“They’re workhorses,” says Dr. Singer [of her patients, ultra-Orthodox Israeli women]. “Their lives, looking from the outside, look like a form of slavery, never-ending. Sometimes I’m incredibly admiring of their stamina, what they’re able to do day after day, after so many children.”
—Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement
In a public Facebook post, a member of my old church recently directed
some comments at a former member whose wife died giving birth to her
seventh child. He cited the biblical command “to go and multiply and
fill the earth” and said his conscience would not let him agree to the
use of birth control. That isn’t just his personal feeling, though:
“The Holy Spirit speaks to and tells me what is acceptable,” he said,
adding that the woman’s death, “was God’s will. We don’t always
understand why.”
And then he lectured this man who had tragically lost a wife and
mother of the many children they already had: “It is very selfish of
you to blame God for this. If you want to see her in death you need to
repent and believe the Gospel.”
The bereaved father pointed out that, though he remarried after a few
years, his “children never got a real mom again.” Was that “God’s will
somehow?” he asked. “We knew how to prevent this, but we did not dare
to do anything. Lots of dreams never came true.” And a woman died.
His Laestadian critic responded, “My own wife would never put herself
and her own dreams and wants before the word of God.”
It’s no wonder that the Laestadian Lutheran Church prefers its members
not to engage in discussions of “faith matters” on social media
sites. But there’s actually nothing contrary to Conservative
Laestadian doctrine in what the man said. It really is that
bad. Consider this statement from an LLC presentation to ministers and
board members in 2010:
Despite God’s command or ordinance, birth control is widely
practiced. People defend their disobedience with a variety of reasons
including the psychological and physical burdens of raising children,
economics, pursuit of an education or a career, concerns about
overpopulation, etc. These arguments are rooted in unbelief and
selfishness. Believing husbands and wives know these arguments
well. The threefold enemy frequently tempts us with them. We wish,
however, to cast aside these arguments as well “and every high thing
that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,” and bring “into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”
This seems like an opportune time to repost an essay I wrote two years
ago about contraception and Conservative Laestadianism. It originally
appeared
on the Learning to Live Free blog, where thousands of people have
seen it. Apparently it could stand to be read by a few more.
It’s an important discussion to keep having. For women in
fundamentalist religions that demand unrestricted access to their
wombs, the stakes could not be higher. Their beliefs force them to
confront an even worse prospect than physical death, lost dreams, and
health problems both mental and physical. What they fear most of all
is the threat articulated by an article in the June 2001 issue of my
old church’s Voice of Zion newletter: eternal death, when “the loss
of a soul is irrecoverable, and no compensation can be made for it any
longer.” Then the “‘Son of Man’ will appear with all of His angels to
execute judgment. Christ will then reward every person according to
his works.”
“There is no way to escape the righteous judgment of God,” the article
warns. Nor is there a way of escape from this vicious threat of
damnation that was put into the minds of desperate young parents in
their childhood and reinforced ever since. When the hell of eternity
is the cost of disobedience, regarding birth control or anything else
decided by the “living congregation of God,” it can seem like no
amount of self-sacrifice in this one short life on earth would ever be
too high a price to pay.
Laestadians who are sick of hearing such dreary and backward language
from their church do have reason to hope for better things,
however. Despite the official claims about “unity,” liberal voices are
now being heard that express much more compassionate and sensible
viewpoints. Here is what one of them recently said in response to an
interviewer’s question about contraception:
I will refer to a press meeting from this year’s summer services,
where Aino Kannianen gave a presentation. She spoke on this matter,
particularly, how we accept [the number of] children just the way God
gives them to us. But there are situations, where because of health
reasons, or because of other difficult circumstances, this can be
dangerous. Preserving and honoring life requires that one does
consider these issues.
“So, you are not completely absolute anymore?” the interviewer asked.
“This is a matter the parents need to decide on,” was the
reponse. “Nobody needs to give birth risking their lives because of it.”
This wasn’t some fringe heretic or borderline unbeliever muttering
over the coffee table to a few trusted friends. It was Viljo Juntunen,
the new chairman of the SRK board of directors, speaking during an
interview with a radio program in Finland. The SRK is the Finnish
counterpart to the LLC, a far bigger one that comprises most of the
100,000 or so Conservative Laestadians across the globe.
