Better News — Part 4

51 min readMar 4, 2024

Part 4 — The Bible Defines My Relationships

Introduction

When I was a minister, I remember having a conversation with a new member about our church’s stance on women in leadership positions. I was an associate pastor, so part of my responsibility was meeting with new members to answer any questions and see if there were any areas of the church they wanted to volunteer to be a part of. This particular member asked me a really standard question in the literalist belief system, which I had answered many times before: “what is your church’s stance on women in leadership?” The answer was simple. We followed the bible, which says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” He responded in the affirmative and followed it up with, “That’s good because if there is ever a woman in a leadership position at this church I would leave.”

To a literalist, the bible not only gives us instructions on how to live our lives, but also in what all manner of our relationships should look like. Whether it is the role of women, sexual and romantic relationships, or the family, the guiding principles of each of those is the bible. Rather than relationships being voluntary and based on mutual respect and agreements, they are based on rigid rules from texts written thousands of years ago, by authors living in a completely different culture than our own, amongst a mostly illiterate and largely nomadic people. Even the evangelical churches that claim to be more progressive and allow women to be pastors and elders, still have antiquated, misogynistic, and abusive beliefs about relationships. In this chapter we are going to take a look at three of those beliefs, which completely block individuals’ development of their basic needs of autonomy, competence, and especially relatedness.

First, we will take a look at the belief that men have authority over women. Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. Second, we will take a look at how sexual relationships must adhere to rigid guidelines, based on literalist interpretations of various verses from the bible, which we looked at briefly in Chapter 3. Last, we will look at the literalist belief that an individual’s “relationship” with god takes precedence over all other relationships. Fair warning, this chapter will be triggering to rational people.

Men Have Authority Over Women

There are two main ways the literalist belief system views the authority of men over women. One is in the context of the church and the other is in the context of marriage. Both of these have “support” from various verses in the bible. For example, the verse referenced in the introduction (about women not being permitted to speak) is a letter from the apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 2:12 and is in the context of the church. Paul’s letters to Timothy (and also Titus) belong to a group of three books of the new testament called the “pastoral epistles.” These letters from Paul are sent to Timothy and Titus as instructions for ministry, discussing various topics like church doctrine and leadership. A literalist would read this passage and dogmatically hold the belief that women are not allowed to be pastors and elders and even go as far to say that women are not even allowed to stand up and teach men in church related activities outside of Sunday morning. Yes, you read that correctly. In some literalist churches women are not allowed to stand alongside men when a man is teaching on stage.

I remember attending the Willow Creek Leadership Summit decades ago and witnessing this dogma firsthand. The Summit was not a church activity, but it was held at the Willow Creek Church. As such, every male speaker stood on stage and spoke to the crowd. Every female speaker, and I mean every female speaker, was accompanied on stage with the Willow Creek senior pastor at the time, Bill Hybels (more on him later), and was interviewed…sitting down. Men got to stand and teach. Women got to sit down and be interrogated.

In the Church

In thousands of churches across the country today, there are millions of women who are actively being taught that their place in church is to sit quietly during the sermon, to teach children in Sunday school, to prepare meals for after-church activities (yes, this really happens), and to generally serve in supporting roles to the men of the church. If you’re one of those women and you happen to be reading this, I need you to know something: you are worth so much more. You are actively being oppressed. You are being taught that your worth is secondary, or the more deceptively discriminatory term “complementary.”

There is a belief within the literalist (and broader evangelical) community called complementarianism. It claims to be a biblically supported, theological position that says that men and women are morally equal, but take on different and complementary roles. To put it into theological phrasing (which, largely, is intended to obfuscate the abusive beliefs of literalism) is “ontologically equal, functionally different.” The literalist claim is that our “worth” as human beings is not dependent on gender, but we are “called by god” to different roles. How cute. There are laws that exist that prevent this exact belief in secular society. It’s called Title IX and if a company told a woman that she is not allowed to take on a leadership position because she was a woman, that company would be in violation of Title IX and that woman would win that lawsuit faster than a literalist opens their bible on Sunday morning.

Any literalist still reading might be wondering what is so bad about this type of belief. Different people have different “gifts” after all and this complementary belief affirms the equal worth of everyone. Let me try to convey why this belief is not what it seems. The words claim that the “worth” of a woman is equal to that of a man. But, where does our feeling of worth come from? Worth and esteem are needs that exist on our journey to self-actualization (please re-read part 2 of this series on psychological needs), to becoming our true selves. They are also dependent on our three basic needs that every person has regardless of age, race, or gender: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. How autonomous do you think women feel when they are told they are not allowed to fulfill their passion and gifts that are not in alignment with the church’s stance on women in leadership? Their autonomy, their ability to act as agents of change in their own life, has been completely obstructed. There is no way for them to feel like they have control over their own life and their own journey to self-actualization if they are told they cannot pursue what they want to pursue because of their gender. If their need for autonomy is cut off, they cannot feel worth.

This complementarian view also bastardizes the need for relatedness. As a refresher, Deci and Ryan’s Basic Needs Theory proposes that the need for relatedness is defined as the “will to interact with, be connected to, and experience caring for others.” Human beings are highly complex, social animals and, as such, we need to relate with others; to be a part of a group. Another word for this is “belongingness.” On the surface, complementarianism appears to grant this to both men and women since they both are given specific roles that contribute to the group: men to lead and women to support. But, there is a difference between having a role as an integral part of a group and having only that role allowed for specific members of the group in order to be a part of that group. What happens if a man wants to be in a support role? Well, that’s acceptable. Not everyone is gifted in leadership, after all. But what if a woman wants to be a leader? Unless it’s over children, music, or something other than teaching men, they cannot be a part of the group if they want that. If we, as humans of all genders and races and ages, need to relate to others and be a part of a group and the only way we can do that is by confining ourselves to one particular role in that group without any way of pursuing other roles that would otherwise affirm our autonomy and competence, then we are not actually engaging in relatedness. Instead, we are engaging in emotional subjugation. This brand of literalist relatedness is deeply harmful, patriarchal, and misogynistic and it is shocking that we tolerate this in the 21st century.

We do not tolerate this kind of discrimination in secular society and we should not tolerate it in religious society. When we allow this to continue we are enabling half of our population to be oppressed. The responsibility of correcting this lies in those that have the privilege to do something about it. Ahem, I’m looking at you, men. In the same way that the women’s suffrage movement, by necessity, required the support of allies to win the right to vote, so too do women today need male allies to stand up and say, “this is not OK.” These literalist communities will not listen to a woman because women “are not allowed to assume authority over men.” Men, therefore, must stand up as allies and demand that this belief not be tolerated in any part of society. If you are a man reading this and you are not actively engaging in allyship so that women have equal status within religious communities (and secular society) then you are a part of the problem. There is no such thing as a passive party to this type of abuse.

