The Liberating Good News of My Sin

I’d always been taught that pride is bad. The worst bad. The root of all bad. The core human sin.

In school, the summation of many stories came down to: “Pride cometh before the fall.” In church, the response to gossip was the same. There was nothing worse one could be than to be prideful.

Which meant, of course, that there was nothing better that one could aspire to be than humble.

“It was pride that changed angels into devils,” wrote Saint Augustine. “It is humility that makes men as angels.”

So it was inevitable that when I placed my needs before the desires of others, I would feel guilty. The teachings and practices of my church and wider culture encouraged me to be selfless, self-less, without a self.

My dad couldn’t understand why it took me years to leave an abusive relationship. Now I’m able to narrate: of course it did. Some unarticulated part of my character had been formed to believe that, in wanting safety for myself, I wasn’t loving him enough, I was being selfish, I wasn’t giving enough of my self.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I learned of a concept that, in the 1950s, was first named “feminine sin.” I immediately recognized it as offering me a particular grace. “Feminine sin” is the opposite of pride. It is, as Valerie Saiving Goldstein put it, is “diffuseness, triviality, and lack of a sense of self.”[1]

And that was good news.

I recognize that for many people, the topic of sin doesn’t generally fall under the category of good news. But this, for me, was liberating; a sparrow released from my ribcage.

To name self-less-ness as sin freed me from these destructive ways of life that I had been told were necessary, even holy. Understanding my silence as sin freed me from the shame of having my own opinions. Understanding passivity as sin freed me from the guilt of leaving abusive relationships, the guilt of failing to “self-sacrifice” more.

The moment these behaviors were named as sin, I was freed from masochism that had been parading as virtue.

I had been living sinfully, but my sin was not pride. Truthfully, the diagnosis of pride only encouraged my sinful behavior, pushing me deeper into abnegating my agency and underdeveloping my self. This was the great betrayal of the theologies I had been given: that what I had been told would save me is what led me further into sin.

I realized that for many of my (male) peers, even ones in seminary with me, the naming of sin was not experienced as good news, and I struggled to articulate why it was for me.

I began to explore feminist theologies of sin. In doing that research, I became increasingly aware of the tendency to split humanity into a spectrum of identities based on sex (male/female biology) or gender (masculine/feminine cultural constructs).[2]

In some feminist theologies, masculine sin (pride) and “feminine sin” are entirely isolated from one another, as though two mutually exclusive categories, or else were put in opposition to one another.

In other feminist theologies, there are arguments for an androgynous understanding of the human condition. These were often formed as a defense against essentialism, the belief that gender traits are inherent to the sex with which we associate them. In other words, that men are inherently, in their essence, strong, violent, and aggressive, whereas women are inherently weak, meek, and submissive.

These theologies argued for androgyny as though the bodies in which we live (sex) and the ways in which our society structures the ways in which we understand our identities (gender) do not carry any weight in the conversation or in our lives.

I longed for an understanding of sin that made sense of my liberation. I longed for an understanding of sin that acknowledged my body and my life. I longed for a way to understand sin that spoke to the way my culture encouraged me to sin on the basis of my sex. I longed for a theology that asked what the human condition is, in all its sexed and gendered complexity, even as it asked what masculine and feminine components might be.[3]

There are masculine and feminine poles within interpersonal relationships, most easily seen in heterosexual romantic relationships. Similarly, these gendered poles exist in our own selves — we each hold elements of the masculine and the feminine in our own selves. And, these poles exist in society at large.

Naming the human condition in its similarities and differences, I believed, would help foster integration of these differences into deeper connections.

Religious texts failed me in this desire.

At least, religious texts as we traditionally understand them failed me.

I discovered that fairy tales offered me a way forward. Perhaps because fairy tales have been a way for women to pass on their wisdom. And during times when women were excluded from positions of authority and theological conversations, they were probably the ones thinking about integrating their masculine and feminine natures.

In fairy tales, the masculine and feminine are often represented by prince/king and princess/queen. They may be in conflict throughout a story, but they almost always find a way to re/unite and love one another at the end (which explains all those wedding endings).

Perhaps our cultural love for fairy tales and their (re-)(re-)re-tellings is because we experience that same truth inside our own selves: our masculine and feminine are in conflict, but we hope for them to love each other.

Fairy tales, then, were able to satisfy my longing for a connective theology of sin. Fairy tales cultivate an understanding of sin as something more than a barrier, but as an essential part of the journey toward grace. Fairy tales show that sin is part of a process toward reconciliation — reconciliation of the differences within our own selves and differences between ourselves and others.

