Dear Entire World,

Mark Driscoll is not a typical Christian.  I promise you, the majority of us by far do our best to embrace the infinite loving-kindness of God, as shown to us in the person of Jesus.  While none of us is perfect, we do know that we must value and respect all persons. We know that, while sex and gender and orientation are fundamental to our identity as a person, these have absolutely nothing to do with God’s love for anyone.  We agree with Rachel Held Evans when she says:

Mark Driscoll is wrong. 

Godly men stick up for people, not make fun of them.

Godly men honor women, not belittle them. 

Godly men love their gay and lesbian neighbors, not ridicule them. 

Godly men celebrate femininity, not trash it.

Godly men own their sexuality, not flaunt it. 

Godly men pursue peace, not dismiss it. 

Godly men rise above violence, not glorify it. 

Godly men build up the Church, not embarrass it. 

Godly men imitate Christ—who praised the gentle and the peacemakers, who stood up for the exploited and abused, who showed compassion for the downtrodden,  who valued women, and who loved his enemies to the point of death.

Christians take seriously the charge Jesus gives us to forgive each other, forgiving over and over and over.  We also take seriously the charge Jesus gives us to take care of every person, most especially the least of these, those who are unable to protect themselves. 

With each word spoken, each blog posted, each tweet or facebook status message, Mr. Driscoll does harm to the least of these. He puts stumbling blocks between God’s children and God’s kingdom.  Christlike forgiveness does not mean we have to allow this harmful behavior to continue. 

On behalf of Christianity, I am so very sorry for the harm Mr. Driscoll continues to do to anyone who isn’t just like him.  I hope you will be able to see that no one person can represent the Church as a whole; we are so varied, so many, so different.  Please don’t let Mr. Driscoll be your only experience of God and God’s church.

With love,
the Undercover Nun

lipsbetweenthehips:

tamburina:

The terms militant atheism and militant atheist are designations applied to atheists who are, or are perceived to be, hostile towards religion. The term has been used going back to at least 1894 and it has been applied to people from Thomas Hobbes onwards. It had a specific application within the materialism of Marxism–Leninism, and in the early years of the Soviet Union, and more recently the term has been used, frequently pejoratively, to describe atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
Julian Baggini defines militant atheism as “Atheism which is actively hostile to religion”, which “requires more than strong disagreement with religion — it requires something verging on hatred and is characterised by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious belief. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that moderate atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense and the second is that it is usually or always harmful.

i wouldn’t ever go as far as to say that i am at all actively hostile towards religion, nor do i have any desire to eliminate religion (though i do believe that would improve things exponentially). but the last sentence is resonating with me.

The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense and the second is that it is usually or always harmful.

i think it’s quite rude of me to express openly that i think religion is false/nonsense (even though i certainly do), but i wholeheartedly agree that it is usually or always harmful. globally, it’s by far one of the biggest incentives for violence, ignorance and hate. duh.
 

Undercover Nun always saddened when I hear it said that religion is usually or always harmful, and the source of most or all wars.  In fact, religion has brought many great goods into the world, but we humans do tend to weigh tremendous evil more heavily than tremendous good. 

It is not religion itself that is harmful.  It is people who have a pathology, who have deep-seated fears, control issues, feelings of powerlessness (etc.) that lead them to abuse others.  Religion is used by these people as a tool, just as abusers and bullies use politics, laws, rules, and even social customs as tools to put others down and to keep them down.

But this is a perversion of religion.  Religion is our experience of the sublime, of the divine, of that which is beyond us.  It goes by many names, with many stories and legends and myths, with strong or weak doctrine.  Religion itself does not harm people, but religion in the hands of a bully is used to harm others.

I grieve for everyone who has been harmed by religion, especially by my beloved Christianity, and I’ve long felt a specific call to those who have been damaged by the church and/or who are hostile toward the church.  I want to gather them in my arms, hold them while they cry out their pain, and whisper to them, This was not of God.  What was done to you was abuse, and it was done by a bully who is very sick on the inside.  And for every loud, obnoxious bully in the church, there are a dozen faithful and loving Christians who go quietly about living their faith, never showing up on television or in the news because they don’t think it’s anything special — it’s just what they do, who they are.  I promise you, this is not God’s church.  I love you, and I will hold you in the Light.

