Like veterans talk about 'Nam" I can't remember feeling it was inappropriate or offensive. I cannot remember the details of what Moran was talking about either save that it was about running away "faster than a Vietnamese boy covered in Nepalm". I wasn't expecting that sentence it kind of sprang at me from no where and made me feel positively sick.

Both authors discussed having children. Evan's wrote an honest and reflective account of her worries and fears about having children. She also explored issues around women's relationship with parenting and the difficulty of living in a world which defines women in relation to children and explored the duff theology in parenting as a woman's highest calling. Moran on the other hand wrote 'Childbirth gives women a gigantic set of balls'. To be fair on Moran this is not all she said and she did also point out that there are a variety of life experiences that can change and shape us. But it's almost that that makes these bizar one lines so problematic there is an inconsistency in her writing.

Both authors mention their vagina's. Evans in a discussion about teenage experience of church teaching on sex.  Famously there was big discussions about how that would affect christian bookshops and whether they were willing to stock the book or not. As far as I am aware there where no such discussions as to the inclusion of the c word which I can't even bring myself to write, but that's apparently what Moran calls her vagina.

Both books made me laugh out loud. Moran's book also made me shout and swear. Evan's book also made me cry. Moran's book left me with an overwhelming sense of frustration. Evan's book left me peaceful and wiser. 

Motherhood is dangerous to children

Of course I don't believe that mothers are dangerous to children but I am growing increasingly convinced that the cult of motherhood, secular and christian (and I'd imagine other faiths though I'm not qualified to comment), is quiet frankly dangerous to children.

I just reacted very badly from my belly to the phrase 'there is no higher calling than being a mother. Or indeed, a father.' Strangely I've found these sort of sentiments even harder since becoming a parent. I find them suffocating and feel my insides looking for the nearest exit. 

And when I look in the eyes of my brave, bouncy, contented little two year old I am determined to parent her well as part of a larger community of adults who take specific irresponsibility for her. But I am also reminded of my responsibility to other children, some who's names I don't even know. I am reminded of my responsibility to the earth and my fellow humanity. 

When my heart rejoices when she learn's a new word but I am reminded that her achievements are not my achievements her growth not my growth, her life not my life. She has a calling and a unique contribution to make, that is different from mine and from my mothers. 

And when I feel exhausted and run dry and frustrated at all the things I've not achieved in the day due to nappy washing, I send up a prayer of thanks for my mother and all she did (not just for me but for the many) and I'm reminded that she is not me and I am not her.

When I go 'out to work' as apposed to staying in and working. I drop her off at the childminders - tell her to work hard and go into my workplace. The work I do there is no less important no lower calling - because the people I work with are just as dear to the heart of God, they may not share my DNA but they share my heavenly parent.

Adolescents is a horribly difficult time, which should serve to remind us that developing and carrying an independent identity is hard work and demands emotional, intellectual and spiritual strength. It is a dangerous and damaging thing to ask children to also carry the identities of their parents. 

Please don't here me wrong - I am on holiday and haven't been listening to the news I understand someone recently said parents who didn't enter the paid workplace damaged their children. I am not saying that for one moment it is not for me to tell people how to decide where to invest their time. Working parents fall in to this trap just as often. The point is children should not have to be responsible for a 'hood', a vocation, it is not fair.

Whatever you do do it as though for the Lord. If that's spending significant time parenting then do it with the excellence children and Jesus deserve. If he's calling you to something else instead or as well then equally do it with that same passion for his name and his glory. 

He is our highest calling nothing else, nothing. 

Luke 14:26

The Message (MSG)

Figure the Cost

^25-27 One day when large groups of people were walking along with him, Jesus turned and told them, “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple.

Sexual politics of Esther: Kids Church

Which bible stories we do and don't think are appropriate for children would be a fascinating subject for a PhD. Here are just some brief musings that resulted from me waking up one Sunday morning and scrabbling around in a caffeine deprived haze trying to work out what I was meant to be doing for kids church and discovering, two weeks after preaching it to the 'grown-wrongs' it was Esther. 

Hmm...do I focus on the sexual violence or the genocide? Jael and the tent peg suddenly feel's like a breeze, though oddly I've never come across resources for teaching that. A few google searches however and it was very apparent that Esther is seen as a highly appropriate story to miss-tell children. 

My googeling informed me that the key messages for children from the book of Esther are:



Godly women have proportionally very tiny wastes. 


Godly women need to try and become 'queens'. Which can be a bit like navigating through a maze. Particularly as you must simultaneously be passive but also take full responsibility for not only your own but all men's behavior. 



The most important and significant thing that happened to Esther was that she became queen. 



Look you can even get an Esther Doll and you can look like her too!

And of course my least favorite (and I know this wasn't developed for children but there is no such thing as children's media all media is children's media if they are going to see it).

I'm relatively broad shouldered and they would have to be twice as wide to fit these proportions.

Esther seems to be fulfilling the role of both Barbie and sleeping beauty, normalising sexual violence and instilling body dysmorphia in all our girls. 

The emperor is wearing no clothes and these images are grotesque and should be banished from our churches. Let's stop feeding our children rat poison. 