In upcoming posts, I’ll be sharing more of my work and reflections on this process of discovering the ways that sin is good news. I hope you’ll join me. Make sure you don’t miss one by signing up — I’ll deliver once-a-week updates with what’s happening on the blog, right to your inbox.

[1] Paraphrased from Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, ed. Carol P. Christ, (New York, NY; HarperCollins, 1979), 35.

[2] Feminine and masculine are words pertaining to gender, which refers to culturally identified traits and programming; male and female are words that relate to physical, biological sex. An individual’s primary gender may or may not correspond with their embodied sex. Each individual carries masculine and feminine gendered poles within his or her self, regardless of physical sex. For more, see Lois Tyson, “Feminist Criticism,” in Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 83-131, 2^nd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006).

[3] In Genesis 1:27-29 (NRSV) we read that God creates humankind in God’s image. While there’s much debate over what exactly “the image of God” is, the text seems to imply that it has something to do with the fact that “male and female God created them.” We best reflect God through being two distinct beings that create one humanity; our human plural corresponds to the divine singular. Thus, I believe the responsible development of theologies must include diversity that is united into a singular humanity.

Share in the comments:

What have you believed is the worst sin? How has that belief shaped your life choices?

Has naming something as sin ever felt liberating? Tell us about it.

February 18, 2016March 24, 2016

Gender & God in the Hunger Games

Gender and God in the Hunger Games - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

Questions of Gender Identity

Our society struggles with how to understand gender identity.

Some people have concrete ideas of what it means to be a man or a woman while others question if there are any traits essential to gender. Each group seems to be attempting to bend society to their preferences, whether for stricter gender conformity or for a move towards androgyny or multiplicity.

In Christian theology, questions of gender are taking place not only horizontally in society, but also vertically: is God masculine or feminine? Is it acceptable to use both feminine and masculine pronouns when referring to God? Might it even be preferable to do so?

In the first novel of her Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins presents an image of a post-gender society that helps us imagine the Kingdom of God as a reality. In this dystopian society, individuals live out of true identity without pressure to conform to a predetermined concept of gender identity.

Gender Identity in Katniss & Peeta

The main characters of The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta, give a glimpse of gender within the Kingdom of God. They do not conform the gender norms that exist in of our current society, and thus question the existence of such societal norms.

Peeta, an artistically gifted baker, values connection over hierarchy and bonds through shared feelings at least as much as shared experiences — qualities considered feminine by contemporary USAmerican society. Because of his traditionally feminine qualities, many are interested in Peeta’s portrayal of feminized masculinity; some reviewers have even criticized Collins for having unfavorably over-feminized a lead character.

Katniss is a hunter. She is stoic and emotionally distant, at times out-of-touch with her own emotions and those of others.

It is easy to view the relationship between Katniss and Peeta as a gender-role reversal. In their vocations, they go against the norms. In their emotional awareness and capacity, they defy our expectations. However, such statements assume that the culturally constructed norms of gender we hold today are in some way intrinsic to males and females.

Reviewers attempting to place our current understanding of gender onto Peeta and Katniss have a hard time of it. Writing for Bitch Media, Kelsey Wallace concludes her character evaluation of Peeta: “If Gale is the bad boy, Peeta is, well, something else. Not the good boy exactly, but maybe the nice boy.” In some way, Peeta resists categorization.

Gender Identity in Panem

Indeed, the entire society of Panem seems to resist categorization to the extent that it could be described as post-gender. In District Twelve, survival matters more than conformity so much so that no one seems surprised by a girl who ventures outside the protection of the fence to hunt and gather. The other spectrum of society, in the Capitol, also defies our current gender norms, as both men and women seem to be equally concerned with fashion and makeup.

Rather than imposing our society onto Panem and its inhabitants, we would be wise to allow the text to question our internalized understanding of gender roles. Why are we, the readers, surprised by a female archer, or a man in makeup? Why are some of us angered by Peeta’s vulnerability, or by Katniss’s inability to intuit Peeta’s emotions? We have been so indoctrinated by the gender norms of our culture that we can’t even see past them when another society, another way of being, is presented.

Identity Beyond Gender

Collins offers her readers a new way of looking at gender. While Katniss is preparing for the pre-Games interview, she is trying to figure out how best to present herself: “charming? Aloof? Fierce? … I’m too ‘vulnerable’ for ferocity. I’m not witty. Funny. Sexy. Or mysterious.” Unable to categorize herself in either (from today’s standpoint) feminine or masculine roles, she vents to her stylist: “I just can’t be one of those people [my coach] wants me to be.” Like many individuals in today’s world, Katniss just can’t force herself to fit into a culturally-dictated cookie-cutter role, regardless of its femininity or masculinity.