———
Before proceeding with this repost (slightly edited for readability
with a few additional notes) let me answer a criticism I occasionally
hear: Why do I keep writing about a religion I’ve rejected? Why keep
bringing up problems with it? Because, when it comes to this
particular church, few other people are in as good a position to do so.
I devoted a year of essentially full-time work to researching and
writing a gigantic book about a
faith that I’d spent forty years living and loving, because it proved
itself false to me in many different ways. My own deep-seated
fears about eternal damnation, pounded into my skull from childhood,
forced me to confront the church by learning about it, in exasperating
detail. Braver people leave it with much less difficulty.
Quite a few people have told me that my work has made a difference in
their lives. I’m pretty certain that there are women who have taken
their bodies and health into their own hands partly as a result of
what they learned from this essay when it was originally posted two
years ago. In a world of outrages inflicted by elites and tyrants
whose power is far beyond the reach of our puny voices, it is
rewarding to have a little place where one’s careful work is
appreciated, where it really does have some impact.
And unlike that Laestadian critic who confidently pronounced judgement
on a man who’d lost a wife to dogmatic beliefs, I am not content to
say, as he did, “You can’t believe with your mind.” Yes, actually, you
can. That’s all you have to believe anything with. And you’ve got
every right to expect people to make sense when they tell you what you
should be doing with your body.
Maternal Martyrdom, Revisited
Like the Second Temple Judaism that preceded it, Christianity is a
religion based on blood sacrifice. That may seem like a jarring
summation of a faith that is, for the average believer, less about
theology than the happy commotion of little children playing, the
smell of hot dish warming in the church kitchen, and the joy of
singing songs that are as beloved and familiar as the hundred other
voices ringing out from the pews alongside you. But it’s the harsh
reality behind all the love and comfort: Jesus’ “blood of the
covenant” was “poured out for many” (Mark 14:24), just as Moses took
the blood of young bulls “and sprinkled it on the people, and said,
‘Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has made with you
in accordance with all these words’” (Exodus 24:8).
The sacrificial victims were not just animals or the one who was
called the Son of God. Judges 11 tells us of Jephthah vowing to God
that he would make a human sacrifice in exchange for permission to do
a bunch of other killing, and fulfilling the vow with his own
daughter. God even commanded the Israelites to give him “the firstborn
of your sons,” the same as they were to do with their oxen and
sheep. “It shall be with its mother seven days; on the eighth day you
shall give it to Me” (Exodus 22:29-30). Then there is the Old
Testament’s most famous story of human sacrifice, where Abraham was
about to slice open his 12-year old son until God stopped him.
Ever since the Epistle to the Hebrews, that incident has been
showcased by Christian writers and preachers as a test of faith that
Abraham passed. “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up
Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only
begotten son” (Heb. 11:17). On Father’s Day of 2012, the pastor of the
Rockford, Minnesota LLC devoted his sermon to Abraham’s “leap of
faith,” the fact that “he had to kind of shut down his thinking.” He
couldn’t think about it, or “use his carnal reason,” because, the
preacher admitted, “what God asked of him was inhuman, was–if we say,
in a human language–it was wrong. It was something nobody should do.”
Well, what are you supposed to do when God (or the voices in your
head) tell you to “take your son and offer him as burnt offering unto
me”? Never mind your natural response that “This is inhuman. This is
wrong.” Just obey: “If you don’t understand, you believe.”
Mothers on the Altar
The same blind obedience is being expected of Conservative Laestadian
women regarding contraception, even when their lives are at risk. They
must put their bodies on the sacrificial altar, or risk the damnation
of their souls instead. It is a picture that Hanna Pylväinen paints
vividly in her book We Sinners, with
the story of a Laestadian mother having her seventh child, an
experience that torments her economically, emotionally, and
physically.
