Any other statements you’ve heard that were unhelpful to your recovery?
Next post: what TO say to someone struggling with their faith!
Any other statements you’ve heard that were unhelpful to your recovery?
Next post: what TO say to someone struggling with their faith!
But this article by Barnabas Piper, published on World Magazine’s website, caught my interest mainly because it purported to lay out the proper Christian response; ie. “How does our Christian faith direct us in these understandings?”
I found the article deeply troubling and worse, directly harmful to the welfare of children.
Piper allows that disregarding Paterno’s legacy “seems almost justified” but then he spends the rest of the article suggesting why Christians should be “willing not to besmirch his legacy with our vitriol and hatred but to know our God is a consuming fire and all Joe’s evil has been dealt with.”
I absolutely disagree. First of all, WE are not besmirching Joe Paterno’s legacy. Joe did that himself. Secondly, there are certain massive failures that really DO destroy legacies. The Bible is full of them.
To suggest that Christians ought to refrain from any kind of judgment about Paterno’s legacy is participate in the same culture of complicity that enabled a molester to repeatedly rape children. Why? Because saying: “Well, let’s just leave it all in God’s hands” is a cop-out. It exonerates us from actually having to advocate for the victims of Paterno’s horrible legacy: innocent children.
Piper also claims that feelings of complicated complexity arise in the wake of Paterno’s passing saying that it’s “the end of his career that so complicates matters.”
Because, honestly, there is nothing really complicated about covering up the sexual abuse of children. There is nothing really complex about actively participating in a complicity of silence that allowed for the ongoing abuse of multiple children. It’s not like this was a one-time ‘lapse’ of judgment. By failing to follow-up, by failing to remove Sandusky from the coaching position, by keeping silent day-after-day-after-day, Joe Paterno definitively wrought his own demise. And worse, the demise of innocent children.
I’m not conflicted about Joe Paterno’s legacy. No, it’s all pretty clear to me. And I say that as a Christian mother.
Piper asks us if we can “reflect on [Paterno's] life and legacy with grace, even if it is conflicted grace?”
Here’s the short answer: no.
Why? Because that is one screwed-up definition of grace. Sure, I can refrain from spewing “vitriol and hatred” but I absolutely refuse to sit back and lovingly reflect on a “conflicted” legacy.
I have a responsibility–no, WE ALL have a responsibility to the safety and well-being of children. I actually find it appalling that the supposed “Christian response” to Paterno’s death precludes any kind of judgment about his legacy. Certainly I leave judgment of Paterno’s immortal soul to God, but that doesn’t mean I refrain from being angry about actions that endanger children. I actually believe such restraint is morally reprehensible!
Lastly, I also read Shaun King’s tribute (honestly, what ELSE am I supposed to call these articles?) to Joe Paterno on Relevant Magazine’s website wherein he actually claims that Paterno was “so great that I think the ultimate story about him will eventually outshine the awful ugliness of a child molestation scandal.” Yes, Paterno was SO great! Except for that one thing. But hey, no worries! That one thing will be easily outshone.
King goes on to suggest that we are ALL Paterno because…at one time or another we’ve neglected our duty to protect children. Really?! This is the logic we’re using now? We ALL enable sexual abuse? And HEY! Stop judging because we ALLLLLLLL are Paterno???!!!!
As a Christian wife and mother to five children I’d really like to know just WHO thinks these arguments in support of Joe Paterno are worthy of publication on major Christian websites?! Because I’m keeping my children far away from whoever thinks this was really A-OK.
I’m so disappointed and offended that World Magazine & Relevant Magazines found these articles worthy of their huge Christian websites.
What does THAT say about the Christian response to the rape of children?
Most people cannot tell my twins apart. Even my mom mixes them up. Their preschool teachers often remark that the only way they can tell my twins apart is if I dress them differently. A few months ago my twins tricked their teachers into thinking they were the other twin and spent an entire day in opposite classrooms.
To me, my twins have always looked very different from each other–which is funny since before I had twins, I always had difficulty differentiating between other twins I knew.
Still, the similarities are remarkable. They both like wearing the same clothes on the same day. I’ve tried to switch things up and present different outfits but then they both decide they want the same outfit and argue over who gets to wear it. It’s just easier to dress them the same.
Ever since they were babies, we’ve called them the Synchronized Poopers. As soon as one goes, the other follows shortly thereafter. They often get the urge at the same time and have to race for different bathrooms, yelling: “I gotta go poo-poo!”
