NLQ FAQ: Should There Be a "You" in Quivering?

June 5, 2011 By 6 Comments

What “Deny Yourself” Means – and Doesn’t Mean

by Kristen Rosser ~ aka: KR Wordgazer

The founders of No Longer Qivering spelled “Quivering” without a “u“ because, as they say, “There is no ‘you’ in Quivering” – there’s no place for self – and they claim this is a bad thing. But Jesus said that a true believer must deny himself, take up his cross and follow after Him. Quiverfull women take the Bible’s admonition to die to self very seriously. We use the acronym J.O.Y., for true JOY comes from putting “Jesus first, Others second and Yourself last.” How can you encourage Christian wives and mothers to turn from Christ’s teachings by making “You” a priority?

The problem with the way Quiverfull followers use the J.O.Y. teaching is that while they claim the “Y” is for “Yourself last,“ what is often actually practiced is “Yourself not at all” – and this particularly applies to wives, mothers and daughters. Quiverfull women believe that in putting their husbands and children first, they are putting Christ first, and that they are not to consider their own needs in any other way than as a means to an end, giving themselves just enough minimal care that they can go on serving “Others.”

J.O.Y. for Quiverfull women, in practice, usually looks more like O.O. – “Others Only.” But is this what Jesus actually taught or practiced?

The story of Mary and Martha is the story of how two sisters understood Christian service. Luke 10:38-42 shows how Martha “received” Jesus into “her house” – which is interesting in and of itself, for Luke apparently didn’t think it necessary to identify Martha in relation to a male authority (such as her brother Lazarus, seen in John 11 and 12). No, it was “her house” that Jesus came to, and Martha did what any good Quiverfull woman would do. Forgetting about herself, she bustled around preparing a meal. But Mary went and “sat at Jesus’ feet and heard his word.” “Sat at his feet” had a particular meaning according to the understanding of that time, which was “to learn as a disciple.” In Acts 22:3, Paul identifies himself as a disciple of Rabbi Gamaliel by saying, “I [was] brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel.” (Emphasis added.) What Mary was doing in Luke 10:39 was making herself a disciple of Jesus, sitting at his feet to learn with the other disciples.

Martha was upset. Here was Mary neglecting her womanly duties, leaving Martha to do it all herself while Mary took her place among Jesus’ disciples! So Martha went and complained to Jesus, asking Him to make Mary do her womanly duty and help in the kitchen. What did Jesus say? “Martha, Martha, you shouldn’t be thinking about yourself or your needs. If you have to prepare the meal alone, God will bless you all the more for your godly selflessness. But Mary, what do you think you’re doing? How will you find a husband if you continue to rebel against your God-given role?”

If Quiverfull teachings are to be believed, this is what Jesus should have actually said. But what He did say was quite the opposite. “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Jesus was telling Martha that it wasn’t necessary for her to be working in the kitchen at all! Instead, what was “needful” was to sit at His feet as one of his disciples, and Mary was right in what she had done. Jesus neither rebuked Martha for thinking about herself, nor said a word to Mary about forsaking her proper gender role. He made no distinctions for the practice of discipleship according to gender at all.

All right, I can see making an exception to serving “Others” if it’s really about putting my relationship with Jesus first. But isn’t Christian life about denying ourselves? Aren’t we just being self-absorbed if we focus on our own needs or desire things for ourselves?

Jesus did say to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. But does this mean it’s wrong to prioritize our own needs, to stand up for ourselves, or to ask others to do things for us?

Matthew 16:36-46 is the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is just about to give His life for the world. A greater example of self-sacrifice could not be shown. But listen to what He says to Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, His closest friends:

“My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” Is that Jesus expressing a deep emotional need, and asking His friends to help meet it?

“And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and said unto Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” Is that Jesus, expressing disappointment, telling His friends honestly that they have let Him down?

Yes, that’s Jesus, thinking about His own human needs and asking for something for Himself. That’s Jesus, honestly telling others how He feels about not getting His needs met. It could not have been wrong for Him to do this– so how could it be wrong for us?

Filed Under: Bible Interpretation, Biblical Culture, Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Boundaries, Coercive Religious Groups (Cults), Gender Equality, Homemaking, Issues, J.O.Y (Self Denial), Ladies Against Feminism by Mrs. Lydia Sherman and Mrs. Jennie Chancey, Legalism, Mary vs. Martha, Me? Obey Him? by Elizabeth Rice Handford, Mental / Emotional Health, NLQ FAQs, Patriarchy, Personal Autonomy, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Proverbs 31 Woman, Quiverfull & the Bible, Quiverfull Discernment, Quiverfull Topics, Self-Abnegation / Martydom, Spiritual Abuse & Recovery, Spiritual Issues, Stockholm Syndrome, Submission, The Godly Woman, Toxic Relationships, Visionary Daughters (Anna Sophia & Elizabeth Botkin) Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Daughter of the Patriarchy: Surveillance

May 22, 2011 By

by Sierra

Thick summer haze blended with the spirals of smoke belching from the backyard grill. A teenage girl in a sepia-colored seventies outfit poked at the flames with a stoic face, silently urging them to gulp up more pages from the notebooks she fed them, one after another. The fire surged with joy and then abated, leaving only charred fragments sinking into dust or drifting lazily into the air. The grill was stuffed, but not for long. Soon the makeshift altar had reduced its sacrifices to embers. The girl sighed with relief, though the anger blazing in her chest had not subsided.