The woman’s pregnancy is a dangerous one, and the latest in a long
parade of C-section deliveries puts her on an operating table,
studying the looming medical equipment: “bags of blood hanging like
deflated lungs, collapsed balloons, and their readiness paralyzed her”
(p. 145). She describes the sensations (“a pinching in her chest,”
“the feeling of being made of many numbed parts”) and the despair
(“she had run out of fantasies–out of husbands to imagine, homes to
build, pianos–there was nothing, only life itself, only long and hard
and always more of it, always more,” p. 145). Then an image comes
to her of her abdomen as prey, ants to jelly on the counter, jelly on
the knife, and she thought about Abraham and Isaac, about Abraham
tying Isaac to the table, and she wondered how long it took him, and
did he tie Isaac carefully. She thought she would try to get up, but
she couldn’t, she was bound, or her muscles were, and she said, or
thought she said, I don’t want to die, as if to ask God Himself to
hold the scalpel. [p. 146]
The cords binding mothers to the birthing bed and operating table were
very real in the 1970s. It was a “lenient mind” that would put “pity
for the mother before having love in the truth concerning family
planning, especially then when humanly speaking, the birth could
appear dangerous,” according to the August 1976 edition of the LLC’s
Voice of Zion newspaper. In 1979, from the other side of the
Atlantic, the SRK’s Päivämies matched the dogmatism: “Never in any
form does the prevention of human life come into question for God’s
children.” But, there is always the eternal consolation prize: “Even
if it were to happen that a believing mother or child would die in
childbirth, or during pregnancy, they would go to heaven.”
Nine Patch Self-Portrait
It may be tempting to consider all that an artifact of a harsh and
misguided period of Laestadian history, when wrong spirits ran rampant
and caretaking meetings of wayward church members were a weekly
spectacle. But the pastor of the Phoenix LLC dispels any such illusion
in his 2012 Mother’s Day sermon. He tells the story of a “dear
sister” who was faced with “a childbirth that was going to cause her
to die.” She had been warned by her doctors “that if you have another
child, the chances are very great that the mother will die.” She and
her husband decided–on their own! As if the expectations of a
high-pressure religious environment played no part–“that they would
trust in God’s goodness.”
“God’s will” turned out to have little to do with the mother’s
health. She became pregnant and, “after the birth of that child, it
became evident that there was nothing the doctors could do to save
this mother’s life.” No, they had already done their job–by warning
the mother that she was playing Russian roulette with her uterus.
With evident emotion, the pastor recounts the dying mother’s denial of
any bitterness about the outcome, and how she said, “I would much
rather go to heaven with a clean conscience.” I don’t know if she left
any kids behind, but if so, any pangs of guilt about leaving them
without a mother are never mentioned. And again we hear the praise of
blind, uninformed faith: “How simply this husband and wife trusted in
the goodness and the protection and the care of the Heavenly
Father.”
Now, the “pillar and ground of truth,” which Conservative
Laestadianism has the conceit to call itself, can’t quite bring itself
to talk this way when it knows the public is listening. Then it
mutters acknowledgments that the wisdom of man, in the form of medical
professionals, might just have something to say on the topic. The 2012
statement by the former SRK Secretary-General Tuomas Hänninen in
response to a question from the Finnish news site Kotimaa24 is an
example of the doublespeak:
The use or rejection of contraception is not a matter of
authorization for each individual case, but rather a question of
faith. Life is full of choices, and a person who wants to preserve
faith and a good conscience makes the choice from that basis. In
extreme cases, and for health reasons, it is good to listen to the
treating physician.
Another example is from a few years earlier, the No. 5 issue of the
SRK’s Päivämies newspaper in 2009 (emphasis added):
Believing fathers and mothers have comprehended as an
unrelinquishable value the scriptural teaching that God is the Lord
of life and death. He has the power to give life and the power to
take it away. For this reason in our Christianity, we have considered
children as gifts from God; they bring blessing, joy, meaning, and
richness to our lives. That’s why even the parents of large families
have wanted to accept children, even though it has perhaps meant that
they have had to give up certain things. The basis for Christian
parents’ decisions has been obedience to God’s Word, faith upon God
as the omnipotent Creator, and trust in His guidance and care.... The
preservation of the life of both the mother and child is
important. A doctor, who has great professional ethics, helps
humanity and respects a patient’s wishes by preserving life and
maintaining health. Surely parents do not relate belittlingly to
their doctor’s assessment given from a medical perspective. In
difficult situations, faith guides us to make decisions based on
preserving life according to God’s Word.
Why?
If you are an exhausted, desperate mother faced with the possibility
of yet another pregnancy, perhaps a life-threatening one at that, the
stakes are unthinkably high. Don’t you have the right to understand
just why you should subject yourself to that peril? Or should you just
tune out everything but the men who sit at their pulpits and urge you,
as the Rockford pastor did, to put blind trust in God, “trust his
congregation. Let us trust this congregation more than ourselves.”
