Maybe Glennon Melton is good for evangelicals

Popular Christian author Glennon Melton got divorced and started dating a woman. And the evangelical response has been fierce. Just like when Mark Driscoll imploded, Melton’s personal life circumstances have been deployed as a totalizing indictment against her message, which is being called a “gospel of self-fulfillment.” It’s a common culture war move that I’ve made more than once against fallen religious right heroes to tear down theologies I thought were toxic.

This is what happens when you…

Live your truth bravely.

Follow your heart.

Refuse to betray your authentic self.

Etc.

I’ll confess that I’m a bit tired of brave memoir culture. Before the past decade, memoir generally referred to something you wrote just once at the end of your life, not a literary genre to which you could devote your entire writing career. It also concerns me that the measure of truth in our age has become how well something “resonates” with other people. Donald Trump’s post-truth demagoguery resonated with enough people to get him into the White House.

But Glennon Melton wrote a sentence on her Facebook “coming out” post that I haven’t been able to get out of my head: “The most revolutionary thing a woman can do is not explain herself.”

I think this sentence explains why Glennon Melton’s writing is attractive to evangelical women who live in communities where they constantly have to justify themselves. Whatever else is good or bad about Melton’s writing, if her words have liberated evangelical women from the anxiety of always needing to make sense to their peers, then she has done God’s work. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing for evangelicals to learn how to extract wisdom from morally complicated people who don’t have all their ducks in a row.

Honestly, I’m more concerned with self-justification than I am with self-fulfillment. Because self-justification breeds resentment and gives people a moral mandate to treat others with contempt. I would rather see people “listen to their hearts” and make mistakes than spend their lives tap-dancing before the ruthless judges in their minds and lashing out at others when the pressure gets too intense.

How many evangelical women are held hostage right now by theology and politics they don’t actually support because they think their safest bet is to “deny themselves” and keep their heads down? Is that really the self-denial to which Jesus calls us? If denying yourself is the same thing as taking up your cross, maybe denying yourself actually means giving up the safety of diminutive conformity and risking the loss of your reputation and friendships by boldly contradicting the official litmus tests of your tribe. Could it be that denying yourself and living your truth bravely sometimes mean the same thing?

I have yet to read any books by Glennon Melton. But if reading Glennon Melton causes evangelical women to stand up for themselves and push back when their hearts’ intuitions conflict with the official truths of their community, that’s a good thing. That doesn’t mean divorce is a good thing. But Glennon Melton’s divorce doesn’t wipe out any liberation that her words have provided.

I’m not saying Glennon has the whole story. Nobody does. The church does need to have a more thoughtful conversation about self-denial and self-fulfillment. Part of that involves admitting that not everyone needs the same message. I need to deny myself more; my wife needs to deny herself less. I suspect many marriages out there are similar. One thing that would help our conversation is to stop using other people’s personal failures to prove ourselves right. And I’m as guilty of doing that as anybody else.

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