When they were about two, they called each other the same name: Jorie. Except it sounded like this: “Jo-wee.” I’m not sure if they thought they were the same person but they both answered to Jo-wee. Now Jasiel is very clear that she is JOSS-EEEE-ELLLLLL.
They both love to sing although Jorie sings off-tune with vibrato while Jasiel can keep a tune and likes to correct Jorie on the lyrics. Their biggest argument right now is about the proper way to sing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”(yes, they’re still singing Christmas songs around here): “No, Jorie, you don’t sing ‘he’ll go down in his-STOR-Y until the end! MOMMY! Jorie is singing the END FIRST!”
Whenever they play House–which is usually everyday–Jorie is always the parent and Jasiel is always the baby. Or the pet duck. Sometimes I’ll hear Jasiel calling, “Mama! Mama!” and when I answer she says: “No, not YOU, Mama. Jorie-Mama.”
Jasiel is very articulate and uses words and analogies to describe her feelings. A few weeks ago she got in trouble with Daddy and when he was putting her to bed she said: “My heart is very sad because this is why I’m not smiling.” Daddy kissed her and she smiled, “Now I’m MORE happier again!”
Jorie relies on body language and facial expressions to relay her emotions. While Jasiel loved watching the live-action Peter Pan movie (and narrated it as it went along), Jorie’s face looked terrified most of the time and she ended up hiding under a blanket.
They’ve recently entered the tattling stage and love to come running to me with various tales of woe. “You know! You know! You know Jorie marked on the wall!” Before they figured out tattling, they bit each other instead. I think tattling is an improvement.
Disciplining twins is a challenge because they are so attuned to each other that even when only one of them is in trouble, the other one cries as well. Last week when Jasiel fell out of the window, Jorie’s screams were just as loud. But they also get in far more trouble than my older children ever did. We’ve come to call it the “Gangster Effect.” They are co-conspirators who enable each other. The mischief they get into together is a hundred times worse than if they were alone.
They’re always obsessively interested in what the other one is doing. Despite being in different classrooms at preschool, they still bring home similar projects and if one of them starts making world maps, the other one decides to do it, too. They’re forever checking to see if they are getting the exact same outfit, hair accessory, dessert, snack, etc. And if one of them gets something the other doesn’t, it’s a massive, epic meltdown. Still, I’ve tried to wean them off this by occasionally dressing them differently–if only a little different.
The one thing that always remains the same, though, is their deep, abiding love for each other. What an incredible gift: a best friend for life.
Dear Jewel: for one year we’ve scrubbed toilets and polished windows at your dance studio to pay for dance lessons. When your friends saw you cleaning and asked why, you smiled and said: “So I can dance.”
I know that wasn’t easy, to clean in front of your friends. But you learned to appreciate the opportunity instead of complaining about what it required of you. You weren’t–you aren’t–afraid of earning your dream. And you are earning it, one dance step at a time.
This month you’ve been auditioning for summer intensives with big companies like Boston Ballet and School of American Ballet. You’re really hoping for a spot with American Ballet Theatre or the Joffrey. But the rejections are rolling in and sometimes it’s hard to keep smiling.
Remember, love, why you smile: because dancing itself fills you with such joy.
It’s not the rejections that matter, really. It’s how you deal with them, what you do afterwards. I have a feeling these rejections are a necessary kind of truth; the catalyst you need to work harder, be better.
I see you so hopeful at these auditions and it breaks my heart a little to read you the rejection emails. But I read them anyway. You need to know this will never be easy and nobody is going to hand you your dream on a silver platter.
“Mom, it’s OK,” you said to me last night. “Even if I don’t get in, this is a really good experience for me.”
Flashes of maturity, words like those. And then, moments of masked despair: this morning you obsessed about the length and width of your bun–emphatically asserting I hadn’t coiled it properly. Finally, Daddy spoke up: “Jewel, what really matters is how well you dance today, not whether the bun is perfect.”
Still, you wanted me to re-do it. To wrap it up the way we did for the first audition:
But then it was time to go and so I hugged you quick and sent you off with registration papers, photos and directions. Daddy drove you. He called a few minutes ago to say you had finished but were hungry and exhausted. Your fourth audition in two weeks and I think the strain is starting to show.
I’m setting the tea pot now. We’ll cuddle up on the couch with a movie tonight–maybe your favorite: Alice in Wonderland. We’ll wait for news, perhaps more rejections.
And tomorrow, you’ll get up and dance again.
]]>I keep coming back to this half-finished to-do list and staring at the last check box I wrote before I heard the scream. I can’t remember now which important task merited its own check box. I do remember the scream.