Her mother had read her diaries. They had to be burned. Her most private thoughts unmercifully exposed, her trust breached, the girl vowed to herself that no one would see those words again. As I would discover thirty years later, she also made a promise to her future daughter: she, unlike my grandmother, would never so mistrust and mistreat her own offspring.

“I trust you.” My mother said, over and over again. “I will never invade your privacy.”

I kept journals sporadically, largely as an outlet for childhood frustrations. When other girls shut me out of their circle, I scribbled furiously about it. When I realized guiltily that Christ had commanded us to love everyone, I hastily amended, “Ignore my last entry. I love everyone, those girls especially!” Sometimes the pages were filled with incoherent childhood rage: “STUPID STUPID STUPID!!” I vented. I knew more emphatic words, but good Christian girls never swore.

Despite knowing that my diaries would never be read by mortal eyes, I nonetheless resisted uttering any religious fears or insecurities. I had been told that Satan could not read our minds but could definitely hear what we said. I surmised, though I was never told, that the devil was probably smart enough to read, too, so I avoided showing fear or doubt in the pages of my journals. I alluded in the vaguest possible terms to crushes I had on boys, convinced that to have a crush was to succumb to sinful lust and thus to leave an opening for Satan. Those thoughts were evil, and must be repudiated and denied.

In time, new media burst on the scene. I sent my first email at 11 years old. My mother, still adamantly adhering to her promise to trust me, didn’t stand over my shoulder or vet my communication. I was free to email my friends at church as though we were having a private conversation. At least, that was my assumption. I was quick to discover, yet slow to appreciate, how different the lives of my peers were.

The internet was new to most people I knew, but some guidelines had been established rather quickly: the first rule was to remember that the people in chat rooms weren’t always who they said they were. The second was related: never share identifiable information. Armed with this common sense, I boldly entered chat rooms and held conversations with strangers. Their potential wiles and innuendos flew over my head like a fleet of supersonic jets. If they were there at all, I was none the wiser for a long time.

Among the interests I pursued on the internet were websites for other children who played the Catz video game, which allowed the player to raise and breed virtual pets and show pictures of them to others. I also discovered MIDI files, which exposed me to music I had never heard before and yet held none of the threats of Satanic infiltration like rock music on the radio. MIDI files had no beat or lyrics. They couldn’t infiltrate my brain with images of sex and drugs. This latter discovery soon led to my first jolt of surprise at the exceptional quality of my mother’s trust.

Filed Under: Alienation, Anorexia, Boundaries, Coercive Religious Groups (Cults), Daughter of the Patriarchy by Sierra, Educational Neglect, Enmeshment, Homeschool, Isolation, Issues, Legalism, More from NLQ ..., NLQ Stories, Personal Autonomy, Quiverfull Discernment, Quiverfull Leaders, Quiverfull Topics, Self-Abnegation / Martydom, Sheltering Children, Spiritual Abuse & Recovery, Spiritual Issues, Stay At Home Daughters (SAHDs), William Branham - Message of the Hour Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 7 ~ Spiritual Adultery

May 15, 2011 By

Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

Nate says what happened from Christmas of 1999 through summer of 2000 was this: I condoned his affair with Angel.

I guess Nate should know, because “condone” is a legal term and he’s a lawyer. That’s not the way I remember it. I remember two things: being very ill and being very angry. After the lingeré bonfire, Nate kept his sickly, irate wife very busy listening to his sermons on forgiveness, doing unpaid paralegal work (he set up his new firm at home with the clients stolen from his former boss), getting through Christmas on a shoestring, overhauling our finances, and going to marriage counseling with pastors Mike and Randy.

All this was going on in my last six weeks of pregnancy. The financial overhaul alone was tiring and overwhelming. Nate planned another home birth for me, increased my life insurance, and made me sign for credit cards in my name to reduce our interest rates. Then he rolled all our debt onto the cards, charged law office supplies to them, and locked the cards in the file cabinet. I wasn’t sure how increasing my life insurance saved us any money—after all, it cost more—but Nate insisted that I wouldn’t understand even if he explained it to me. I couldn’t even balance a checkbook, so if I would just trust him and sign here, here, and there already, he would take care of it all. It was futile to ask questions, I would just be even more worn out with Nate’s thousand-word answers, excuses, and insults.