Cinna offers a solution to both Katniss and the reader that is at once obvious and beautiful:

“Why don’t you just be yourself?”

Amidst the questions of Katniss’s combination of masculine and feminine traits and Peeta’s feminized depiction, critics have missed Cinna’s prophecy. Is Katniss a masculine woman? Is Peeta a feminine man? Within the world of the novel, the questions don’t apply: Katniss is Katniss; Peeta is Peeta. The characters are fully themselves, in the full complexity of their gender.

The Identity of God

Personification

The God of the Bible includes both feminine and masculine traits. In the beginning, God creates “male and female” in the image of God’s self. Scripture describes God with masculine images such as father (e.g., Hosea 11:1) and king (e.g., Psalm 29:10), as well as feminine depictions such as mother (e.g., Isaiah 66:13).

Surely, this is a God whose identity is reflected by both men and women. God’s gender is carried by the diversity of masculine and feminine individuals; it feels safe to imagine that the Kingdom of God will not only tolerate masculine and feminine genders but will accept and celebrate such diversity.

And yet, such a view, as hopeful as it sounds, is too limited, too unimaginative. The God of scripture includes and transcends gender. From the anthropomorphic images of God as father, king, and mother, we could easily picture God as a male or female figure. However, to do so would be to misconstrue the characteristic being invoked.

As Hebrew scholar David Stein notes, “Personification was employed as a vehicle to convey a statement about deity—and especially about one’s relationship with deity.” What is being invoked in the image of father or mother is an aspect of relationship, a situational similarity, rather than the full, embodied, engendered being.

Such an understanding of the text gives a clearer understanding of what the scriptural author wants to invoke in the audience. It also clarifies seemingly paradoxical images, such as “suck at the breast of kings”, in which a female biological function of nursing is ascribed to male rulers. To understand the personifications of God too literally means to deny the grand all-ness of a Divinity that transcends all human boundaries and definition, including gender.

Beyond Every Human Category

Genesis 1 not only sets the stage for the entire story, it introduces the character and event of God with a powerful first impression of a being who is beyond every human category. This God creates and orders the universe with a word; it is part of this deity’s identity to surpass all traits of humans, meaning that this being is almost nothing like a human. Such a God is so other that “the audience not only receives no warrant to ascribe social gender, but would be hard pressed to do so,” writes Stein.

Just as Collins’s created society of Panem does not ask questions of Katniss’s nor Peeta’s gender, the audience of scripture receives no warrant to ascribe social gender to God. Those who do have an equally hard time, as demonstrated above. Stein, emphasizing the importance of first impressions, summarizes the rule for understanding the transcendent inclusiveness of God with regards to gender: “What is inappropriate to the opening, do not do what’s joined to it—that is, the whole Torah.”

How, then, should gender be understood in a Kingdom that lives under a God who is introduced to be beyond human understanding?

Why Don’t You Just Be Yourself?

Christian theologians have been easily sidetracked by our own understandings of gender and identity in the debate over God’s masculine and feminine descriptions. Some attempt to equally disperse masculine and feminine pronouns, others try to discern which parts of the Trinity are which gender. As a solution, to paraphrase Cinna, why don’t we just let God be God?

If Christians are to read Scripture to understand the character of God, as the people of ancient Israel did, we must not allow vision to be clouded by the predominant culture’s misunderstandings and false truths. Doing so would be to superimpose our paradigm onto God, effectively killing the living God and creating an idol in humanity’s image. Just as readers of The Hunger Games can fully appreciate the narrative by allowing Katniss and Peeta to live out of their truest selves, so should even the most critical reader of scripture allow God to be the true God, without attempts to superimpose a gendered box onto ~~Her/Him~~ God.

A Kingdom Understanding of Gender

A Kingdom understanding of gender must reflect a God who acts uniquely and creates humanity in God’s image.

Although a dystopia, Panem presents a society that appears to be largely beyond concerns of gender roles, whether such nonchalance is the result of desperate survival, as it is in District Twelve, or boredom and body decoration, as it is in the Capitol. In Panem, people are intrigued and impressed by the full identity of Katniss, not only that she is at once strong and female. Even more so, the audience of the Games is captivated by Peeta’s emotional vulnerability and intuitive ability to connect, and not only because he is a man doing so. Rather than praising individuals for breaking gender boundaries, Panem is a society that allows individuals to live out of their truest identity and understanding of self.