It is telling that he describes the reasonable speculations Abraham
might have had after hearing the divine death sentence pronounced on
his innocent son, to wonder “if God exists, if this is just nonsense,
foolishness, the creation of my own mind. Maybe I should turn back, go
back home, and try to forget the whole thing.”
But God was there, the preacher says, and showed Abraham what he was
to do. And when God speaks, you’d better listen. As Luther put it, “we
must simply maintain that when we hear God saying something, we are to
believe it and not to debate about it but rather take our intellect
captive in the obedience of Christ.”
Perhaps the most detailed attempt at a defense of Conservative
Laestadianism’s anti-contraception position to ever see print is a
document
that Seppo Lohi presented at the SRK’s 2009 Summer Services. His
argument is mostly grounded in tradition, with little biblical
support.
First, he cites the Genesis commands to “be fruitful and multiply,”
which he considers to have established “new life” as “a fundamental
task of marriage.” He makes a bizarre appeal to Mark 10:6-9, Jesus’
directive about the permanence of marriage. And he rounds things out
with statements in Mark 10:14 and a few verses in Matthew 18 about
receiving and becoming as children.
The Genesis commands are the strongest of some very weak
arguments. Lohi gets some help from Luther there: “Therefore, the word
of God, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply,’ is not a command, but more than a
mere command, namely a Divine Act, not being in our power to hinder or
neglect.” But Mark 10:6-9 (What God has joined together let not man
put asunder) has absolutely nothing to do with contraception. Neither
do Mark 10:14 (“Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name
receiveth me”) or the verses in Matthew 18 (e.g., “Except ye turn, and
become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom
of heaven”).
This is all explained in §4.7.6 of my book An Examination of
the Pearl, under the subheading “Human Rights Concerns.” And, as
discussed there, it is a tricky business to rely on the Bible to
establish the sanctity of life.
Exodus 21:22 imposes a mere civil penalty for hurting a pregnant woman
and causing her to miscarry. Leviticus 27 places monetary valuations
on human life (less for women than men, naturally), and assigns no
value at all to infants less than a month old. Hosea rants against
Ephraim that he will “slay even the beloved fruit of their womb”
(9:16). The people of Samaria had “rebelled against her God,”
according to Hosea, so “they shall fall by the sword: their infants
shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped
up” (Hos. 13:16).
So, then, is there no biblical position against contraception worth
talking about, other than that “be fruitful and multiply” business? In
her book Quiverfull, Kathryn Joyce cites those Genesis passages, and
also two others that fundamentalist Christians have relied on to
oppose contraception: Psalm 127, with its talk about the fruit of the
womb and arrows in a quiver, and “the biblical story of Onan, slain by
God for spilling his seed on the ground.” Let’s take a look at
these three main points in turn.
———
Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the
fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty
man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his
quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak
with the enemies in the gate.” It was very important for a man
(certainly not a woman) in that patriarchal society to have heirs who
could continue and extend his household with its livestock,
landholdings, buildings, slaves, etc. Look at the story of Abraham and
Sarah, and how important it was for him to have a legitimate
heir. (Ishmael got pushed aside as soon as Isaac was miraculously
born, as the story goes.)
Laestadian doctrine has long fancied that there is some vague cloud of
unconceived children floating out there somewhere who are all God’s
property. They wait to be conveyed into existence one after another by
women who have no option but to bear them and fill some man’s
quiver. Along those lines, the Phoenix pastor makes much of the way
his sermon text (1 Sam. 1:27-28) says that Hannah (the biblical
figure, not the novelist) “lent” her child to the Lord.
Anna presenting her son Samuel to the priest Eli
Well, of course she did; the child was Samuel, who was destined to
become an important prophet. But you can’t make that a generalization
of God’s views about children, not when he slaughters so many of them
without hesitation–in Sodom (children weren’t even considered as part
of the ten “righteous” whose presence would have spared the city,
Gen. 18:32), in Egypt (the passover plague, Exod. 12:29-30), and in
Midian (“kill every male among the little ones,” Num. 31:17,
KJV). Remember, this was the God who inspired the Psalmist to write,
“O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be,
that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones” (Ps. 137:8-9,
KJV).