A quick aside. I have only discussed male/female, binary gender roles, largely because I am constrained to that which I can speak intelligently about. I have much to learn when it comes to gender identity, and perhaps after I have educated myself more thoroughly, I will add an addendum to this part to more completely speak to this topic. For now, I will say that in contemporary society, gender identity is infinitely complex and non-binary individuals face even greater misogyny within literalist communities. When a literalist believes that god made adam and eve, therefore there are only two genders, this leaves out and actively oppresses many individuals who might otherwise be seeking the peace and love that comes with being a part of a religious community. Instead of having their basic needs of relatedness met, they are instead shamed, ostracized, and altogether abused. For what? In the name of adhering to a literalist interpretation of the bible and a dogmatic belief that their literalist interpretation is the “right” one. “Tough love” they would say. If you are a non-binary individual and are struggling with this, please know that you are good and beautiful exactly as you are and you deserve to be supported on your journey to self-actualize, just like everyone else.

In Marriage

I want to take a second to recognize that this section is likely to be triggering. There is a great deal of trauma associated with this specific belief within literalism. Namely, that men have authority over women in the context of marriage and generally over the entire family as the “head of the household.” If this is triggering for you, know that it is my intention to help process that trauma. This section is going to face the more abusive beliefs within literalism head on. If you feel that you are not in the right headspace or have the necessary support, I’d suggest skipping this part and proceeding to part 5.

As we’ve discussed before, we cannot heal until we feel what we need to feel. If you have suffered or are suffering at the hands of the misogyny that is occurring everywhere throughout the literalist community, know that you are not alone, you are capable of great things, and you have the ability to lift yourself out of the oppression you are in. You are not good and noble for suffering under the heel of the men in your life. That is a lie. You deserve so much more. You are worth so much more. Let’s deconstruct the lies you’ve been taught. Let’s hear the better news.

Ephesians 5:22–23 says,

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

This is a letter from Paul again. He is speaking to the church in Ephesus in the first century C.E. and this passage is specifically to married couples. The direct message here is obvious: wives are supposed to be submissive to their husbands. In our contemporary society, this is obviously abusive and I don’t think I need to say much about how this completely removes any autonomy a woman might have. How can a woman have any autonomy, at all, if she is supposed to “submit” to her husband? She can’t. There isn’t any autonomy. This passage is so jarring that even literalists attempt to twist it around to make it about how much Christ loved the church and that that is the real message of this verse. There are issues with that word-smithing and the best way to address them is through a literalist’s own methods of interpretation. As a refresher, those are exegesis and hermeneutics, which means we need to ask a few questions: what literary genre is it, what do the surrounding verses talk about, what are the meanings of important words in the passage, and how should we apply this today?

As mentioned previously, this passage comes from the book of Ephesians, which was a letter from the Apostle Paul. At this time, Paul was awaiting trial in Rome after being arrested in Jerusalem for starting riots related to his message of Jesus and already going through one round of trial in Caesarea Maritima. The literary genre of this book would fall under what are called the “epistles” or letters. This means they are from Paul to a specific person or people, in this case the church in Ephesus. A letter, by nature, can contain any number of genres within it, but in this case we’re dealing with something akin to an instruction manual for a church. The book of Ephesians is often used in what’s called “church planting” where individuals’ will seek to start new churches in areas that don’t have them or at least don’t have that specific brand of christianity. It’s used this way because of its broad range of topics from theology and doctrine to prayers and exhortation to instructions in everyday living.

The literary context of this verse is within the “instructions” context of the book of Ephesians. John MacArthur, who is a very well-known bible commentator in the literalist community, would describe this section of Ephesians as “God’s Standards for Authority and Submission in the Church.” This is reinforced by taking a look at the section before this one, which discusses how someone can live in alignment with god. Verses 1–21 of Ephesians chapter 5 are written to the entire christian community in Ephesus and it ends with the instruction to “[submit] to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The word for submit (it’s “submitting” but you get the point) in greek is “hypotassō,” which, according to Thayer’s Lexicon, carries the meaning “to submit to one’s control; to yield to one’s admonition or advice: absolutely.” That specific verse is for everyone, so you would be forgiven for thinking that this verse isn’t about the subjugation of women specifically. Especially, considering “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands” doesn’t actually contain the same greek word for “submit.” In fact, it doesn’t contain that word at all. If I were to translate that passage without any additional context it would read, “Wives, of your own husbands, as to the Lord.” But, what happens if you read it in the context of the previous verse: “…submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, of your own husbands, as to the Lord.” We can see how the surrounding context actually affirms the position that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands.

You might be wondering, if the context of the previous verses are about everyone submitting to one another, then what do the proceeding verses say about husbands? I’m glad you asked. Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The word for love there is agapaō. You may have heard the word agape before. It is reflective of the love of God. So, Paul’s message to the Ephesians is that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands as though they were owned by them and husbands are supposed to love their wives like God does, which is to say, unconditionally, despite the fact the object of this love will most certainly fail in their commitment to that love. Put differently, God loves human beings despite the fact they are prone to rejecting him and failing him repeatedly and choosing not to follow his commandments. What kind of love would ask a human being to become property of another, while that other is asked to offer a type of love that expects its object to be a “failure?” We’ve discussed it already: an emotionally abusive one.

It is reasonable to say that one manifestation of emotional abuse in intimate relationships could be the treatment of a partner like a servant. This verse, in the bible, according to a literalist interpretation, is an instruction of Paul to the wives of Ephesus that they are the property of their husbands, whereas the husbands are instructed to treat their property well. This is very much in line with the literalist community and a review of commentaries on the verse affirms this. MacArthur’s commentary states:

As indicated by italics in most translations, be subject is not in the original text, but the meaning is carried over from verse 21. The idea is: “Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ [and, as a first example,] wives, … to your own husbands.” As explained in the previous chapter, hupotasso means to relinquish one’s rights, and the Greek middle voice (used in verse 21 and carried over by implication into verse 22) emphasizes the willing submitting of oneself God’s command is to those who are to submit. That is, the submission is to be a voluntary response to God’s will in giving up one’s independent rights to other believers in general and to ordained authority in particular — in this case the wife’s own husband.

So, according to the literalist community, wives are supposed to relinquish their rights to their husbands, who are the authority over them. How loving.

