A thread.

When I previously shared a chart illustrating spiritual grooming and abuse, people questioned whether these horrific things are actually taught. I will be using quotes from John Piper, Debi Pearl, Elisabeth Elliot and Marabel Morgan to exemplify just a few instances.
The problem really begins with a poor understanding of the call to the cross. I recently wrote an article about spiritualized suffering and self-imposed martyrdom: kingdomoutpost.org/the-cross-spir…
The second error comes from a misinterpretation of Genesis 1-2. Women WERE given dominion in Genesis 1:27 and a mission by God, and women are called to fulfill the Great Commission and be disciples of Christ too!
This third error exemplifies a Christian culture where women are expected to be so wholly given to motherhood/wifehood that if you're not completely losing yourself in the process, then you're just not doing enough.
Finally, submission is primarily and exclusively misinterpreted as subjection and obsequity. Reverence is misinterpreted as fawning. Everything resolves around making men feel superior, in-charge, and The Boss.
There are many more examples from a range of different authors. Some are more overt and some are less so. But pervasive is the idea that if you just draw the technical line at where you consider submission leads to abuse then you are safe.
The problem is a failure to consider that the entire culture and context in which some of these teachings like "taking up your cross" and "denying yourself" occur. It's not about drawing a line but rejecting an entire destructive culture that misuses scripture.

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Rebekah Mui @ 𝕂𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕕𝕠𝕞𝕆𝕦𝕥𝕡𝕠𝕤𝕥.𝕠𝕣𝕘 Profile picture

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More from @MuiRebekah

Feb 22
"Deconstruction" is only dangerous to a spiritual abuser. Let me explain why:

For many, Christianity is not just a certain belief in specific doctrines: it is about this relationship you have with someone else "driving your car" & telling you what will get you saved.
The No. 1 method of control in Christianity is to bind you to an institution & belief system because you are afraid. Anything else is hell. Therefore you cannot question the driver of the car (your life).

You cannot leave the abusive relationship with the driver.
Whoever drives the car, whether it is a church or belief system or parents or denomination, has to make you believe that to question their authority is to question God and therefore to lose salvation.
Read 19 tweets
Dec 18, 2024
@NeilShenvi It's helpful to think of power = force. The power to force.

In the Mediterranean world many positions held the right of sexual access. Masters had the right to sexually exploit slaves. Many kings enforced such rights as Abimelech & Pharaoh tried to do with Sarah.
@NeilShenvi Sexual access was considered part of one's status, i.e. in the Roman world. The more access you theoretically had, the more masculine you were. Caesar was an impenetrable penetrator.

The more accessible you were, the less masculine (even as a male).
@NeilShenvi Colonial America operated by the same rules, so indentured laborers & slaves making up about half the population were subject to sexual access (re: historian Toby Ditz).
Read 20 tweets
Nov 7, 2024
The problem with contemporary Christianity is that for centuries we have imbibed the message that the closer you are to power, the closer you are to God and to righteousness.

You are capable of greater virtue. The lower classes are criminal & unrestrained

This is very Roman!
The person who wields the most authority and force is the person whom we look up to and idolize as the godliest figure, while at the same time excusing their immorality and sin that we would condemn in "social inferiors".
There are three key pillars of imperial and magisterial Christianity: upper-class "ascetic" virtue, authoritarian force, and normalized abuse.
Read 20 tweets
Oct 22, 2024
Here is the church,
Here is the steeple,
The women have left...
We don't treat them like people.
We want them to stay,
Just for their wombs and nice smiles,
They don't get a say,
They're to fill pews and aisles.
We talk AT them and tell them,
What God ordained,
And if we do harm them,
Tis their rebellion to blame.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 6, 2024
Post-Constantine, we see the development of Augustine's "concupiscence" model under which we have a certain hierarchices sin, under which sexual sin (and sexual desire) are deep sources of anxiety and "holiness" is construed as an inward, un-defiled, sexless state.
Note that the Christian Right does not even follow this model, because they in fact have a dual model under which the sexual sins of some (masculine-type, dominant, exerting force) are coded as virtuous while "deviant" sexual sins of subordinates are the real punishable sins.
Nevertheless, the concupiscence model is dominant, and drowns out the peace/violence model, a model based on the greatest commandments (love God & love others). "Harming others" is not really a sin, unless it happens to violate God's checklist & mars your personal record.
Read 10 tweets
Apr 22, 2024
People think that when you identify predatory desires and sinful desires that have been normalized and sanctified even in Christian culture, you are attacking who they *naturally* are.

Because they can't separate the ideology from identity. That's social darwinism. Image
This thread here is a really good start because I show how exposing "sanctified" aggression is not an attack on men and who they are as Imagio Dei.

It's not a war on men. It's a war on The kind of masculinity pushed on young men by an imperial culture that indoctrinates them to be hypersexualized and extremely sensitive so that they have to go out and do things to prove themselves and to earn some kind of worth.
Image
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Read 10 tweets

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