There is a subtle but important issue in calling the fruit of the womb
“his” reward, as the KJV does. With such wording, it is understandable
that one might view the fruit of the womb as something God can demand
as his own. But other translations render the passage without that
possessive pronoun, and with no such implication of ownership or
control:
NASB: “Behold, children are a gift [or heritage] of the Lord,
the fruit of the womb is a reward.”
Luther (my translation from German): “See, children are a gift
[Gabe] of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is a present
[Geschenk].”
Finnish (1776): “Katso, lapset ovat Herran lahja, ja kohdun
hedelmä on anto.”
One could see the same possessive implication in the KJV when it calls
the fruit of the womb a “reward.” The other translations call it a
“gift” or “heritage,” putting the emphasis on the child as something
from God. Wasn’t the next generation more a bounty given to
mankind–when God looked favorably on them–than a tribute owed to
him? In the ancient world where women were expendable, dominated, and
possessed, the “fruit of the womb” was produce, in an all-too-literal
sense.
———
This leads to the second point of Scriptural support: God’s command to
be fruitful and multiply. He said it twice, first after the creation
of Adam and Eve and then after Noah parked his ark on the
mountainside. Well, actually it was never said. Not in either of
those stories, anyhow, because the stories are not true.
Evolutionary science completely disproves the ancient Creation myths
of Genesis. (Yes, myths, plural–there are two conflicting stories
in Gen. 1 and Gen. 2-3.) At no point was there any first pair of
humans standing around having to be told to make babies and populate
the earth. Every early human, no matter how many thousands and
millions of years back you go in prehistory, had parents who had
reproduced without any divine sex education and were pretty much human
themselves. Darwin had this figured out a long time ago: “In a series
of forms graduating insensibly from some ape-like creature to man as
he now exists, it would be impossible to fix on any definite point
where the term ‘man’ ought to be used.”
And it is just not possible for the entire human race to have
descended from a single father and mother. Genetic evidence now makes
clear that there have never been fewer than about a thousand members
of Homo sapiens throughout the more than 100,000 years of its
existence, which began in Africa, not Mesopotamia.
Noah’s flood supposedly concluded with kangaroos continent-hopping
around the world to Australia, and with God making his second
pronouncement about replenishing the earth. Those who believe this
story, an obvious adaptation of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh,
are in a dwindling minority even among Conservative Laestadians,
certainly among those in Finland. One ordained SRK priest with whom
I’ve corresponded expressed shock and disbelief that people in the LLC
actually take the story seriously.
The LLC preacher who said to someone back in 2009, “Why is Ed worried
about Noah’s Ark? None of us believe it, either,” was just being
honest about the situation. (Though not so much when he took part in a
meeting a year later, where I would be pressured to profess belief in,
among other things, Noah’s Ark.) Rather than belabor this posting with
the devastating critique that the story deserves, I refer interested
readers to Jason Long’s 101 Reasons Why Noah’s Story Doesn’t Float.
Now, let’s suppose–against overwhelming evidence–that the Eden and
the Noah stories are true. Do they actually have anything to do with
Christian doctrine? No; despite centuries of earnest exposition by
Christian preachers from the Gospel writers onward, they do not.
The Fall myth wasn’t even about original sin. The Bible mentions
nothing about it until Paul finally comes along with his “one sinner,
one redeemer” idea in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. What happened
here (as with the supposed messianic prophecies that never quite add
up) is that Christian theologians went back and looked over the
ancient Scriptures and invented ways to give historical credibility to
their new story about Jesus.
Another example is God clothing Adam and Eve with animal skins in
place of their fig leaf aprons. Saying that God did so as a precursor
to Jesus’ sacrifice is just something Christian theology made up. One
could just as easily say that God replaced the fig leaves because he
knew that Jesus would someday curse a fig tree. He did, and it is just
about as relevant–that is, not at all.
Even if you make the two gigantic leaps of accepting the stories as
accurate and also relevant, there is still the issue of God’s commands
in the Old Testament being overruled in the New. Through his claimed
representatives or directly, God commanded all sorts of crazy and
horrible things in the Old Testament. Almost all of it is forgotten
and ignored by Christians today.
