Relationships Should Be A Balance Of Give And Take

I saw a post on Facebook this week where someone recommended horrible punishments for children who don’t listen to their parents. They based that on Ephesians 6:1-3, a scripture that tells children to obey their parents. It is important to obey, especially if children have a good parent who gives them wise instruction that is designed to keep them safe by passing on the wisdom the parent has learned in life. However, if we continue to read Ephesians Chapter 6, we see that the parent also has instructions on how to treat the child. In the very next scripture, verse 4, the father is instructed not to provoke their child to anger.

When I read the bible, I see a book that gives us instruction on how to create balanced and fair relationships. If we read on through verse 9, we see that slaves are instructed to obey their masters AND the masters are instructed to treat the slaves kindly and not make them feel threatened. Proverbs 12:10 further emphasizes that we are to be kind in any relationship where we have power over another. This scripture tells us that we are to be kind to our animals and that only the wicked are cruel to them. I am so tired of seeing people cherry-pick scriptures to make it look like the bible says what they want it to say. When the bible is understood by weighing the whole book, you see balanced relationships.

Some of my church history is steeped in patriarchy and even white supremacy. That is why I got away from that particular “Christian” movement. At first, I thought that’s how all Christians were, so I went to another religion. I had been taught female submission so well that it didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have the life skills to thrive any place until I stopped being a doormat. There are predators in every religion and every walk of life who can spot a doormat and prey on them. Even though I came to realize this, I didn’t understand how I was supposed to change me when I’d been taught female boundaries were a sin against God.

God answered my prayers on this subject by bringing a wonderful progressive pastor into my life. He had a doctorate degree in theology and was equipped to teach me what the bible really said about relationships. He was also equipped to surround me with people who lived those relationships. He introduced me to the best friend I ever had, Linde Grace White. She explained to me how people saw at first meeting that I was a doormat, because she saw it, too. The difference was that she, and people like her, didn’t take advantage of it. She helped me understand that people make a choice whether they would take advantage of a doormat or not. The ones who chose to take advantage of it defined themselves, not me. I soon realized that I could tell when people were doormats by their body language as well, but I tried to nurture them instead of take advantage of them just like Linde Grace did. She helped me realize that was what defined me. She helped me learn that God not only wants everyone, including women, to have boundaries, but he wants us to use those boundaries to create balanced relationships.

The scripture that was used to teach me that women should be submissive doormats was Ephesians 5:22. It still amazes me how so much emphasis can be placed on one scripture that the scriptures right next to it aren’t even noticed. If you read verse 5:21, it tells all of the members of the household to submit to each other and then goes on from there to give examples on how this could be displayed. If you read verses 25-33, it gives instructions that the husband must love his wife like Christ loves the church and that he must love her as he loves his own body that he would never harm but would instead nurture and feed.

This is not what I was taught in church or my culture. I was taught that the man’s soul and eternity were the woman’s responsibility. If he beat us, we must submit better so he would see the error of his ways and return to Christ for the saving of his immortal soul. That is NOT what verses 25-33 teach us. As I healed, I realized that common sense tells us that a person only sees the error of their ways when they face the consequences of their actions and learn from those consequences. A man is not going to learn anything if the church is forcing the wife to take the consequences for his actions.

I was so engulfed in female submission teachings that I was shocked to my core when I learned that Matthew 18:15-18 teaches that we can protect ourselves if someone harms us. I think it is important to point out that this scripture says sins against us. That does not mean we can make everything everyone does our business and condemn it if we don’t agree with it. This is talking about situations where someone harms us directly and we need to keep ourselves safe. These scriptures say that we are to talk to them, talk to them with witnesses if they won’t listen and change, and finally the church is supposed to ask them to leave if they still won’t change.

The theologian who taught me this taught me two key things related to these scriptures. First, many churches do not follow the third step of this formula any more. If our culture has changed the church in a way that doesn’t allow the church to keep us safe anymore, we can choose to keep ourselves safe by maintaining a safe distance from people who have a pattern of harming us. Second, farther down in that chapter we’re told to forgive 70x7; therefore, we can’t take this action while we’re holding a grudge. We can keep ourselves at a safe distance from a harmful person while still doing forgiving and loving things such as praying for them and the situation and not spreading gossip. The theologian who taught me this emphasized that having one chapter of the bible explain the need to separate from those who harm us and won’t repent while also telling us to forgive 70x7 shows that forgiveness doesn’t always mean reconciliation yet forgiveness must occur for our own spiritual and mental health.

When the bible is taken as a whole instead of cherry-picking scriptures, I don’t see a book that aligns itself with the Facebook post I saw that tells us to punish our children severely if they disrespect their parents. I see a book that outlines what balanced, respectful, and healthy relationships should look like.