Sexual Politics of Esther: Fatherhood

"How many of you dad's read this story with me and freak out?" 

"If your single you don't understand women"

I hadn't originally planned for this blog. But there was too much problematic stuff about what it means to be a parent last Sunday. I almost don't know where to start. 

I've always found it fascinating that Mordachi is so widely believed to be Esther's uncle. Go check out the passage. He's Esther's cousin, not that it matters that much he is clearly her adoptive parent. I just wonder where and why the misconception arouse and does it have anything to do with the need to fit Mordachi and Esther into a 'father leader'/'obedient daughter' model. There was a great piece about the mutuality in the relationship between Mordachi and Esther here at CBE. 

I wanted to avoid commenting too directly on the content of what Mark Driscoll said in his preaching series but I think on this subject it is unavoidable. The problem I have with a lot of his rhetoric is that he tells people how they should feel and leaves no room in his construct for a diversity of life experience and emotional response. He very directly told single men that they would have no ability to understand what was problematic about young women being gathered into a hareem only Dad's could possibly understand. So single men are incapable of empathy or sexual integrity. 

Dad's however are capable of and overflowing with murderous rage. Anger the only other emotion men are allowed to feel besides lust in these 'masculinity' constructs, is how fathers will respond, no complexity of emotion allowed just plain rage. And Fathers only - mothers are not mentioned at all despite the biblical text comparing God's protective love to that of a mother bear.

And the rage is not a response to violence and oppression of a dearly loved human being - but an anger at another man taking what belongs to you. As demonstrated by Mr Driscoll's possessive advice about what men should do if their daughters are dating men they don't like. They apparently have the right to dump them. All the while no mention of mothers or sons. 

Mordachi should have just plain said no. Now while I don't disagree that it would be great if the people of Persia as individuals or a collective had resisted this oppression, I also assume that Mordachi didn't or perceived he didn't have a choice. But this doesn't fit Driscoll's paradigm of what it means to be a man, nor does it fit his agenda of policing men's behavior and sense of identity. 

He appeals to the case of Adam our 'first father' (is he ever referenced as such in the bible?) who's sin was apparently a sin of omission, that he did nothing (funny I thought he took and ate!) in the same way he argues Mordachi didn't prevent Esther from going to the palace and failed as a father.

Through the whole thing he set up a paradigm of women as the property of men, particularly their fathers. It is the model of the punitive, controlling father rather than what I believe to be far more biblical: the nurturing parent.

While he's berating Xerxes for acting as god he wants fathers to extract complete obedience from their families. 

Coming soon: Sexual Politics of Esther: Sexual violence

Reflections of a ex porn addict

I'm 32, a father of three and a reasonable husband.

At the age of around 12 I was introduced to the idea of masturbation in the changing rooms at school. In that boys-only world it was discussed and normalised, and then came the porn, a page 3 smuggled in, a magazine, it was the early 90's we hadn't dreamed of the net yet.

The quest of the boys was sexual experience, getting a girl to let you... Or do something to you. Love and romance was kind of involved, but basically it was about experience that made you cool, a man etc.

Also the experience had to be with an attractive girl, it didn't count as much if she was ugly. We hear worries about children being indoctrinated by religion or atheism or politics, but no one seems to care how views on sexuality are indoctrinated.

At 16 I became a disciple of Jesus, I chose to follow him, and whilst I wasn't truly discipled until a fair while later I learnt that sex was a bad thing before marriage, so as a typical Christian teen I drew a line. I put intercourse out of bounds and did everything but. Teen experimentation of alcohol, sex etc. purely harmless..? I was out for what I could get, females were a commodity to be exploited. But also there was an idealism; if I could get that one perfect girl to love me, to want to be with me, then that would make me complete.

So women in two categories, to be used or idolised.

I was growing up, so was the world, but I left the developed world and did a year out in Swaziland and whilst there I managed to find someone who would let me be physical with her, but for the first time it felt abusive, I was convicted that this wasn't good. This was also the first time I ever spent time without being subjected to TV, advertising and media, this may be a coincidence. I stopped masturbating that year.

From Swaziland to bible college, or bridal college, this rarified Christian world, full of judgements and rules (and where I was taught and lead and discipled and dealt with a lot of crap and fell in love with God again). A world where one aim was marriage, and fast, because we needed sex now! After two years I was one of three single guys in my year and the youngest by a decade. I did two things, found Internet porn and grabbed the nearest single girl I could find.

Back into the destructive cycle. I nearly married a girl who I didn't love and didn't respect or treat well, because I had to get married. I was in an accountability group, 3 guys who were like brothers to each other, but who response to masturbation was "don't do it!" Those guys did save me from a horribly bad marriage, and only then did I start a road to freedom.

In that moment of clarity where I ended the relationship and walked away I was given 20:20 vision. I saw the desperation for marriage for what it was, I saw that everyone chasing this was lacking a true sense of self and real relationship with a loving God. I relaxed, I walked away from the porn and the destructive need for a relationship and stopped looking at girls to complete me and answer my questions.