That task, whatever it was, just doesn’t matter anymore–the check box only serving to remind me how thin this veil between life and death; how one minute you’re writing a to-do list and the next, you might be mourning a dead child.
Except she didn’t die. She didn’t even break a bone, which is its own kind of astonishing mercy. And this is also how it happens: you come so close to peril and yet you emerge unscathed.
How does that even happen? This is how: sitting on her brothers’ top bunk bed, pressing her head against the window screen and shouting down to our dog in the backyard.
“Why are you barthing, Darby?” she asks. “Darby! Why are you barthing?”
And then the screen pops loose, she tumbles out the window. She lands about six feet below on the roof of the porch. A few inches to the right and she would have fallen 15 feet onto concrete.
I heard the scream and don’t even remember flying up the stairs but suddenly I was there and she was in my arms, all bloody nose and scraped elbows.
She sobbed in my arms. “Mama! The screen brote! The screen brote!”
I marshaled the older kids downstairs and they stood at the ready while I examined Jasiel all over. Jewel fetched ice, James comforted the other twin who was crying, too. Jasiel’s nose stopped bleeding. She could move her arms. No swelling. She stopped crying.
“I’m OK, Mama! I’m OK!”
I watched her all night, checking her every five minutes for changed breathing or confused behavior. She was tired but she wasn’t injured. How could she come so close to peril and yet be so unharmed?
And yet, this is how it happens.
But I’m not OK. The tsunami of condemnation and fear that has crashed down on my head has seen me weeping into my pillow before falling asleep, trembling with night terrors, vomiting under the weight of all the terrible what ifs.
This is how you become a crazy person, I think as I find myself awake in the dark morning hours. You almost lose a child and suddenly you’re wandering the house checking and rechecking all the locks at 2am.
It was such a close call. Any other upstairs window and she would have landed on the concrete patio. Even if she’d landed differently, perhaps rolled an inch or two she would have fallen on concrete.
A few inches between life and death oh, merciful God….
Jorai (left) and Jasiel (right), age 4
I felt–I feel like a horrible mother. Those windows–self-locking. I had no idea the twins knew how to open them. I can hardly open them! And how many times have I told them not to climb up on their brother’s top bunk?
I was making a to-do list. I was about to start dinner. I’d been keeping my eye on them all afternoon. And yet. I look away for a few minutes to write a to-do list and a child falls out a window. How does that happen? How can I be an involved, watchful mother and freak accidents still happen?
Still, this is how it happens.
And then, this thought: my children are not baptized.
If, God forbid, she had died, I would never be able to forgive myself. Yes, I trust the unconditional love of God. Yes, I believe she would have been swept up into the arms of God.
But still, have I been remiss in my maternal obligation? Such a long, complicated journey out of our spiritually abusive past and baptizing the children seemed like something we could sort out…later. Infant baptism has always been one of those difficult, sticking points. It wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. Until now.
In the stark light of this morning, the idea of waiting until “later” seems like such hubris. We can baptize them later? As if we’re somehow guaranteed a “later”? What if there is no…”later”? A few inches to the right and Jasiel’s “later” might not have been.
Yes, I believe in God’s unconditional love but something in me desperately needs to make it official. I need the ritual. She needs the ritual. Because we don’t really know if we have a “later.”
Sometimes, this is how it happens–we have to make things happen.
I am shaking. I’ve been throwing up. I’m jumpy. This morning I ran over a grate in a parking lot and it made a weird bumping noise. I screamed, threw the car into park, jumped out. I thought maybe I’d hit a person.
How does a mother go on without her child? I think of my dear friend Joy who lost her daughter three years ago and suddenly, she seems like a giant in the faith to me. How does she even manage to smile? How does she carry on?
“Focus on the fact that Jasiel’s OK,” Matt said to me. “Focus on the gracious, merciful hand of God sparing our child.”
But what if God hadn’t spared our child? What if she had fallen to the concrete? Would His hand still be gracious then?
This is how faith happens–sometimes you just choose to believe despite the what if. She fell but she didn’t die, thanks be to God.
Matt starts chuckling.
“What?” I say. “What could possibly be funny?”
“Well, in 20 years when someone asks our twins how they got baptized, Jasiel will say: Yeah, when I was four I fell out a 2nd story window and my mom got so scared she hauled us down to the local priest and got us baptized right away.”
Yes, this is how it happens.
Growing up Christian fundamentalist, I often said religion was a man-made set of rules. I didn’t believe in religion, I said. I believed in a relationship with God.