As I said in a recent blog post, my father was left severely handicapped by child abuse due to the misinterpretation and misapplication of the spare the rod and spoil the child scripture. When I prayed and asked God how he could do that to my father, I literally heard his voice say Psalm 23. I went straight to the bible and turned to Psalm 23, which says your rod and your staff they comfort me. Something in the way the Holy Spirit was guiding me that day let me know that many are misunderstanding the meaning of the word rod in the spare the rod and spoil the child scripture. A theologian who was guiding me at that time verified the mistranslation and how it should be translated. Then, I found this article (that I have also shared in a previous blog post): http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theprinciplesofspiritualliving/2014/11/the-truth-about-spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child/

When I began to learn what the bible really said about relationships, I was surprised by how much resistance I met. I was even more surprised why I received that resistance. It often didn’t have anything to do with the truth of the situation, what was best for me, or even biblical accuracy. Instead, it was related to some of the same reasons people cherry-pick scriptures – to get the outcome they want.

I want to share one example that’s very telling. My background includes a church that door-knocked a lot. They believed if we had time left in our schedule to do anything we enjoyed, we weren’t door-knocking enough. In addition, they did a lot of activity that was or resembled standing on street corners holding signs and screaming sinner at passers-by. Since I had been engulfed by those kinds of teachings, I needed some support to recover from them. A few years ago, I was driving through a group who were so large they were strangling all four corners of an intersection, waving signs and screaming sinner. It was quite an overwhelming display, a display that became even more overwhelming when one of the men tried to get in my car while I was stopped at the red light. I was terrified. At that time, I was being mentored by a theologian who was helping me recover. When I escaped that horrible experience, I was terrified and shaken. I typed a Facebook message to this mentor with hands shaking so bad I could barely type. In my terrified state and lack of expertise in posting from a phone, I accidentally posted it on my timeline instead of in a private message. The message asked her if I was perceiving correctly, since I now saw something I used to do as harmful. She verified that I was seeing it correctly in her normal kind manner. However, someone else jumped all over me and incited others to do the same, starting the abuse and proxy abuse by trying to make me look bad for not letting religious people have the freedom to act however they want. She did this even though she knew I came from a very destructive religious environment I was trying to heal from. First of all, freedom of religion doesn’t include a man climbing into the car of a woman and scaring her, which the police later verified. Second of all, if her idea of freedom of religion is to leave them alone and let them act however they want, then leave me alone and let me ask my mentor a question so I can heal from a frightening experience. As time passed, it was proven that this person took her stand in retaliation for a scheduling boundary she took as a No when in reality I had said Yes but on a different timetable than the one she expected. I learned from that experience that we must be careful not to let people cherry-pick situations any more than we can let them cherry-pick the bible. The big picture must always be weighed.

This topic also seemed pertinent because of another experience I had this week. I saw a person who had been my neighbor in a bad neighborhood. I was in the early stages of my healing from being a 100% doormat the last time I saw her. After talking with her, I realized bad religious teachings about female submission had been too large of an influence in me developing into a doormat. Most of our neighbors had been drug addicts, alcoholics, or both. She explained how addicts who aren’t in recovery will take advantage of people. She said she sat on her porch and watched them take advantage of my kind nature for years. When I started learning to set boundaries, she said they reminded her of spoiled children whose parents said no for the first time. She said the gossip they spread to retaliate against me was too littered with “how dare her not help us like she used to” for any thinking person to believe I was anything but a caring and helpful person they had pushed too far. She kindly tried to educate me for my future safety. I was happy to inform her that I’ve healed a lot since those days when she watched me take my first clumsy steps into learning to set boundaries. I admitted that I started out as a 100% doormat and now I’m only about a 40% doormat, but she didn’t have to worry about me, because I wouldn’t stop healing until I was a 0% doormat. She was very happy to hear that I was going to be okay, because she said there was a time when I was such a doormat she didn’t think I could ever be okay.

The moral of this story – whether you are a Christian, a non-believer, or another religion: teach your children that relationships are a balanced give and take where both people’s needs get met. When one person lives the consequences of someone else’s wrong doing, the person who did the wrong becomes more and more like a spoiled child. No one should be dominated by a spoiled adult child. People grow by facing the results of their own actions. Please don’t teach your children to deny people that opportunity, because that will only put your child under someone else. That will decrease their opportunities and happiness. I don’t believe God intended any of us to live that way. I can’t speak for other religions, but I believe the bible reveals that God never wanted us to live that way. I showed some of that proof in the scriptures I shared in this blog post.