The usual excuse is that Jesus fulfilled the law and thus the Old
Testament doesn’t apply. Of course, for some reason, one still must
honor one’s father and mother, avoid “sitting in the seat of the
scornful,” and not hunt or fish on Sunday. When there is a handy verse
to be found in the Old Testament that supports somebody’s idea of
right and wrong, they don’t hesitate to pluck it out and quote it.
“Be fruitful and multiply” fares no better than the command to avoid
sitting on furniture used by menstruating women (Lev. 15:20), for a
number of reasons. First, with seven billion people, the earth has
been replenished beyond the Genesis writer’s wildest imaginings. The
whole point of the command has been achieved, and then some. If
covering the face of the planet with billions of people–many times
more than have ever lived–is not “replenishing” it, then the term is
meaningless.
Second, perhaps surprisingly, some New Testament writers viewed
children very differently than as a welcome gift. Look at how Paul
felt about marriage in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians. Not only
did he view it as more favorable to be unmarried, but he even told men
“that have wives be as though they had none” (1 Cor. 7:29-30). The
time was short, and there was no point bringing children into this
world that was about to end. The way to avoid that back then, of
course, was celibacy.
———
The third point, the Onan story (Gen. 38:3-10), was all about
fulfilling the Old Testament requirement to raise up an heir. Again,
that was very important back then, and was a duty that Onan owed to
his dead brother. God specifically ordered Onan to undertake the task,
and he disobeyed the command. God killed him, as he threatened and
killed many others for disobeying his commands.
There’s nothing special about the life of a speculative
not-yet-conceived child here. It’s all about submission. That is, I
think, also largely the case in Laestadianism.
Enough Already
Despite what is claimed by Laestadian preachers who know almost
nothing about biblical scholarship, the collection of essays we call
“the Bible” is not a single book with a unified message. It is futile
to dig through “the Bible” looking for what “it” has to say on such a
modern subject as the health of women, who were expendable and pretty
much treated as property, when different passages provide
contradicting answers about such fundamental things as whether God
wants everyone to be saved, the value of the Old Testament sacrifices,
and salvation by faith or by works.
The contradictions we’ve seen here concerning the value of children
are just a small example of the conflict lurking between those mostly
unread pages whose gilt edges sparkle under the pulpit lights. The
writers of Genesis couldn’t even agree on details of the Flood story.
(Were there seven pairs of ritually clean animals, or one? Forty days
of flooding, or 150? See An Examination of the Pearl, §4.3.2.)
So some ancient editor merged the conflicting accounts together.
None of the Old Testament writers were remotely the same kinds of
“believers” as the writers of the Gospels. And the Gospel disagreed
with each other! Not just about trivialities, but such fundamental
points of doctrine as whether Jesus was divine (John 14:9-11) or not
(Mark 10:17-18) and whether he revealed esoteric meanings of his
parables to the disciples in secret (Mark 4:11; Matt. 13:11; Luke
8:10) or always spoke openly, saying nothing in secrecy (John 18:20).
Of course, this will not stop the preachers from citing and creatively
interpreting their hand-picked passages from “God’s Word,” claiming
the authority of God as they do so. They are the Holy men who speak as
moved by the Holy Ghost, they claim, ironically citing a passage (2
Peter 1:19-21) from the single most discredited book of the New
Testament.
When any criticism is raised, they point to the Serpent’s question of
Eve: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the
garden?” (Gen. 3:1). There is a sad irony here, too: They are citing a
character in a mythic story–long since proven false–to keep you from
entertaining the possibility that what they say might be false. And
remember that, even in the story, the Serpent was actually the one who
told the truth: Adam and Eve did not die upon touching the fruit
(Gen. 3:4). Instead, as he said would happen, “the eyes of them both
were opened” (3:7).
Laestadian women need to open their eyes as well, before any more of
them bleed to death on the sacrificial altar of a faith that requires
their fertility for its survival. At long last, some of them are
choosing to be the survivors instead, finally claiming their lives,
their minds, and their bodies as their own. It’s about time.
———
Originally posted October 3, 2012 on the
Learning to Live Free blog at
extoots.blogspot.com/2012/10/maternal-martyrdom.html. See also my related post on that blog,
Seeking Clarity in the Face of Tragedy and the 100+ comments provided by readers.
Image credits:
Nine Patch Self-Portrait by
Linda Frost.
Anna presenting her son Samuel to the priest Eli by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout,
Wikimedia CommonsNotes