I didn't want sex or a relationship, no longer objectifying women, I thought I was free. But I'd only escaped the symptoms, not diagnosed the cause.

I went 6 months without looking at a girl as anything other than a sister or a friend. And then she walked in, a woman walked in and I couldn't stop my heart beating faster. I was gutted, my celibate, free life was undermined. I was so angry with her, how could she do this to me! I avoided her for 48 hours until I joined a common room conversation and we fell into a deep discussion, at 4am the conversation ended and I was in love. It took a couple of months before she felt the same way, but here I was. Free happy, on my way to marriage and freedom, sorted.

But whilst this was the second best thing that ever happened to me, I was still a mess. Now being stuck at a desk with a PC in a private room, with a sex life opened up and a wonderful wife who couldn't and shouldn't be the answer to all my questions of self I was through the looking glass and scared.

Big questions faced me, what could I achieve? could I provide? would I succeed? Life loomed large as I was ordained as a curate and started work, took on responsibility, had a father diagnosed with cancer and became a dad.

Porn was a constant backdrop, use, repentance, abstinence became a cycle. Telling virtually no one. Once opening up to my wife, being forgiven and then not being able to tell again when I fell back into the cycle.

Then I met a mentor, a great man, who was able to publicly name himself a porn-addict and who lived in a world of accountability. A spiritual father who I opened up to and had some answers. Who pointed me in the direction of answers to my brokenness, in a God who wanted to be my father, a God who was good and a healing that could really work. I applied accountability to my life, if I fell I would be caught.

But the Internet space race meant I found ways round it all. A huge personal disappointment meant I lost the freedom i had found and then plunged back in, I went deeper and worse, nearly lost my marriage.

I moved to become vicar of a new parish, with a baby son and bit off way more than I could chew. I became radical about my faith, lived it rather than talking it. In the course of this we fasted all physical pleasures for a month. I mean everything, we ate the plainest food, watched no screens, read no books, no sex, no games, no nothing. Just God to find pleasure in and verbal intercourse. It was amazing, God was so real, but an exhausting volcano was building towards eruption in my soul, all the inner sickness that lead to me need for and use of porn was on the rack and it needed to be killed or set free.

I arrived at a Christian conference in a different nation. And God undid me, I lay on the floor of a church for hours on end as he healed me. I had been working through issues with my father, walking some very hard yards with a dad who was slowly dying, and then I allowed my heavenly father in, to do heart surgery, to undo the hurts of my adolescence, to free me from the tyranny of the lies that I had been taught:

That women were a commodity,
That I needed to be sexually experienced to have self worth
That the amount my wife made love to me and the variety of it made me a man.
That I needed to succeed for God to like me.
That I God was in a bad mood with me and I needed to hide things from Him.
And many more.

I was free and full of bliss, with accountability and the weaponry to pull apart the bastion of lies that invade a man in our culture, I was free.

My marriage was pure bliss, I was living in heaven.

Then my father died.
This man I loved didn't make it, he let me down, God let me down and suddenly I was the
messed up little boy again, and again The addict went back to his cycle.

I now knew that brain needs an addict to get a bigger hit, so either you need to find a way into harder stuff or to live in a cycle of indulgence and denial. Abstinence makes the brain grow fonder, the serotonin hit more pleasurable, the downer more worth it. The cycle now included openness and repentance, my wife involved. But the cycle was back.

But now two years after my Dad died, I'm free.

One thing didn't do it, a combination did.
1. Women, I embraced female friendship. Sexless brotherly friendships.
2. I read and sought help, went through forgiveness and retrained my eyes not to look at a women in objectification. (Illusions of intimacy by Bodishbaugh)
3. I read an article, Article written by a porn "star", on the horrific abuse that was her daily existence, the tearing of her insides, both physically and emotionally and I couldn't stand to look at abused women as sex objects any more.
4. The lies of the porn industry were exposed by the Holy Spirit, I saw abuse as abuse, rape as rape, objectification as objectification, suddenly this was a justice issue.
5. I got free of guilt, Jesus had taken all my guilt, so I had none. Repentance became about identifying lies and overcoming, there was contrition, but not guilt, the addictscycle was broken.
6. Most importantly I realised I couldn't overcome my addiction, it was Impossible by human effort. I'd just replace one addiction with another. That the gospel of Jesus was not about anything but His work in me. That I could do all things in His strength if I stayed plugged into Him, if I surrendered to His work on my behalf, in Jesus on the cross, in Holy Spirit within and a Dad God who would welcome me to work my crap out on His knee.
7. Also I started to free myself of accountability software, this had helped with the physical addiction, but perpetuated the mental one. Accountability to true friends with no holds barred, who call out the greatness in me and know that Jesus Christ in me is the hope of glory has released me.

How do I know I'm free?
I've walked through, pain, disappointment, tiredness and distance from God and not fallen into my addiction. I've laughed at the idea and been revolted by the exploitation.

And I am free of the weight on my soul.
But I do have a burden, I have two small boys and a tiny daughter and I will fight and die to protect them from having to walk the road their father did.

Dave Hammond is a vicar in Nottingham and can be found on twitter at @DaveSavious