But this was a false dichotomy. Attempting to sunder Christian relationship from Christian religion leads to a sort of spiritual nihilism: a belief that any established Christian traditions are abstractly contrived, that traditional, ancient forms of Christian worship do not have intrinsic value.
This was what frustrated me about modern Protestantism. I spent six years wandering through Protestant churches before coming home to Catholicism. What I found during those six years was a sundering and splintering that had gone on so long, heresy was mainstream.
It no longer mattered what you believed about Christianity so long as it was true to you. Experience trumped everything. There was no need for creeds, fasts, holy days of obligation. It was your relationship, you decide what’s relevant to you. Except not really. Because it had already been decided that the Eucharist, Mary and the creeds were totally irrelevant.
Which is to say, it wasn’t until our family began attending a traditional Presbyterian church that I heard the Nicene Creed for the first time ever.
As a small example of how far splintered Protestantism is, I recently met a pastor in a coffee shop who had left his church to start a new church (his former church was also a split-off from another church). This pastor told me he centered his services around… improvisational comedy skits. No worship. No communion. Just comedy skits. Which I gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “bring in the clowns.”
To my mind, this is not healthy reproduction where a good tree bears much fruit. This is bad reproduction, the kind that happens when you make xerox copies from a bad copy–all subsequent versions becoming more grainy, less true reflections of the original.
In the 70′s and 80′s it was all the rage to leave mainline denominations and reinvent the Christian wheel. The odd irony is that non-denominational churches have become their own denominations with the same kind of triumphal, stifling pride they accused traditional denominations of having. It doesn’t surprise me that the meanest and most hateful emails I’ve ever received are from devotees of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.
I now believe it’s a staggering act of hubris to reinvent the wheel of Christianity and even toss out words like “religion.” We’ve reinvented the wheel so much it hardly even resembles a wheel anymore. Hello, comedy skits as church.
The thing is, I’m also guilty of reinventing my own Catholicism. I am not a very consistent, good Catholic. I take the birth control pill. I don’t get to Sunday Mass as much as I should. I am horrible at fasting and am easily annoyed by purist Catholics who make Catholicism inaccessible to outsiders.
Still, I revere the constraints of Catholicism. It gives me the structure within which to work out my salvation and my relationship with God.
In a lot of ways I’m like a pinball shot out of the spring-loaded chamber. I am wildly inconsistent. The vagaries of my human nature often get the best of me. But the lanes and channels of the pinball machine keep me in line. Which is to say, it’s far better for my soul that I am wildly inconsistent within the “man-made” lanes of Catholicism than out on my own, trying to reinvent ways of relating to God.
For me, the word “religion” has been redeemed. The great gifts of Catholicism are the lanes and channels by which I develop my relationship with God. Catholicism is a very human religion, meaning: Catholicism aids my humanity by giving me touch, sight, taste, smell, feeling. Catholicism doesn’t ask me to be a disembodied spirit. It stoops to my humanity. I’ve become far more human inside Catholicism than in all my years outside it.
Yes, there are obligations in this religion just like there are obligations in relationship. Despite widespread claims, I’ve discovered that religion and relationship are not mutually exclusive.
Even the most authentic, genuine relationship will suffer if it is neglected. A relationship is a living thing and cannot go without attention, love and….obligation. True love is sacrifice. Jesus said, “greater love has no one more than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (St. John 15:13)
Entering the Catholic Church was a painful, difficult sacrifice for me. I went alone. I went kicking and screaming. But the Eucharist and Mary were worth every sacrifice. Indeed, going alone and remaining alone are crosses I gladly bear because love has redeemed religion.
And religion has become one of the sweetest, purest words I’ve ever known.
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth. You had me until this post.”
If I only had you until this post, I didn’t really have you.
“Honestly, you just sound bitter.”
Honestly, you just sound dismissive.
“Elizabeth Esther, you confuse me.”
Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I confuse me, too.
“You’re being hypocritical.”
I agree.
“As a Bible believing Christian with a theology degree, I must say your point is contextually OFF.”
As a Bible believing Christian without a theology degree I must say your pride is contextually puffed up.
“Lighten up!”
Sorry, I only starts diets in February. Check back next month.
“What’s the difference between a self-righteous YouTube video and this blog?”
Well, for starters, one is a video and this is a blog.
“Do you think you are saved? Anathema to you!”
And Ichabod to you! Next time we curse each other, let’s do it in Aramaic.
“Mary brought you back to God? Seriously?”
No, literally.
“Your post is an over-reaction.”
Thank you, arbiter of appropriate reactions.
