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God told me?
Sep. 1st, 2011 07:22 pmA situation came up yesterday while I was at the writer workshop I attend.
This is not a formal workshop, but an informal one held by the library several days a month. We all read up to five pages of a story or several poems. No one has to bring a story; it is fine to listen and learn and constructively critique. We do have two published novelists who attend regularly, and another who has published poetry in magazines; several are teachers or have some kind of degree, so there is certainly help for new writers here.
One new person, whom I will call 'J', brought something she wrote, and we ran into a situation that I had not experienced here before- something of a conflict between liberal and conservative attitudes. J's former boyfriend has had a full gender change- through surgery and legally.
J remained friends with the changer through the process, which is long, involved, and expensive. Where the problem come is that like many other people, J has lost her job. Like many other people, she is forced to rely somewhat on her family for help during this difficult time- and her family is pressuring her to denounce her friend and write a statement for the nieces and nephews explaining that what her friend did was wrong and sinful. She brought her pitiful attempt with her to ask if it made sense. In the statement, she tried to say that God creates people as male and female and to change what you are is against God's will. I say that the attempt was pitiful and not because her writing was bad. Instead, what was very clear to me and I think to everyone else in the workshop is that she does not believe what she wrote, and that conflict came over very clearly in her writing.
Now, I am not going to address J's dilemma. That is a conflict she will have to deal with herself. Many of us stated that we did not agree with what she said, and to be honest we should not have. More to the point, we told her that she was not making her point. What I want to address is her cloaking the prejudice of her family in religion.
She strongly reminded me of a little old lady who I dealt with when I did social work with older and disabled adults. When this little lady did not want to take a bath, or get up from her bed, or eat dinner when it was served, she would say that God told her not to.
My sons' stepmother would invoke God in this manner when the children would fight or not do chores or something similar that upset her. She would tell them that they were not acting as God wanted them to.
As you can imagine, this strategy did not work for either the little old lady, or my sons' stepmother, and it will not work for J. The little old lady was demented, and my sons knew that the will they were thwarting was not God's but their stepmother's and soon after that little stunt, she no longer had to deal with them. In any event, their attempts to invoke that higher authority were harmless.
However, many, many people use judicious quoting out of context from the Bible or other religious works to their prejudices- and they are not harmless at all.
I was reading the passages which are supposedly against homosexuality in the Bible. In Judges 19, the Bible says it is better to give up your concubine and let her be raped and abused all night, and then cut her into pieces than to give up a male guest to be raped. This is moral?
There is a passage in Leviticus that equates homosexuality with bestiality and incest. However this is also the chapter that states that anyone who eats an animal they did not kill themselves must undergo a fast and cleansing. It also states that anyone with a bodily discharge is unclean, how to tell is someone is a leper, and the laws regarding sacrifices. Now, as far as I know, no Christian sacrifices anymore, and we all eat meat that someone else killed. That called into question the validity of the rest of it, doesn't it?
As for Paul's statement in Romans- He equates homosexuality with gossip. Read the whole letter if you don't believe me.
I have read historical passages where slave owners justified slavery because it is in the Bible. I have heard abusive husbands say that if their wives acted like the Bible says they should, they would not beat them.
Robert Heinlein once said that you could use the Bible to justify anything. I'm sorry to agree with him, but I do.
Ever since I met the old lady who invoked God when she did not want to take a bath, I have looked twice at any snap judgement I make on morals. She did teach me that I need to see if what I am calling immoral or wrong is truly against God, or against my own prejudices.
I've learned a lot about myself that way.
This is not a formal workshop, but an informal one held by the library several days a month. We all read up to five pages of a story or several poems. No one has to bring a story; it is fine to listen and learn and constructively critique. We do have two published novelists who attend regularly, and another who has published poetry in magazines; several are teachers or have some kind of degree, so there is certainly help for new writers here.
One new person, whom I will call 'J', brought something she wrote, and we ran into a situation that I had not experienced here before- something of a conflict between liberal and conservative attitudes. J's former boyfriend has had a full gender change- through surgery and legally.
J remained friends with the changer through the process, which is long, involved, and expensive. Where the problem come is that like many other people, J has lost her job. Like many other people, she is forced to rely somewhat on her family for help during this difficult time- and her family is pressuring her to denounce her friend and write a statement for the nieces and nephews explaining that what her friend did was wrong and sinful. She brought her pitiful attempt with her to ask if it made sense. In the statement, she tried to say that God creates people as male and female and to change what you are is against God's will. I say that the attempt was pitiful and not because her writing was bad. Instead, what was very clear to me and I think to everyone else in the workshop is that she does not believe what she wrote, and that conflict came over very clearly in her writing.
Now, I am not going to address J's dilemma. That is a conflict she will have to deal with herself. Many of us stated that we did not agree with what she said, and to be honest we should not have. More to the point, we told her that she was not making her point. What I want to address is her cloaking the prejudice of her family in religion.
She strongly reminded me of a little old lady who I dealt with when I did social work with older and disabled adults. When this little lady did not want to take a bath, or get up from her bed, or eat dinner when it was served, she would say that God told her not to.
My sons' stepmother would invoke God in this manner when the children would fight or not do chores or something similar that upset her. She would tell them that they were not acting as God wanted them to.
As you can imagine, this strategy did not work for either the little old lady, or my sons' stepmother, and it will not work for J. The little old lady was demented, and my sons knew that the will they were thwarting was not God's but their stepmother's and soon after that little stunt, she no longer had to deal with them. In any event, their attempts to invoke that higher authority were harmless.
However, many, many people use judicious quoting out of context from the Bible or other religious works to their prejudices- and they are not harmless at all.
I was reading the passages which are supposedly against homosexuality in the Bible. In Judges 19, the Bible says it is better to give up your concubine and let her be raped and abused all night, and then cut her into pieces than to give up a male guest to be raped. This is moral?
There is a passage in Leviticus that equates homosexuality with bestiality and incest. However this is also the chapter that states that anyone who eats an animal they did not kill themselves must undergo a fast and cleansing. It also states that anyone with a bodily discharge is unclean, how to tell is someone is a leper, and the laws regarding sacrifices. Now, as far as I know, no Christian sacrifices anymore, and we all eat meat that someone else killed. That called into question the validity of the rest of it, doesn't it?
As for Paul's statement in Romans- He equates homosexuality with gossip. Read the whole letter if you don't believe me.
I have read historical passages where slave owners justified slavery because it is in the Bible. I have heard abusive husbands say that if their wives acted like the Bible says they should, they would not beat them.
Robert Heinlein once said that you could use the Bible to justify anything. I'm sorry to agree with him, but I do.
Ever since I met the old lady who invoked God when she did not want to take a bath, I have looked twice at any snap judgement I make on morals. She did teach me that I need to see if what I am calling immoral or wrong is truly against God, or against my own prejudices.
I've learned a lot about myself that way.