May we anticipate a Kingdom in which we are accepted and celebrated for living out of our true self rather than a societal expectation, in which the complexity of an individual’s gender-sex alignment is secondary to the fullness and flourishing of individual identity.

Questions: Did you have any reactions to the gender of Peeta or Katniss while reading/viewing The Hunger Games? What did that reaction tell you about yourself and how you understand gender? What would you do with your life if it didn’t make you a “bad woman/man”?

January 26, 2016March 24, 2016

The Prophetic Works of Lady Gaga

Pop star Lady Gaga is more than an entertainer, she is a prophetic voice. Through fashion and performance art, she functions as prophet for secular USAmerica.

Israel had many prophets, but today the church isn’t adding anyone’s words to the Biblical canon. When did we begin to refuse to see the prophets in our midst?

Prophets Seek Justice

The primary role of a prophet is to work for justice. Prophets actively stand outside of society in order to critique the injustices within society, with the hope of bringing about change and reconciliation. The prophet simultaneously exposes the present reality while developing a vision for the future.

Prophets have traditionally used a variety of tools, including, as Dan Allender writes, “piercing narrative, powerful images, prescient poetry” and a willingness to “bear the consequence of being viewed as an enemy of the status quo.” The prophet employs such artistry and suffering to create a compelling vision of what reality could be if justice were enacted, if love and mercy were lived.

Reconciliation & the LGBTQ Community

Perhaps most notable is Lady Gaga’s prophetic work against injustice against the LGBTQ community. She came out as bisexual to both acceptance and criticism from the queer community: she was accused of not being “gay enough” to claim bisexuality nor to be a representative voice. Regardless of the level of her bisexuality, claiming it to a national audience was a prophetic move: Gaga chose to align herself with the marginalized in a hetero-normative culture. As many prophets before her, she actively stood outside of the cultural norm in order to engage and critique culture’s treatment of a marginalized people.

Lady Gaga worked for reconciliation between LGBTQ and heterosexual persons, who often have been viewed as oppositional. “Born This Way,” was became an anthem for the community. It was significant for its overt shout-out to the LGBTQ community; equally significant is that she included heterosexuals:

“No matter gay, straight, or bi,
lesbian, transgendered life,
I’m on the right track, baby,
I was born to survive.”

These lyrics were an effort to highlight LGBTQ rights, but they were also a way to unite LGBTQ and heterosexual communities. Live performances of the piece end with Gaga and her dance company bending towards one another in a circular, all-embracing hug (see title image). The performance offers an image that speaks to a vision of what our reality could be, one in which gay individuals are not only equal, but lovingly included. Her image calls us toward the possible reality in which we are one, united humanity that includes multiple sexualities and sexual orientations.

Prophets must bear the consequence of provoking controversy and disrupting the status quo. As a result of Lady Gaga’s involvement with the LGBTQ community, rumors circulated in an attempt to shame her. One of the most direct attacks on her sexual identity was the rumor that she has a penis. Rather than retaliating (and effectively proving that she would be ashamed to be part of the transgendered community), Gaga claims to love the rumor. She stated: “‘This has been the greatest accomplishment of my life: to get young people to throw away what society has taught them is wrong.’” If fans believe her to be transgendered and still come to her performances, listen to her music, and support her work, Gaga takes it as a hopeful sign for future inclusion of transgendered individuals in society. Rather than suffer, Gaga reframes the consequence into a cause for celebration.

Another consequence has been the protestors who gather outside of Monster Balls, Lady Gaga’s stadium concerts. One writer recalled a concert in Nashville in which picketers held signs “urging ‘homosexuals’ and other ‘sinners’ to ‘repent’.” During the show, Gaga shouted from stage, “Jesus loves every fucking one of you!” before launching into a raucous performance, “as if to say, the only proper theological response to bigotry and hatred is to dance in its face.” Prophet Gaga practices a living theology; rather than discussing abstractions, she moves into actions.

Reconciliation between the Sexes

In realm of sex, Gaga prophetically exposed the present reality by reflecting back to her audience what the present really looks like, and the reflection is startling. One of the most notable examples is the ‘meat dress’, which Gaga wore at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Feminist Kate Durbin notes that “masculinists see but a piece of meat, so Gaga gives them exactly what they ‘see’ – a piece of meat. In order, of course, that the Male Gaze might ‘see’ itself.” The powerful fashion image of a woman wearing raw beef exposed the hardness of the heart of USAmerican society.