Fundamentally, I believe all bullying and abuse to be expressions of fear.  And fear is the opposite of faith — the rejection of faith.  Faith is a choice, made continually every day.  Faith is work, it is the conscious turning toward the Divine whenever we notice we’re facing another way.  But fear — fear is a choice, too.  Fear is the conscious turning away from the Holy One, turning our backs and squinting our eyes tightly shut and sticking our fingers in our ears to sing the “La la la, I can’t hear you!” song.

So truly, religion is not the root of bullying, abuse, terrorism, war, genocide.  No, the root of these is fear, which is actually a rejection of religion, even when one appears to be embracing religion to promote these harms and insults to the world.  Were there no religions for fearful people to wield against us, they would find other weapons.

BREAKING NEWS: Bullying is a sin. 

Behavior that offends or harms someone is a broad definition of workplace bullying. Mary tells Sandra that Betty is sleeping with the boss, when in fact the rumor isn’t true. Spreading gossip or rumors is one type of indirect bullying. When a vicious rumor is spread with the intent to get a person fired, that is defined as an intent to harm, but few would call that a criminal act worthy of jail time. According to Workplace Bullying Institute, http://www.workplacebullying.org/ workplace bullying is “the repeated mistreatment of one employee targeted by one or more employees with a malicious mix of humiliation, intimidation and sabotage of performance.”

Court cases involving disability, ethnic and gender discrimination, and sexual harassment have had such reasonable success as to cause laws to be enacted to make them criminal acts if proven. However, statistics show that bullying happens more often that verbal abuse or sexual harassment, although, when examined closely, those things are actually forms of bullying. Bullying is three times as prevalent as illegal discrimination and 1,600 times as prevalent as violence at work. Those same studies show one in 10,000 employees are victims of violence in the workplace, but, in this country, one in six employees are victims of bullying at work. A British study shows one in three employees suffer workplace bullying.

The problems revealed in these studies are that bullying usually takes place within company policy guidelines and between the lines of legal activity according to a report by Gary Nami of Workplace Bullying Institute, and by Tim Field of Bully Online.org. That kind of bullying seems trivial when each incident stands alone and out of context, and the problem remains there rarely is any grounds for dismissal or disciplinary action. …

On his website located at http://www.bullyonline.org, Field describes in depth the serial bully characteristics. Some of those include,

• convincing, practiced liar who will make up anything to fit the moment, excelling in deception
  - can be vile and vicious in private but innocent and charming in public
  - has plenty of glib, fine words, but no substance; mostly superficial
  - pours out what people want to hear
  - cannot be trusted, fails to fulfill commitments
  - refuses to be specific and does not give straight answers
  - adept at creating conflict, thrives on conflict
  - quick to belittle, undermine, and discredit anyone who calls the bully to account
  - knows-it-all, arrogant and haughty
  - spiritually dead while professing some religious belief or affiliation
  - mean, and petty, stingy and financially untrustworthy
  - greedy, selfish and an emotional vampire
  - convinced of their own superiority and qualities of leadership but exhibits qualities exactly opposite of leadership including immaturity, impulsiveness, aggression, manipulation, distrust and deceitfulness.

Field goes on to say that the serial bully in the workplace is “more likely to know what they are doing but elects to switch off the moral and ethical considerations by which normal people (live by).”

If you are the victim of bullying, the first thing to combat it is to recognize it for what it is, says Gary Nami founder of the Workplace Bullying Institute.org, too often a bullied person will fall into the trap of believing what the bully is saying is true.

Field says there is usually a grain of truth in the bully’s attack which seems to give it credibility. After recognizing the bully, you must understand what is going on. It is not about you, it is all about control. Criticisms and allegations are a projection of the bully’s failings. The bully is trying to project guilt, shame, and fear which are known tactics of control. It is how all abusers — sex abusers, child abusers, verbal abusers, etc .— gain control over their victims and silence them. …

Undercover Nun recognizes every single item in that list of bully characteristics.  She experienced each one in sixteen years of marriage to a chronic abuser.  She has witnessed these same techniques being used by abusive teachers.  And she will not stand quiet and see them used against other persons.  Christlike love demands no less.

If you or someone you know is the target of a bully or abuser, be careful.  Read the full piece here, and read the references.  Build your support structure carefully.  I’ll be praying for you.  You can count on it.