This is not the only passage that has this command either. There is 1 Corinthians 11:3, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” Colossians 3:18–19, “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” If you’re not convinced yet of the blatant misogyny of the literalist interpretation of the New Testament, how about this nugget from 1 Peter 3:7, “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” Weaker. In greek, the word is asthenēs which means “weak, sick, feeble.” According to God’s inspired word, as brought to us today in its perfect and complete form, being accurately transmitted by the holy spirit, literalists are taught to believe that women, as an entire gender, are weak, sick, and feeble.

I mentioned before that this chapter is triggering, and this is one of those moments. If you are triggered by this, I want to take a second and give space for you to feel that. Label it. What is it that you feel when you read the passages and the literalist interpretation above? Anger? Shame? Sadness? Rage? Grief? Those feelings make sense and you are allowed to feel them. We cannot heal from trauma until we know what we know and feel what we feel. And no one else gets to tell you how to feel.

As you sit with those emotions, I want to also make sure you understand that you are good and you will be ok. You can be accepted as you are, when those who truly love you are in your life. You are worth far more than what these passages tell you. You have autonomy — the agency to take control of your own life, rather than relinquish control to another. You have competence — the knowledge that you are capable of great things, despite the fact that you have actively been pigeon-holed into roles in your life that are not concordant with your gifts and passions. You deserve healthy relatedness — secure relationships that affirm your worth as a human being, not as someone that adheres to rigid principles from two thousand years ago in the middle east, but as a human being, equal in every way, not just ontologically, but also functionally. Autonomy, competence, relatedness. These are necessary for self-actualization; for you to become who you were always meant to be. Who you deserve to be. Know that you have the support of millions of others to stand up for who you are.

An Aside On Abortion

We are dealing with the very serious assault on female autonomy here, so, we need to take a look at the quintessential literalist evangelical complaint: abortion. Hang in there. This is important. Triggering? 100%. Do I, as a man, have the right to even speak about this? Probably not. I will do my best to be a good ally and if I fail, then I ask to be corrected, so that your voice can be amplified.

The refrain you will hear again and again in the literalist community, as well as evangelicalism broadly, is that abortion is murder and that the pro-choice argument of “a woman’s right to choose” misses the point that the fetus is a real human life and isn’t a part of the woman’s body, therefore is not her choice. If this is your belief, I am under no delusion that anything I say will change your mind. In fact, I never will. Because your belief is just that — belief. It is not based in anything resembling reason. Oh sure, you may have “reasons” that you’ve come up with post-hoc, but that isn’t how this works. Rational thought says, “this has been validated to be true, therefore it is.” Not the opposite of, “I believe this to be true, so I will find evidence to support my belief.” However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to walk through this and how I came to the pro-choice stance that I did.

The idea that a fetus is a human life and deserving of the same protections as someone who was born is actually a red-herring, a diversion away from the real problem of abortion: female bodily autonomy. If you are a literalist with firm anti-abortion proclivities, I want you to really take a step back and try to work through this section with a critical eye. I don’t want you to be “open” or “receptive” to pro-choice arguments. I want you to put your literalist evangelical thinking cap on and answer these two questions with me: what does the bible say about a fetus being a conscious human life and what does the bible say about abortion specifically?

A Fetus Is A Conscious Human Life

There are a couple of verses that are typically used when arguing that a fetus is a human life. Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalm 139:13–16.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” ~ Jeremiah 1:5
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. ~ Psalm 139:13–16

The argument for a fetus being a human life is an interpretation of these verses that claims the phrasing around God “knowing,” “sanctifying”, and “ordaining” all indicate the personhood of a fetus. The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the fundamental principle that God is all-knowing, or omniscient. Of course he knew us in the womb. He also knew us before we were born at all. God exists outside of time and space and therefore is not constrained to our limited view of the universe. Any literalist would affirm that God knows all. Even before we were even a thought in our great-grandparents dreams. God is still able to know, sanctify, and ordain us. So, if this is the case and one tries to make the argument that God knowing us as a fetus indicates personhood, then the logical extension to that claim is that any preliminary stage prior to birth would indicate personhood because God knew us then, too. What’s a stage prior to a fetus? How about sperm? When a sperm meets an egg, a fetus is formed and God certainly knows which sperm and which egg is going to form us, therefore he knows us as a sperm too. Let’s form a logic statement:

God is all-knowing
God’s knowledge of us indicates an established personhood
The destruction of an established personhood is murder
Via 1, God knows us as sperm
Via 1 and 2, God’s knowledge of us as sperm indicates personhood
Via 2 and 3, destruction of sperm is murder

All of the sudden things are more uncomfortable for the literalist. They aren’t uncomfortable because the reductio ad absurdum of the literalist argument is inconsistent with literalist actions. They are uncomfortable because we’ve made men just as culpable as women in the destruction of a human life prior to birth. Would a literalist still be pro-life if male masturbation was equivalent to murder? More on this in a second.

Clearly, believing that the destruction of sperm is equivalent to murder is an untenable position and is absolutely absurd, even for a literalist. So, what to do as a literalist? You have limited options now. You certainly can’t claim that God is not all-knowing and I doubt any literalist would deny that the destruction of an established personhood is murder. So, really, the only option available is to refute that God’s knowledge of us indicates personhood. But, if we do not accede to this argument, what would indicate personhood?

There are really only a couple of other ways that literalists try to make the claim that a fetus is a human life from the moment of conception. One is about the movement of a child within the womb, which is derived from passages like Luke 1:41, which says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” On this point, I’m not really sure what to say other than movement simply doesn’t indicate personhood. Have you ever breathed? Right, you have at least breathed long enough to stay alive to this point and read this book. Breathing occurs because our lungs inflate and deflate, aka, move. No one is arguing that lungs are people, I hope.

Just in case that isn’t convincing, let’s talk about the human embryo after fertilization specifically. Simply put, when a sperm successfully fertilizes an egg, the egg travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus where, if it successfully implants there, will continue its process of cell division (mitosis) and grow a fetus. So, technically speaking, the fertilized egg does move. Does this indicate personhood?

What you may not know is that cells called hepatocytes also move. Hepatocytes are adult stem cells that make up about 80% of your liver cells and undergo the same process of cell division as embryos, aka mitosis. They also spontaneously move, even when removed from the liver under study. So, both hepatocytes and embryos undergo mitosis and move. Is anyone really claiming that hepatocytes are people? Hopefully not. Otherwise, drinking alcohol just became murder. The more reasonable belief is that not everything that moves is a person.