Some of her other fashion pieces have been similarly tied to society’s treatment of women. Lady Gaga has worn many weapon-inspired bras — a flame-thrower bra in the “Bad Romance” video; a gun bra in the “Alejandro” video; a fire bra on the cover of GQ magazine. Durbin states that, like many women, Gaga’s “breasts were seen as a weapon, therefore she was going to literally turn them into that.” Gaga hears the narrative society tells women and exposes the flaws and pain in the narrative through constructing a powerful fashion image.

Another statement on sex and gender was the introduction of Gaga’s alter-ego, Jo Calderone, at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. The opening monologue made it clear that this performer was not Lady Gaga as Jo Calderone: “Gaga? Yeah, her,” Jo says while pointing to some vague distance; Gaga is not here. To further emphasize the opposition between Gaga and Jo, he informs the audience, “She [Gaga] left me [Jo].” Gaga, according to Jo, groups him in with other men: “She said I’m just like the last one.” Jo, for his part, dances in a company comprised entirely of men; the audience does not see a single woman on stage during the performance.

Gaga here uses her one body to portray a woman and a man who are in opposition to one another. Similarly, the viewers are one humanity in opposition to one another as a result of the gender divide. The audience knows it to be absurd for Gaga to critique Jo, just as it is equally absurd for Jo to feel left out from Gaga’s life, since they are one and the same. The audience can then look back on themselves and see that they create divides within the one humanity, divides where there should be unity. Gaga-versus-Jo is a picture of humanity, a mirror for how we relate across the sexes.

Prophets Expose Idolatry

An additional role of the prophet is to expose idolatry. James Danaher wrote that in USAmerican culture “what we recognize and revere about a person is their celebrity status.” Celebrity is the new idolatry. Most of us join the game, attempting to construct an identity using various social media to gain some amount of fame. At the same time, we hate celebrities for their status and for having the resources to continually re-create their identities, so eventually we demand their destruction.

Gaga undermined the system of celebrity to show that it leads to death and destruction. In her performance of “Paparazzi” at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga opens by naming the idol USAmericans have come to worship, and recognizes her potential position as sacrifice: “I pray the fame won’t take my life.” The fame is the god that this society has made, and it demands ritual sacrifice. By the end of the show, Gaga is covered in blood and hanging from a rope, enacting her own death.

By walking, willingly, to her own enacted death, she showed the audience what we do to celebrities: we demand violent destruction. The image does what prophetic images are meant to do: disrupt denial and expose idolatry of the heart.

Having shown the audience her destruction, Gaga is then free of the audience’s demands on identity because she has fulfilled that identity and shown that it leads to death. After that moment, all her work is free to be performed without inhibition because it is enacted in the shadow of her own death. The audience are no longer able to impose an identity on her; it is she who identifies herself with true identity/ies.

What The Church Can Learn

Lady Gaga’s work as a prophet within the secular community questions and critiques the church, inviting its members to recognize good news with fresh sight and to return to worship. Gaga, in acting as a secular prophet, aligns herself with the marginalized people of the LGBTQ community. The church should be convicted: we are called to stand with the oppressed and marginalized, and instead are the ones excluding and condemning. As Gaga reconciles and unifies queer and straight peoples, the church creates divides with hateful language on picket signs. Gaga’s work asks the church: what is a loving response to individuals, regardless of sexual orientation? Her scream of Jesus’s love followed by dance questions: what would action look like on your part? Can you ever stop the debates over scripture long enough to act?

Gaga’s use of fashion and performance art raise questions of communication. Gaga confronts the culture through symbols that it fluently understands: music, performance, and fashion. The church insists on using scripture and sermons as its primary forms of engagement, but for many people in USAmerica, the text does not carry authority over their lives. How could the church better engage culture on its own terms? What would happen if we ceased to articulate and defend every position, and made room for a conversation through image and action that made sense to today’s culture, within and outside of the church?

Finally, Gaga’s enacted death that exposed the idolatry of celebrity questions the way the church teaches the narrative of Jesus crucified. We often have sermons trying to explain what Jesus did, but her bloody performance and empty stare ask: how would the church enact the narrative? Pastors try to educate congregants by explaining the historical context of the cross, but what if they moved the narrative into the context of today’s culture? What would we critique? What idols would we expose?

The prophet known as Lady Gaga is doing God’s work in USAmerica. Rather than fight her, the church would be wise to allow itself to be critiqued by her exposures and educated by her forms of communication. After all, God has often provided prophets who have worked outside the church to invite the church itself to repentance; we should not be surprised that the Living God is still speaking, should not be startled to see a prophet in our midst. The proper response might be gratitude and worship: perhaps a dance would be appropriate.

This piece was one of my first that developed theology from culture. Who do you see as currently working as a prophet in the world? How would you like to see the church perform the Christian narrative?