This is a really great article detailing why living in a biblical family structure like that encouraged by Mormons and evangelical Christians is actually very abusive and oppressive to women. This woman was a devout evangelical christian for 25 years, and her family published a newspaper on living biblically for 16 years. The Nebraska Family Council voted them the Nebraska Family of the Year. She worked hard to promote the anti-gay defense of marriage act (something she is no longer proud of). Yet somehow after rigorously following the teachings of the bible, she found her family life to be miserable. Her husband had taken several of their children away and demanded that she submit to him if she wanted to see them again. She found her way to a womens shelter, where she eventually learned that everything she was suffering from stemmed from her husbands control over her. She had pushed for this control herself because she believed strongly in the teachings of the bible. She thought her Baptist friends were too liberal for not following things that are clearly asked of all followers in the bible. But she had no freedom, and was not happy. This article very clearly lays out how living biblically requires women to submit to the power of their husbands. It was by all modern measures abusive, but she had a very hard time seeing it because she believed she was doing what god needs of us. If you believe the bible is all literally true, then sure, it doesnt matter how happy you might be - ya gotta do it. But believing the bible is literally true is a hard position to defend, since it contradicts itself (meaning those parts could not be true) and advocates murder for all kinds of things including working on Sundays, blaspheming, and of course being gay. So if following the bible is oppressive towards women and basically takes away all their freedom, how can it really be the best way? Couldnt we all just be good people but not actually live by the rules written down in a 2000 year old book? Why cant we think for ourselves and determine the best way to act collectively based on the best information we have? And if nothing else, this clearly reveals that the men writing the bible had their own bias. There is no scientific reason why men should be considered superior. The bible is not the command of a loving god, but a series of stories made up by men. It is the perfect tool for controlling people, as this article shows. The women are subservient to the men and the men are subservient to the church. Even if you abandon the doctrine that seems unpleasant but still promote Christianity, youre simply promoting a tool that can continue to be used to oppress and cause harm. Even seemingly benign beliefs like thinking that an embryo is a person at the moment of conception is harming millions of people every year who could be helped by embryonic stem cell research. Im curious what some of my religious friends think of the article (you can ignore my rant here, which Im sure youll disagree with). How can you say these oppressive teachings came from a loving god? Why dies he need us to live a horrible life just to get into heaven? Jill Weeber Jessica Lamoreau, thoughts in the article? Ill keep responses on the logic side and will keep discussion to a minimum, Im just curious what you think.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 21:43:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015