The other argument for a fetus being a conscious human life is around some old testament laws that demand recompense for the loss of an unborn child. For example, Exodus 21:22–25 says,

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm,[a] then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

So, in this verse we see an actual reference to inducing a miscarriage via an “accidental” assault on a woman. Why, if men are fighting between each other, either one of them would hit a pregnant woman is an entirely different conversation, but let’s imagine for a second that it was indeed an accidental blow landed on the pregnant woman and her unborn child dies. Literalists will view this verse as proof that a fetus is a person. Here’s a question for the literalist, where in this passage does it say that the “harm” caused was the loss of life of a person and not the loss of potential income? Meaning, in the context of this chapter of Exodus, there is a mix of verses about consequences related to loss of life and loss of property and financial reparation. Even in the passage quoted above, there is a bit about financial reparation. These two specific verses are actually right in between passages on slaves. Let’s look at the whole section, like a good exegetical literalist:

When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money. When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth.

So, first there is a law about how to respond when someone beats a slave, then one about causing a miscarriage, and then back to beating slaves again. As a quick aside, because I have to, slaves… No one would argue today that a slave is not a human being. Yet, the same section of the bible that is used by literalists to say that a fetus is a human being, was not used by literalist slave owners to argue that slaves were human beings and thus…not fucking property. Maybe, just maybe, literalist evangelicalism doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to morality.

Continuing on with fetuses, it seems like an interesting place to put a verse about the “personhood” of a fetus generally and it is certainly a tough place to derive a theological position about the personhood of a fetus, when the passages immediately preceding and preceding the verse in question are talking about slaves, which were considered property. It seems more contextual to me to read these verses as the consequence to someone accidentally causing a miscarriage, which is the loss of potential monetary value of a child who can work the fields or work as a tradesman or be a daughter to sell (yes, that was really a thing). If we’re going to care about the context of passages then we should at least be consistent about it.

The Bible’s Instructions For…Abortion?

If you are still not convinced by the above, let’s take a look at a similar passage in the old testament that also deals with miscarriages. Numbers chapter 5, verses 11–31 give explicit detail about induced miscarriage. Feel free to take a look online for the complete passage, but for the purpose of this chapter the summary is that it is a description of how to “test” whether or not a wife has been unfaithful to her husband. Yes, it is specific to women and no, there isn’t an equivalent passage about men. The idea that there is only a test for women and not men when it comes to adultery is itself patriarchal and misogynistic, but what makes this passage particularly disturbing is that the “test” itself results in a miscarriage via a drink prepared by a priest in the temple and given to the woman. Verse 27 is the punchline,

If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse.

So, according to the bible, if a woman has an affair and gets pregnant and the husband wants to test her, then it is the recommended approach to give her a drink that induces a miscarriage. That’s an abortion, in case you were wondering. Some people say it isn’t, which is either mind-bogglingly stupid or horribly manipulative. If personhood begins at egg fertilization, then this passage in Numbers is saying that God’s recommended approach to dealing with a suspected extra-marital affair by a woman is to kill that person. Is that what you believe? That God recommends killing a baby if you merely suspect the wife has an affair? Should that be the law today?

I hope you can now see how there are fundamental problems with the literalist position that life begins at conception. I hope even more that you can see that the whole issue of abortion actually has nothing to do with the “murder of the baby” and everything to do with female bodily autonomy. The Bible recommends abortion as a “test” for an affair. Specifically, the affair from a woman. From a literalist viewpoint, this passage demands (it’s god’s word, remember) that if a man wants his wife to have an abortion, then that’s OK. But nothing is said about a woman having any say in this matter.

The Inequality Is Palpable

If you make the claim that life begins at conception, then you are acceding to the idea that God endorses the murder of an unborn child as a “test” for female marital infidelity. What’s worse is that there is no male analog. Men are simply not held to the same account. Don’t believe me? Just ask someone dear to me, whom I will call Regina because she asked me to obfuscate her identity.

When Regina was 18, she got pregnant. Which is super young. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she wasn’t married yet. As a result of her pre-marital sex life, she was fired from her job at a Christian summer camp. She was also required to stand up in front of her church and apologize. Yes, you read that correctly. She had to apologize for being a sexual human being with desires. Apologize for being an autonomous individual. Apologize for being human. And no, she did not have an abortion. Her already difficult life (being a new mom at 18) would have been made so much harder.

Why do I bring this up, if it’s not about abortion? Because the man that got her pregnant was not required to do anything. The focus was entirely on her and her “sins.” There were no repercussions for him, no consequences, no anything. Instead, the community of people that Regina knew and the community that claimed to “love” her, took no time at all to sham her and humiliate her publicly with this forced apology. And she was not alone. Regina is one of countless women who have been shamed and humiliated by the literalist community for decades. Completely undermining their need for autonomy, competence, and especially relatedness. This is beyond inexcusable. As a society, we ought not to stand for this type of behavior. There ought not to be the “freedom to exercise religion” when that religion so obviously and egregiously inflicts such psychological harm on so many people.

If you’re a woman and you have suffered or are currently suffering under this type of misogyny, I wish there was something I could say to you to make it all go away. I feel for you. I wish I could fix it right now. The fact is, you are being oppressed and abused. Your autonomy is being stolen from you. Your relatedness to others is absolutely bastardized and you are worth so much more! You are not property, you are not a servant, and your body is yours. No one else gets to tell you how to feel and no one else gets to tell you what to do with your body. There are millions of good people who support you and are fighting for your reproductive rights every day. What you are enduring or have endured is nothing short of domestic abuse. The United Nations defines domestic abuse as this:

Domestic abuse, also called “domestic violence” or “intimate partner violence”, can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone. Domestic abuse can happen to anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender. It can occur within a range of relationships including couples who are married, living together or dating. Domestic violence affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels.

Read that again and let it sink in. I’ll wait.

If you are taught to believe that women are supposed to submit to men like they are property, that a woman’s role is to support men, and that you have no such thing as bodily autonomy, then power is being exercised to maintain control over you. Being humiliated in front of a faith community because someone got pregnant outside of marriage is a form of emotional and psychological threat that influences you. Call this what it is: abuse. If this is you, then please call the national domestic abuse hotline at 800–799–7233. Ask for help and get the resources you need. You are not alone and you deserve so much more than this.