“Forgive this email, but ___________.”
Anytime an email starts like this, I know I’m about to read something unforgivably rude.
“Your judgment, bias and unresolved hurt are showing through.”
Thank God my pantyline isn’t showing through!
“Honestly, you just sound overly sensitive.”
Honestly, you just sound overly insensitive.
“I don’t even see why you would post this.”
Which is probably why you didn’t post it.
“You must be super sensitive about your religion.”
Actually, I’m only super sensitive about cat dander.
“Reading your take, Elizabeth, shows you’re ignorant of Catholic history and dogma.”
What? I’m not ignorant of my Catholic dog! I get her blessed every year.
“I understand you’re on a journey to your PERSONAL truth.”
As opposed to your highly enlightened one, of course.
“Yes, now we all know what Elizabeth would like the Bible to say.”
I’m calling it the EEV. The Elizabeth Esther Version. It’s totally Authorized.
[Three paragraphs of Scripture refuting my opinion]
This was clearly NOT the Authorized Version!
“I don’t think you understand doctrine.”
But I do understand Spocktrine. Does Star Trek knowledge count?
This is the ONLY tweet this person has ever tweeted. Creepy McCreeperson.
“You just don’t get it.”
TRUE! I’M JUST GETTIN’ JIGGY WIT IT!
This video is making the rounds and I thought I’d watch it with my kids. I had no idea that thinly disguised anti-Catholicism was still all the rage.
I ended up using the video as a teaching tool to explain how using cliches, sloppy logic and misquoted Scripture might be wildly popular but it also spreads harmful misunderstandings.
Right in the middle of the video, my eldest son turned to me and said: “How can he say he loves the Church while he’s bashing it?”
Out of the mouth of babes, yo.
So, let’s examine this a bit closer.
First False Claim: “Jesus came to abolish religion.” This is simply untrue. In St. Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.” Jesus didn’t come to abolish religion. When Christians say they hate religion but love Jesus, they should remember that Jesus was an observant Jew!
Unfortunately, the word “religion” has become synonomous with empty, meaningless ritual. But the problem, here, is not religion itself but religion without relationship. It’s an important distinction that is ill-served by a slam poet recklessly slapping the “religion-as-different-than-loving-Jesus” label to anything that looks (let’s just be honest, here)….Catholic.
Sure, there are plenty of lapsed Catholics (especially American) who make it seem like Catholicism is an empty, meaningless “religion.” But there are also plenty of Catholics who found the love of Jesus right in the very heart of Catholicism. I’m one of them.
Second False Claim: “Religion builds big churches but fails to feed the poor.” Again, just blatantly untrue. I hate to be the bearer of inconvenient facts, but the truth is that the biggest humanitarian organization in the world is…..the Catholic Church.
Third False Claim: “Which is so different from religious people and why Jesus called ‘em fools.”
The sloppiness here is more than a little annoying. Yes, Jesus often called out religious people who paraded their righteousness before men. But Jesus’ problem wasn’t with their RELIGION, it was with their desire to be seen, to live their zealotry before men instead of before God alone. This is why Jesus admonished religious people to pray in the privacy of their closets instead of shouting on YouTube how they love God so much better than all those OTHER people. Oh, wait. I digress.
Fourth False Claim: “I ain’t judging, I’m just sayin’ quit puttin’ on a fake look.” *sigh* Here’s the thing: that little phrase “just sayin’” doesn’t exempt you from the fact that you just said something judgmental. It’s the passive-aggressive version of: “I don’t mean to be disrespectful but now I’m going to say something TOTALLY disrespectful!” I ain’t judging, I’m just saying you’re full of crap.
Fifth False Claim: “Jesus hated religion.” Which totally explains why He quit that whole observant Jewish thing. Oh, wait. What?
Sixth False Claim: “He doesn’t support self-righteousness.” You mean like a self-righteous YouTube video?
Seventh False Claim: “Religion says ‘do.’ Jesus says ‘done.’” Jesus also said: “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.” (St. John 14:15) Keeping commandments sounds a little like ‘do’ to me. And then there’s the whole “faith without works is dead” thing. (St. James 2:26 is SO annoying!) I’m not judging, I’m just sayin’.
Eighth (Scary) Claim: “I hate religion, in fact I literally resent it.” You don’t hate religion, you hate your IDEA of religion. Because if you really hated religion, you’d hate something Jesus loves.
Jesus isn’t greater than religion. Jesus IS religion.
Jesus is real, good, old-time religion.
And His grace saved a wretched, Jesus-lovin’ Catholic like me.