Marriage counseling was also futile—it didn’t help matters at all. Nate was enraged for two reasons: I had great respect for Mike and Randy, and Mike and Randy were very hard on Nate. Randy made one remark during counseling that hit me like a stun gun.

Randy said, “Nate, in your heart you have rejected God.”

My brain began to blink to life. The broken mirror pieces in my mind fused into one big mirror, still picturing Nate, but he was ugly—uglier than the portrait of Dorian Gray. Ugly as sin.

Nate’s “theology,” no matter how complicated, was a substitute for faith, not evidence of faith. I knew it in that instant.

Nate’s retribution was swift, his diversion brilliant. He accused me of being in love with Randy and Randy of being in love with me. We could continue to go to the church and to marriage counseling, Nate decreed, but I was not allowed to speak to Randy unless Nate was present. Nate spread ugly innuendo about us throughout the congregation. In private, Nate assured me that the only thing I was guilty of was “spiritual adultery” so far—of putting another man in Nate’s place of spiritual head and God-mediator. I needed to watch myself, though, he argued, or I’d be in bed with Randy next.

I hated Nate with every ounce of my strength. Randy’s wife was very pregnant too, and it hurt to see the pain and doubt cross her face. Randy’s marriage held tight, though, and his wife was soon beaming again.

As the controversy blew over, I focused on the imminent birth of my sixth child. I had to lie down a lot. The cramps were breathtaking. I had legal research to conduct. I had my children to educate. Plus, Nate had one last theological curve ball to pitch. Nate had begged my forgiveness for Angel. He had repented in tears, and agreed to the marriage counseling. Now, in the wake of my alleged “spiritual adultery,” Nate was backtracking. Could a convinced polygamist, Nate asked me, ever commit adultery? Nate said, “Maybe only women can commit adultery.” As he explained to Mike and Randy, he was “looking at six months” of no sex while I carried Abi, and what better time to look for a second wife? (A little wrinkle: Though only 21, Angel was married. Her husband was in the Navy and deployed at sea.)

Suddenly I was the adulteress, and I wasn’t buying a ticket for this guilt trip. Nate and I had one heated argument after another, and, as long as we were arguing, I hotly denied that I needed God to speak to me through Nate or any man.

By the final two weeks of pregnancy, I was too uncomfortable to argue any more. The pressure on my pelvic floor was so intense that I wished I could simply hang from the ceiling via a system of big elastic belts between the legs and under the belly, attached to straps, affixed to wheels on tracks. Then, I fantasized, I could push off with my swollen feet and glide from room to room. Nate responded to my weakness and discomfort by threatening to exercise his “right” to polygamy on a permanent basis and move another woman into the house, if I couldn’t figure out a way to carry babies and have sex simultaneously. If I left him or reported him to the authorities for practicing polygamy, Nate said, he would use the courts to take the children and everything we owned. No other man would ever want me with six kids.

Filed Under: Alienation, Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, Boundaries, Coercive Religious Groups (Cults), Depression, Domestic Abuse, Dominionism / Christian Reconstruction, Fundamentalism, Gender Equality, Home Birth, Isolation, Issues, Justice Is No Lady, Mental / Emotional Health, Motherhood, NLQ Stories, Patriarchy, Polygamy, Quiverfull Discernment, Quiverfull Topics, Self-Abnegation / Martydom, Spiritual Abuse & Recovery, Spiritual Adultery, Spiritual Issues, Submission, Toxic Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Adventures in Recovery: They Will Know We Are Christians By The Fish On Our Car

May 3, 2011 By 24 Comments

(Thanks Dwight Parker for the title, friendship and inspiration. You are a Rock Star!)

by Calulu

When is a t-shirt just a t-shirt and when is it a smug statement in the face of the world?

Recently I wore my cross to church. That’s something I almost never do and it’s not because it’s ugly. It’s not because I don’t respect what it stands for. If anything I have greater respect for it than I did during my years drinking the kool aid and toeing the proverbial line at my old patriarchal church. I do not want to dishonor what the cross represents.

My cross is beautiful, platinum set with blue sapphires and tanzanites. But I tremble over wearing such an ostentatious symbol of belief around my neck for a variety of reasons.

Back when I was a new Christian attending Possum Creek Christian Fellowship many of the people there wore emblems, t-shirts, jewelry that proudly proclaimed that they were Bible-believing Christians, as if the world couldn’t tell by the floral print cotton jumpers the ladies wore and the polyester pants and button-down shirts of the menfolk.