My Sexuality Must Adhere To Rigid And Unrealistic Rules

I have known since I was a young kid that I am an intensely sexual person. I have what Dr Emily Nagasaki calls a high SES (sexual excitatory system) and low SIS (sexual inhibitory system). What this means is that it doesn’t take very much for me to get excited sexually and it takes a lot to pump the brakes. Within the context of healthy sexual relationships this has been a wonderful experience. Lots of sex, all the time, with people I like. Within the context of a literalist belief system, however, nothing has been more traumatic. My journey in discovering myself sexually is probably its own book (one I don’t plan on writing any time soon), but it’s enough to tackle the two main ways human sexuality is denied within the literalist community. One, any sexual activity that is outside the guardrails of one cis-man and one cis-woman in the confines of marriage is tantamount to the “unforgiveable sin.” Two, “lustful thoughts” themselves are also sinful.

These two beliefs are standard in literalism and are taught early on. I remember teaching lessons about this when I was an associate minister in evangelicalism and overseeing the junior high and high school age groups in the church. I look back at that time and shudder. But before I walk too far down memory lane, let’s take a look at each of these beliefs, where they find their basis in literalism, and how they deny a core component of what it means to be human and undermines our autonomy, and competence, and infects our need for relatedness.

Sex Is Only Allowed Within Marriage

I got married at 20. I was barely out of adolescence when I decided that I was going to commit my life to another person. Even by literalist standards (of the 21st century anyway), this was young. It wasn’t uncommon, but it also wasn’t the norm. I remember having conversations with my mentors at the time and them telling me that they felt I was too young to be getting married. One of them even refused to perform my wedding, in part, because of how young I was. That being said, there were also plenty of people telling me that it was OK and that I was living in alignment with God’s word. Why would a person say that I was living within the will of god by getting married so young? 1 Corinthians 7:8–9 says,

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

I was 20. I was burning with passion, especially considering that my then fiancé and I had been dating for a couple of years and we had not had sex yet. We hadn’t had sex because if we did, we would have been shamed and humiliated by our community (remember the story of Regina?) and even ostracized. So, there was a great deal of pressure to remain abstinent before marriage, no matter how strong the urges were.

The literalist belief is that it is better to get married so that you can have sex than it is to “burn with passion.” It ought to go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: a person shouldn’t get married just so they can have sex. That’s a really terrible reason to get married and while that wasn’t my only reason for getting married, it was a part of it. If that wasn’t bad enough, the idea of sex outside of marriage, for a literalist, is sin. Any kind of sex outside marriage.

The bible conveys a message that god cares an awful lot about human sexuality, which makes sense when you consider the people that wrote the books of the bible were either patriarchal and tribal leaders where lineage mattered or they were sexually repressed men. In either case, a great deal of the bible has rules around what is “godly” sexuality. It’s far too large of a topic to cover here, but the short version is that the church has had different stances on human sexuality throughout the thousands of years it’s been around. What we see today in literalist evangelicalism is just the latest manifestation and has its roots in Puritanism. While you might think that this implies literalist evangelicals hate sex, this isn’t the case and it wasn’t the case for Puritans either (they get a bad rap). Puritans were intensely passionate, actually. At least, in terms of 17th century standards. John Winthrop (of “city on a hill” fame) has this little nugget in his letters to his wife Margaret Tyndall:

Being filled with the joy of thy love, and wanting opportunity of more familiar connection with thee, which my heart fervently desires, I am constrained to ease the burden of my mind by this poor help of my scribbling pen, being sufficiently assured that although my presence is that which thou desires, yet in the want thereof these lines shall not be unfruitful of comfort unto thee.

Now, this is certainly no Nora Roberts, but “wanting opportunity of more familiar connection” was too explicit to be included in the 19th century publication of Winthrop’s journals, so it also wasn’t totally innocent. The Puritans were passionate and loved sex inasmuch as it was seen as a means of procreation as well as part of fulfilling one’s duty to their spouse. Remember 1 Corinthians 7:8–9 quoted above? Well, those verses follow after 1 Corinthians 7:1–3 where Paul tells the Corinthians,

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

Puritans felt it was a husband and wife’s duty to fulfill each other’s sexual desires. It was a way for a married couple to deepen their relationship with each other and with god. On its face, this isn’t so bad. You might even be forgiven for thinking there is something beautiful about it. However, let’s take a quick aside and read the next verse. 1 Corinthians 7:4, which says, “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” So much for bodily autonomy.

Puritans, and literalist evangelicals today, view sex as a positive thing and encourage married couples to engage in this for the purpose of procreation and fulfilling their godly duty to one another as husband and wife. One main question comes out of this though: what do literalists believe about having sex outside of their concept of marriage between one cis-woman and one cis-man? Put simply, it’s sinful. Engaging in any type of sexual behavior outside of that standard is considered “wrong” and there is immense pressure put on individuals, even young children, to maintain their “purity.”

There are explicit and implicit norms within the literalist community to maintain that “purity” which includes, but is not limited to:

Masturbation is sinful
Sex before marriage is sinful
Adultery is sinful
Ethical non-monogamy (where all parties are informed and give consent) is sinful
Homosexuality is sinful
Certain kinks are sinful
Certain sexual positions are sinful

Basically, if you’re a heterosexual, married couple, you can have sex in the missionary position and maybe oral sex if you’re more “progressive.” It’s difficult to articulate just how oppressive this view of sex is. Apart from the blatant hetero-normativity, the abuses against homosexuality within literalism are rampant. They have been well-documented, but it’s worth bringing up briefly just to add to the litany of oppressive acts.

I knew a man, we’ll call him James, that also married when he was young. He got married because he got his girlfriend, Regina, pregnant before marriage. James and Regina married at 20 and 18 respectively. They were married for about 15 years and had three kids before James finally grew the courage to come out of the closet. I can’t even imagine the amount of pain and turmoil that this man must have had to endure by coming out when he did. Naturally, he was completely rejected by his faith community and I even remember the pastor of his church at the time telling me, verbatim, “Adultery, I can understand, but being gay? That doesn’t make sense to me.” So, according to this literalist, adultery was understandable. Violating the trust and agreement of your partner was understandable. Deceiving your partner was understandable. But being attracted to someone of the same sex? That was too far.

If this episode is triggering, I am sorry. It is not my intention to trigger pain. It is, however, my intention to shine a light on all of the abuses of literalism, both explicit and implicit. This literalist belief that marriage is between “one cis man and one cis woman” has traumatized millions of people and we have a duty to reject it outright. There is no justification for allowing the trauma and abuse of individuals based on their sexual identity under the auspices of “religious freedom.” We do not allow religions to teach that beating your children with rods (Proverbs 13:24) is acceptable. Nor should we allow them to teach that people are inherently bad and sinful because they are sexually attracted to members of the same sex.

