On Kicking the Dog

There are truths in our world and then there is spin.

Spin is when it’s wholly unreasonable to make a claim given the relevant facts but nonetheless employing some of those facts in order to help prop up a preselected narrative while dismissing the others. This is what we call confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is 99% of what we view when we turn on a cable news network — yes, even when watching the self-proclaimed “No Spin Zone” of one Bill O’Reilly. Sadly it has become a primary component of what passes as journalism anymore. What is occurring in these moments isn’t the explanation of what has happened, but rather a creative storytelling of what we would like to have happened — and thus claim did indeed happen.

The S(p)in of Omission

I listened to a pastor speak of the faith’s contribution to the progress of women the other day and I couldn’t help but chortle just the slightest bit. It was an exposition of a verse in Ephesians 5 in which Paul writes “Wives, submit your own selves to your husbands as you do to the Lord.” This verse was immediately hedged with the clarification that this does not in fact grant brow beating to the husband or allow him to lord over his wife.

It’s an unfortunate reality that such a phrasing should even need such immediate and distressed clarification, but c’est la vie. While I’d say that anyone wanting to hijack this verse as a warrant for misogyny of any sort doesn’t need to be in the discussion to begin with since they’d show themselves as being far from familiar with any sensible mode of Biblical interpretation, it’s all too inconveniently true that plenty of men have enjoyed the benefits of confirmation bias with texts such as this before.

Despite being off to a good start it was the subsequent narrativization to prop up that otherwise solidly simple interpretation that became problematic. “Christianity has done more for women than,” “finally, thanks to Jesus, women could find their rightful place in society,” and other claims came to our attentive ears, all of which were far beyond what the verse in question could support on its own.

Kicking It Old School

Jesus had women in his troupe. Jesus’ resurrection was first witnessed by and attested to by women. The law of Love, as above, is enforced within the household such that women are, or at least should be, treated with greater respect and dignity than they had been in all modern societies up to that point in time.

There is no denying those bullet points exist within the story. They’re great. Indeed, they are beneficial to women, or at least should be. I would undoubtedly agree that it is true to say that Christianity has helped women rise up. I would find it incredulous, however, to say Christianity has, per se, raised women up.

This would be like claiming that you have raised the family dog up to equal stature as your own, the one at the head of the table. He — sorry, she — is now one of you. And all the glory of this incredible ontological shift is owing simply to you having stopped kicking the poor dog.

Or at least stopped kicking as hard or as often.

That’s all well and good. Congratulations on not being entirely horrid. But it is simply insufficient. To claim the dog is now one of you when it’s still scrounging for table scraps — albeit without having to dodge your steel toed boots while doing so — is ludicrous. The withholding of abuse in its more severe forms is not the same as elevation or liberation.

Christianity has helped us stop kicking the dog. Or helped us not kick it repeatedly. Sure. But it did not, in fact, transform the dog into a fellow human. And, in case the point isn’t clear, there is a twist in this little analogy: the dog is actually — fully!— another human.

While Christianity’s new view of the world should get some credit for helping begin the process, it’s a far cry to put it on its CV. It took two thousand more years for the dog to realize that if it doesn’t stop believing the master’s lie and simply stand up and start raising its voice at dinner it will be resigned to nothing more than those (formerly considered) ‘gracious’ scraps from the master’s plate. And thank God she did (and does) because we still have some ways to go.

The withholding of abuse in its more severe forms is not the same as elevation
or liberation.

When Helping Hurts

Further, if we’re really going to bother being retrospective here, we may as well ask: did the small elevation of women brought about by the Christian worldview perhaps delay the process to full maturation to begin with? Maybe we’ve been too busy patting ourselves on the back the last two thousand years as we tell ourselves this questionable narrative to realize that we hadn’t done nearly enough just yet.

Paul said “there is neither Jew nor Gentile…nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3.28). Perhaps this allowed men and women alike to revel in the metaphysical and principled truth at the expense of figuring out how to make it practically true in daily life. When dualism is at the core of your belief — earth v. heaven, soul v. body, etc. — it’s quite easy to have an ideal about women that doesn’t align with their actual lives.

Speak Up

Another famed go to for Christian’s empowerment of women is Proverbs 31 as it describes hustling lady who is praised. Is it not incredibly ironic then that the verses preceding the story:

8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.
9 Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Christians have read this passage for ages while en route to reading about their favorite, prototypical woman in Proverbs 31. Yet few made the connection that the Proverbs 31 woman could be every woman, and that it was their job to “speak up” about the systemic injustices that restricted that opportunity.

Instead of fighting to allow every woman the chance to be praised the way that the heroine of Proverbs 31 is, the believers were satisfied with having their single, mythical creature, their very own super woman of Scripture. Couple that with some Pauline theology, Jesus’ inclusion of women, and the early Church’s allowance of women in significant church roles, and you get yourself a nice, self-assuring narrative.

And if you have that then you’ve got all you need for the spin, so why bother actually writing a better history?

I like to write and discuss Christian and current cultures, philosophy, and much else. Please don’t let this be one sided: join in the discussion, share, and get conversations going.