The t-shirts were imprinted with slogans like “The Devil Is Ugly As Sin” or “John 3:16” or various pious scripture. Bumper stickers abounded on fleets of 15 passenger rolling scrap iron vans in local church parking lots proclaiming that abortion was murder or that you need Jesus RIGHT NOW! Sometimes you’re instructed to “Honk If You Love Jesus”

I remember that my best friend, Josie, had two crosses I envied. One was gold with a stunning number of large diamonds mounted in it and the other was also gold, but a more rococo setting with garnets like drops of blood. I started to save for my tanzanite and sapphire one after wishing for a beautiful gem stone encrusted cross like Josie’s.

Now I look back and it all seems so silly, like status symbols one needs in middle school, like gang affiliations, like ridiculous couture clothing. Instead of doo-rags and those pants that sag to the ground you can hide beers in we ID ourselves with all sorts of things to provide a cultural identity in the Church. I realize now how smug, how proud, how elitist we were in our badges of self righteousness. How unapproachable we must have been in our upright Christian gear, like well-scrubbed indoctrinated cult members instead of average people who believe in God and love others. False pride and we were proud of that pride. Like lemmings lockstep marching along.

I am not even sure what it is that drives people to do things like that, label themselves or put on a public show. A couple of months ago I saw Pastor Hilltop and his non-dancing minions bedecked in t-shirts that had the church name on the back and said on the front “Random Acts Of Kindness” He and his flock were handing out hot cups of apple cider in front of Wal-Mart as their random act of kindness.

That really made me laugh, not only were they sporting matching Tees with their church name on it but they were deliberately giving people cider. Isn’t the whole point of random acts of kindness being that it’s random and you’re not shouting out to the world what you’re doing? I have to conclude this branding has more to do with “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I’M SOOOOOOO RIGHTEOUS!” more than any desire to ‘help’ others or show your faith.

Filed Under: 15 Passenger Vans, Adventures in Recovery, Alienation, Boundaries, Drinking the Koolaid, Fundamentalism, Gender Equality, Issues, Legalism, NLQ Stories, Personal Autonomy, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Quiverfull Discernment, Self-Abnegation / Martydom, Self-Righteousness, Shunning, Spiritual Abuse & Recovery Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 24 Comments

No Charity in The Remnant ~ Part 3: Rebellion

April 14, 2011 By

by Whisper Rain

Whisper ran outside, down the slope, and into a tangle of trees. She sat down in the grass, in shock. It was kind of a blur, what had happened just now in the house… something that had never happened before in her sixteen years of life. It was joked about maybe, but never for real… but this… this was dead serious.

Her parents used to feel kind of sorry for her friends who lived their lives inside a rigid cage of rules. The Rains didn’t operate that way! Whisper’s parents were her friends! But the way she had just been talked to in that house felt anything but friendly… it felt demeaning.

Denny Kenaston’s archaic chatter about “modesty” and “submission,” and warnings about “harlotry” had sounded so silly and harmless coming out of the stereo… but when it was rephrased into new rules… into new expectations for her behavior, those words were like weapons. The amount of pain they inflicted surprised her. They suggested that her individuality was evil… that her preferences were rebellious… that her independence was ungodly. She was furious. She knew she had blown up- she had shouted at her parents. She had probably sworn at them, and she knew she had slammed the door on her way out. Her heart pounded and her eyes burned… she wanted to go anywhere… anywhere but back into that house.

She looked down at her jeans. She had saved up money and bought them herself. She didn’t have very many pairs, but they were cute and flattering, and she lived in them. Whisper knew that when she stood up and went back into the house, she was expected to go straight to her room and replace them with a long, frumpy denim skirt. The thought made her sick. If she were really a “godly daughter” according to those horrible tapes, she’d probably give away her jeans. Or even throw them away so that she wouldn’t “allow another young lady to dress immodestly”… Whisper groaned. This whole thing felt embarrassingly ridiculous. Obviously she wasn’t very godly. She curled up on the ground and stayed there for a long time. It got dark.

Eventually, Whisper dragged herself up off the ground and walked back up to the house. She stared at the bright windows. Her house was beautiful. Her family was fun… maybe… maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe her parents hadn’t meant it the way that it came across. Maybe she should just wear a stupid skirt for awhile out of respect for her Dad, and the whole thing would blow over.

Something inside of her wanted to turn around and walk away that night. She remembered her aunt jokingly telling her that if she ever needed to run away, she was welcome at her house. It was tempting… just walk a couple miles to a neighbor’s and make the phone call… Whisper jerked herself back to reality and slowly walked back into the house. She carefully folded her jeans and put them away… and then she went to bed.

In the morning, she put on a skirt. Her parents smiled at her, and she fake smiled back.

Filed Under: A Woman's Choice, Alienation, Boundaries, Christian Modesty, Denny Kenaston ~ Charity Ministries, Enmeshment, Gender Equality, Isolation, Issues, More from NLQ ..., NLQ Stories, No Charity in The Remnant, Personal Autonomy, Quiverfull Discernment, Quiverfull Leaders, Quiverfull Topics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,