The interesting thing about the list above is that many of these items do not have explicit biblical references. The bible doesn’t talk about masturbation, or pre-marital sex, or ENM, or kinks, or sexual positions. Yet, some literalists will argue these things are qualified as “sexually immoral,” which the bible does discuss at great length and is considered sinful. Sexual immorality, though, as used in the new testament, comes from the greek word porneia, which means “illicit sexual intercourse.” The idea that the behaviors listed above are “illicit sexual intercourse” is incredibly subjective and is actually blatantly contradictory to the literalist claim to derive their beliefs from the bible. Nowhere in the bible does it explicitly say, “masturbation is a sin.” And yet, this is how I was raised and also what I taught. Where does this come from? The answer is that lust itself is a sin.

Lust Is Sin

In the new testament, the word for lust is some variation of the greek word epithymia, which means a “craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden.” When Jesus is recorded as saying, in Matthew 5:28, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” epithymeō is the word there. So, from a literalist perspective, anyone who looks at someone who is not their spouse with a craving, longing, or desire, might as well be committing adultery. If that wasn’t enough, the next verse really drives home the point. Matthew 5:29 says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

When I was in bible college, I took this passage almost literally. Thankfully I had enough sense to not gouge out my eye. But that wasn’t the case for othgers throughout history (feel free to read the story of the life of Origen). Having a high SES and believing that desiring others who were not my wife (didn’t have a wife at that time) was sinful, I made the now embarrassing decision to walk around all day with a blindfold over my eyes. Like I was making some sort of statement about morality. When people asked me what I was doing I would quote the verse mentioned above. Some thought it was a bit strange, but understood, and others were “moved” by it. One of my college professors came up to me during one of my classes, leaned down and whispered in my ear, “I’m so proud of you.” Proud of me. For making a spectacle of myself by taking this one passage of the bible somewhat literally and parading around with a blindfold because…what? Because I felt sexual desire for other humans.

We will dive a bit deeper into this topic in part 6 because, for me and many others, sexual sin is at the core of our deep-rooted hatred of ourselves and belief that we are fundamentally bad. For now, it’s sufficient to demonstrate how literalists view the idea of sexual desire for anyone other than your spouse as tantamount to adultery and how this undercuts a person’s autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

As mammals, sexual desire is a part of being alive. While true that there are those that are born without a sexual desire (asexuality), the vast, vast majority of us humans have sexual desire. This is a biological prerequisite to sexual reproduction, which mammals reproduce by, so this would make intuitive sense. If we reproduce sexually, then our ancestors that were highly sexual would have reproduced more and those who were asexual would have reproduced less, thus passing on those genes of sexuality to us. It’s real straightforward. So, here we have humans as sexually reproductive creatures with sexual desires in order to pass our genes along and then comes along a viewpoint that says, “in order to be a part of our group, you have to deny the part of you that makes you a sexually reproductive human.” You might see how this is traumatic. Does a literalist choose their need for autonomy and decide that their sexual desire is acceptable and forfeit their basic need of relatedness by being ostracized? Or, does a literalist choose to forfeit their autonomy and deny their sexuality, so that they can attain their need of relatedness? If you’re thinking that this would make a person go crazy, you’d be right.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the real insidious thing here is the reinforcement of incompetence that comes along with being unable to deny one’s own sexuality. Again, we will deal with this in detail in a later part. For now, we can introduce the problem here with a story. Like I mentioned earlier, I knew from a young age that I was a highly sexual person. I was also raised in the literalist belief system that said sexual desire outside the context of marriage was sinful. And to be clear, I’m not talking about behavior, I’m talking about desire. The lessons I was taught and taught others was that sexual thoughts and feelings that were not for one’s spouse were sinful. And as we saw in the previous chapter, a literalist holds the belief that once they accept Jesus as their “personal lord and savior” the willful sinning is supposed to stop. This would mean that the willful sexual thoughts and feelings are supposed to stop. We used to have a phrase, “the first look is free.” The implication here is that we can’t help our biological reactions, but we are supposed to rein them in as soon as they pop up.

This idea of restraining one’s feelings and thoughts comes from 2 Corinthians 10:5–6, which says,

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

Take a step back and think about this for a second. A literalist believes that it is their responsibility to resist temptation and do their best to not sin and they equate sexual desire for anyone other than their spouse as sin. Every thought and desire is supposed to be made “obedient to Christ.” Put a different way:

Once saved, willful sinning is supposed to stop
Lust is illicit sexual desire and equivalent to adultery
Sexual desire outside marriage is sin
Sexual desire outside of marriage is supposed to stop

What kind of sexuality do you think a person will have if this is their view? If your answer is one that is repressed and full of shame, you would be scratching the surface. More on this later.

In the context of sexual relationships, marriage or not, sex is foundationally important. It is a part of what makes us human. It is one of the main ways that we bond with one another in partnerships. When sexual partners orgasm in their sexual encounters, the hormone oxytocin is released. Oxytocin is called the “cuddle drug” or “connection drug.” It, quite literally, gives us a feeling of intimate connection with our partners. By denying individuals this form of connection with people who have given their consent, literalists are denying a person’s humanity. Additionally, this type of oppressive view of sex completely subverts an individual’s need for secure relationships and makes them feel grossly incompetent because there isn’t a sexual human alive who can “take captive every thought.” It’s like asking someone to stop feeling hunger. Or thirst. Or sleep. Ridiculous, right? If you are a literalist or former literalist who struggles with your sexuality, you are not alone. This rigid, unrealistic, and hypervigilant approach to human sexuality is not only unhelpful, it is actually abusive. You are being asked to deny your own humanity; the very thing that even allowed you to exist in the first place (a drive for sex). This is wrong and we ought not to tolerate it as a society.

Family Relationships Are Second To Relationship With God

There is a story in the old testament that you may have heard of before that best represents the literalist view on familial relationships and a relationship with god. The story of Abraham and Isaac. For those who may not have heard of it, the summary is that god showed up for Abraham at some point after he had made a treaty with the Philistines and told him to make a sacrifice for him. But this wasn’t just any sacrifice. God asked him to sacrifice his son. Yes, that’s in the bible. Genesis 22:2,

Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love — Isaac — and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.’

To put it in a larger context, because that’s important to literalists, Isaac was god’s promised son to Abraham. Abraham did not have any sons (sons are important in patriarchal tribes) with his wife Sarah before Isaac because Sarah was “barren.” He did have a son through Sarah’s servant, Hagar, whose name was Ishmael. The rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael is a story for another time. The point here is that Abraham didn’t have a hundred sons and Isaac was one of them. He had Isaac. The son of promise. Not that that matters terribly to the rational person, this is important to literalist evangelicals because it acts as what’s called a messianic foreshadowing. Isaac was Abraham’s only son, his promised son, just like Jesus is god’s only son, the promised messiah. And, just like the story of Isaac, the story of Jesus is about sacrifice. The sacrifice of a living human being.

The way that literalists normally explain this passage, in order to avoid the obvious problem of god demanding that a father murder his own son, is that god didn’t really intend for Abraham to sacrifice his son. It was just a test. Which is an interesting perspective to have, given that literalist evangelical exegesis and hermeneutics dictate a “plain reading” of a text. But that’s neither here nor there. Even if we grant the premise that god wasn’t really asking Abraham to kill and burn his son on a mountaintop in the desert of the middle east, Abraham sure thought so. This would seem to matter more than any intention god had, given that Abraham is the one actually doing the murdering. Genesis 22:9–12 says,

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham was literally going to murder his son until an angel stopped him. Abraham, who is viewed as the model of what true faith in god looks like, was willing, able, and committed to murdering his son because he heard a voice telling him to do so. This story is lauded in the literalist community as an example of how deep our faith must be for god. I would know because that is what I was taught and what I taught others.

Murder, He Wrote

To a literalist, God is the most important relationship that an individual can have. Bar none. So much so, that if god asked an individual to murder their own child on a mountaintop in the desert, they are supposed to have the faith to do so. The rebuttal I can hear now from literalists would be something along the lines of, “that was a specific test for Abraham, that’s not what god would ask of us.” The main problem with that is someone would have no proof that that is the case. God did it once, why would he not do it again? How would one know? And why didn’t Abraham follow that same logic? A literalist might respond with, “Well, that was an old testament passage and Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial requirements of the law, so god would never do that today.” Leaving aside the heretical view that the old testament can just be cast aside because Jesus “fulfilled” it, let’s take a look at the new testament. Just to make sure we are addressing the literalist concerns.

In Matthew chapter 10, the author records Jesus as sending out his disciples to bring the good news to people and to perform miracles like healing the sick. As a sort of “pep talk” before sending the, out Jesus says, in verses 34–37,

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

In Jesus’ own words, he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. That if we love our parents or our children more than him, then we aren’t worthy of him. Basically, what Jesus is saying here, according to a literalist, is that if someone chooses to love their family more than they love Jesus, then they get the opportunity to go to hell. And this is by design, because Jesus came to “bring a sword.” There is a larger context to this chapter that we will deal with later because it is directly related to the “victim” mentality that many literalists (and evangelicals more broadly) have, and how that relates to the rise of violent rhetoric and christian nationalism we see today. For now, it’s sufficient to understand that the verses above are within the context of Jesus speaking directly to his disciples about going out and bringing the good news to others and to be prepared for violence, even violence between family members. And his words of encouragement to his disciples if that happens is that it’s all a part of god’s plan, even if that means “brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. (Mat 10:21)”

Does this mean that god would ask someone to kill their own child today? I don’t think a literalist would agree, but I would argue it’s within the “plain reading” of these texts and a literalist would have to do some fancy word-smithing to make that message be different, which is rather inconsistent with their larger approach to other doctrines they hold dear (homosexuality is a sin, for example). Maybe, according to the new testament, we can allow that god won’t ask us to murder anyone (seems like a pretty low bar, but OK). But, what if he asks a literalist to never speak to their parents again or disrespect them in some way or generally behave in a way that demonstrates they love god more than their parents (kinda sounding like an abusive relationship again)?

Father Knows Best

Luke 9:59–60 says, “He said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But he replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” Here is a man who wants to be a disciple of Jesus. A willing servant. Someone who likely heard Jesus preach and followed him around and wanted to take the message of the good news to others. The only caveat? His dad died and he was clearly still grieving given that his father hadn’t even been buried yet, and Jesus’ response was, “pshhhhh, you don’t deserve me.” That’s a very strange and unempathetic reaction from a supposedly loving god. Unless, of course, god really does want us all to prioritize our love for him above our love for anyone else and be willing to behave in ways that violate our own values, in order to demonstrate that love. I’m a broken record, but only because I want to really drive the point home: what kind of relationship does this sound like to you?

Old testament, new testament, it really doesn’t matter because from a literalist perspective god is the supreme relationship in this life and everything else is secondary. I don’t think I have to spend too many words demonstrating how this idea of familial relationships breaks our basic need for relatedness. As children, if we learn that our parent’s relationship with an abstract, unseeable thing, is more important than their relationship with us…well, it’s traumatic. I would know.

I mentioned briefly before that my dad was a member of the Gideons. According to their mission statement,

The Gideons International is an Association of Christian business and professional men and their wives dedicated to telling people about Jesus through associating together for service, sharing personal testimony, and by providing Bibles and New Testaments.

We are going to leave aside the statement that women are defined by their role as “wife” rather than autonomous individuals because we’ve talked about that already and we understand how traumatic that is. I quote this mission statement because it demonstrates how zealously literalists pursue the distribution of bibles and to give context to my life.

My dad participated in this endeavor for a time when I was young. Every week (or maybe it was every month, I don’t remember), my dad would pick me up from elementary school and take me with him to some unfamiliar location and meet with other men (it was always men). They would meet and pray and then they would drive to a nearby junior high or high school and stand on the sidewalk as the school let out. He would then pass out bibles to these students, if they wanted one. The whole thing lasted a couple of hours, sometimes more if the men got to chatting afterwards. Where was I? I’m glad you asked. I was in the car. Alone. Without anything to entertain myself. This was in the early 1990’s, so it was a time before smartphones and youtube or anything to keep oneself occupied. No, I didn’t have a gameboy or any kind of electronic game because that would “rot my brain.” I did have a bible to read though, so, I should have been happy.

Since I came straight from school, it was usually expected that I do my homework while I waited for a couple of hours. On its face, this may not seem so bad (or maybe it does if you’re empathetic at all). But just to elaborate, I was alone, in an unfamiliar place, with strangers mulling about around me (high schoolers are terrifying if you’re 8), with nothing to entertain myself, and stressed out more than you can imagine as someone who is hypersensitive.

I remember vividly on one of these trips that Idid not get a chance to use the bathroom after leaving school because we were in a hurry (can’t be late to deliver bibles). When we got to the location where my dad met with the other men, there was no bathroom. When we got to the school, I asked my dad if I could go to the bathroom and he said “no, just hold it,” or something to that effect. I don’t remember the exact words, but I do remember not being able to go pee. I assume he said “no” because he was more interested in delivering bibles as quickly as possible and my journey to the school bathroom would have taken too long. So, I held it. For a while. Long enough to where I couldn’t hold it anymore and looked around in the car for something, anything to pee in, I found a “trash can” in the form of some sort of bucket that had some spare change in it and I emptied my bladder. In the car. Far away from home. With strangers walking by. When my dad came back some time later, I informed him of what I did and his response was, “good boy.” Like a dog being rewarded for peeing outside and not on the carpet.

A literalist may disagree with my arguments. They may disagree with the conclusions that I have drawn from various passages. They can argue about my form of exegesis and the definition of greek words. If they’re theologically savvy, they can use fancy word-smithing to explain these things away. If they’re philosophically trained, they can point out flaws in my logic. But, what they cannot do is deny that there are people in the literalist community that behave this way because they believe they are doing the will of god. And those people are abundantly common. Just like my dad, who fervently believed he was doing god’s work. He firmly believed that he was operating within the will of god by delivering bibles at the expense of his son urinating in public, which if you’ve never experienced, feels incredibly humiliating.

This is the practical application of the literalist belief system. In the same way that it is irrelevant that god didn’t really intend for Abraham to kill his son because Abraham believed it and Abraham was the one doing the murdering. Maybe the intention of the literalist belief system isn’t to prioritize the love of god above the love of children, but that’s what happens. I know because I lived it.

So far, you’ve heard the literalist version of the good news of Jesus. Men have authority over women, they are the head of churches and the head of the family, sexual relationships must deny their own humanity, and family relationships must be disposable for the sake of god. There is better news though. Again, these simple statements are ones that I repeat to remind myself that my needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are real and can be met.

We Are All Morally And Functionally Equal

The truth is, we are all victims of the patriarchy. None more so than women, but men are also victims in a different way. Being raised as a man in the literalist community, I believed my duty as a man was to be a leader and to be husband and a father, leading both family and church. The assumption was always that my wife would play a support role while I led. That women in the ministry would have support roles while I led. That, generally, men were leaders and women were supporters. We’ve already seen how this good news breaks autonomy, competence, and relatedness for women, but it also does so for men. I, for example, spent most of my life violating my internal value of fairness in order to uphold the patriarchal view we’ve discussed. As a result, I carried tremendous guilt in this regard for most of my life. I knew that we were all equal, but I wasn’t behaving that way. This patriarchal belief system made me a victim and then I victimized others. I have many amends to make and I hope this book serves as a part of that. The point here is that there is better news. Everyone is actually equal. I don’t mean equally in worth, but not equal in function. I mean equal in worth, function, and everything else. There are no “roles” that we are supposed to fill. Each person is allowed and ought to be encouraged to pursue their passions and abilities wherever they want to take them. If they want to take them anywhere at all.

No one else has the right to tell you what “place” you have in this world. There are no rules. There is only what we agree to. In the same way that you have the autonomy and competence to decide what values you have in this world, so too, do you have the autonomy and competence to decide for yourself what roles you want to play wherever you go. You can be a leader, a supporter, neither, both, and everything in between. The choice is yours. Because that’s what it means to be an autonomous individual and it is critical for every human being to have that need met if we are ever to have the motivation to continue on our journey towards being our true selves.

My Sexuality Is Beautiful

Sex is infinitely complex and it is beautiful in that infinite complexity. It is a part of what makes us human. I want to take a moment to make something clear, though. Sex is beautiful, when it is within the bounds of what is legal and consensual. In other words, there aren’t rules, but there are agreements we have made as a society. Breaking those agreements carries consequences. It is our obligation as citizens of our democratic (for now) society to follow those laws. This is important because literalists like to make the argument that if we remove the rules (not agreements, because we didn’t get a say) that god put in place around sex (one cis-man and one cis-woman, within marriage) and make all sex beautiful, then what’s to stop people from engaging in the more extreme acts like rape, pedophilia, and incest. I think the magician and comedian Penn Jillette has the best response to this. He responds with, “I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.”

The fear literalists have is that if you remove the box of rules that they have had their whole lives, then there is nothing stopping them from doing horrible things. part 6 is devoted to this fallacy, so I’ll save the arguments against it for later, but suffice it to say, that’s not how it works. Just because the rules have been removed, doesn’t mean you can’t behave in moral (or godly, if you prefer) ways. That choice is yours. Because you have the autonomy, competence, and responsibility to do so.

I spent most of my young life believing that I was broken. Broken, bad, wrong. All because I have a nearly insatiable sexual desire. Believing that sex was only good and beautiful within the confines of one very particular type of relationship only served to deepen my hatred of myself because, clearly, if that was the case then I must truly be a sinner. That’s the good news. The better news is that that is not true. I am not bad and broken and sinful because I have sexual desire. I am human. You are human too. If you are a literalist and struggling with a sexuality that does not align with the stated position of the literalist community (and evangelicalism more broadly), then know you are not alone and you are good exactly as you are. You are not bad. You are not broken. You are not sinful. What you are is a mammal with mammalian instincts. It is an unreasonable and impossible task to try and “take captive every thought” and that has only served to make you feel incompetent and increase your insecurity in relationships. It does not have to be this way. Your sexuality is beautiful as it is.

My Relationships Are Voluntary

I have shared a number of stories about my dad so far. You would be forgiven for thinking that I hate him. The truth is more complicated than that. Not every memory I have of my dad is negative. We would play games on the way to school in the morning, we would play catch in the backyard, and wrestle in the living room. My dad is not a monster and I don’t hate him. I actually do love him. I love him because that is my choice to do so and I understand that he is a human being too, with all the infinite complexity that comes with that. It is my choice to make.

I choose who to love and I choose who is most important to me. Yes, there is a ranking system. For example, I love my children more than I love my colleagues from work. But this ranking system is based off of real people in my real life and none of that ranking system involves asking those people to murder someone for me to prove how much they love me. We get to decide who we love and who we don’t. Relationships are voluntary. All of them. We decide who to spend our time with, listen to, share our lives and memories with. We are autonomous individuals and this is our job, no one else’s. With that, though, is also our responsibility. If we desire to progress on our journey towards self-actualization, then it is our responsibility to create secure relationships in our lives. Relationships that will affirm our autonomy and competence and all the other needs we have along the way. I may have been a victim of cult-like brainwashing and developed patterns of thinking and behavior that allowed me to survive as a child, but that does not negate the fact that it is my responsibility to surround myself with people in my life that support me and are in alignment with my values. That responsibility of choosing who to love and who to include in my life lies solely with me, as an autonomous and competent individual. Just like you.

Remember, anyone still reading, outside of the abuse that is the literalist, evangelical good news, there exists a beautiful and affirming world of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And that is better news.