Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 13

Whoo-boy!  When it rains, it pours. 

My son is down with his first runny/stuffy nose cold.  In spite of my best efforts to keep him from coughing, at least once a day he's coughed enthusiastically enough to spit up some of his last meal - and it always lands on my shirt and pants.   The albuterol medication that is keeping his lungs nice and open is also making him shake like a tiny little jitterbug. 

First thing Monday morning, I carried my hacking son down the steps and found my husband conscious but laying flat out in the the kitchen.  He had dizziness so severe he couldn't stand up or walk on his own.   He's never had anything like that in the past and there was no way I could safely spot him out to the car so I called 911, got the baby settled (and as mucus-free as I could), arranged for my mom-in-law to take the baby, and drove my husband to the hospital once the local first responders had verified that his vital signs were good and helped him out to the truck.

Good news is that my husband has benign idiopathic vertigo which has miserable symptoms but isn't a sign of a stroke or any severe medical problem.

As I told a good friend in exasperation, I trust my ability to deal with all sorts of insane situations - but what I'd like right now is a break from the insane situations.  As a side-effect of this week's crazy, I'm behind on blogging along with pretty much everything else right now.  I hope to be back to three posts a week next week, God willing.

Chapter Thirteen is titled "I love me, I love me not", but I think a more accurate title is "Stacy McDonald is a terrible person."  She spends the chapter going off the Calvinistic deep-end by explaining why "we" all are horrible, horrible sinners.  I might be more sympathetic if she started with or focused on her own failings but she spends the vast majority of the chapter blaming people with mental illnesses for failing to recognize their own personal sins.   

Bluntly, this chapter is gross and completely contrary to modern Christian teachings that recognize that Jesus wants his followers to support the most vulnerable among us including the mentally ill.  Feel free to leave without reading the rest if it will disturb you.

Mrs. McDonald starts by trying to rehash the theology of human sinfulness, but since she's not received theological training the gaps in her Biblical studies show quickly.

If we are to view ourselves biblically, it is much more realistic to deal with our depravity swiftly and honestly rather than to agonize over a false sense of our perceived personal goodness. Admittedly trying to locate our "good qualities" is much more fun and far less painful (Proverbs 27:5-6). (pg. 118)

I....have no idea why she pulled that verse in a paragraph that discusses self-examination.   Proverbs 27:5-6 is "Better is open rebuke than secret love.  Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy."  But then, I'm probably overthinking this.  Mrs. McDonald's major theme throughout "Maidens of Virtue" is that saved Christians or members of the Elect can be as judgemental as they want towards the unsaved/damned.  In case any of her readers have a gentle heart - or dare to question the morality of being crass and bitchy towards the rest of humanity - Mrs. McDonald tries to hide behind the "iron sharpening iron" rationale.  That argument is badly undermined by the fact that Mrs. McDonald already admitted previously that she had a friend who was clearly struggling with personal hygiene issues and her response was to do absolutely freaking nothing.  Wait - that's not entirely true.  She did nothing for the guy and then used his story to make money in a book.

In terms of her disdain for our good qualities, that is in direct contradiction to Genesis 1:27 which explains that all humans were created in God's image. 

The next quote is where Mrs. McDonald shows that her grasp of mental health issues is as tenuous as her grasp on theology:

Many young girls today have serious problems (anorexia, bulimia, obesity, promiscuity, drug abuse, alcoholism, and the list goes on). Many individuals are convinced that the answer to the issues young girls face today could simply be solved by a hearty dose of self-esteem. Actually, the search for self esteem is more than a modern buzzword: it is an age-old pursuit. For years man has thought too highly of himself. Our flesh screams for praise and glory (Genesis 11: 4). (pg. 118)

Having a healthy self-esteem is some protection against mental illness - but self-esteem alone is not a cure for anorexia or chemical dependencies.  All of the listed issues require some level of medical intervention in the form of drugs and/or psychotherapy.   

Mrs. McDonald is especially blind on the subject of obesity; doctors are finding more and more support for the fact that most humans can gain weight far more easily than they can lose weight.  Obese people are not lazy or sinful; they are fighting a very long-term battle where losing weight causes their metabolism to slow down drastically.  A slowed metabolism means that these people can be eating less than 1,200 calories a day and still gain weight.  Truthfully, a metabolic system that could keep a body going through long periods of semi-starvation by slowing the metabolism down was extremely beneficial through most of human history.  Naturally slender people who lose weight easily are more of a recent trend in evolution....

The Bible verse quoted is from the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis.  She interprets it as a sign of the human desire for praise and glory which is a bit strange.  The most literal reading I can get is that the humans were challenging God - not angling for praise or glory.   Ironically, that same literal reading shows that humans were doing a good job at challenging God; God was so concerned about this latest development that he went down with the other gods and scattered human kind.

I feel bad for Stacy McDonald's teenage daughter in this next quote.  It cannot be fun to realize your parent is a horrible person.

While writing this chapter, I discussed the subject with my thirteen year old daughter. Sympathetically she wondered about young people who fall into such a pit of despair that they take their own lives. Even as sheltered as my daughter was, she was somewhat influenced by the humanistic notion of value and self-esteem.

" But, Mom," she said, " if they knew how special they were, they wouldn't be overcome by hopelessness. Aren't some people depressed because they just don't think they're any good?"

"Maybe so, but are they any good? Are any of us any good?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in her direction.

Knowingly, she smiled, " I see what you mean. It just seems so sad."

And it is sad. If we're to be like Jesus, we should have compassion for those who are suffering in the pit of despair. But viewing sin falsely will not lift anyone out of that pit. (pg. 118-119) 

I kept running away from writing this section - like I found myself doing chores around the house that I hated rather than dealing with writing a response to this section.  I finally made myself sit down and reflect the emotions it brought up in me - a mixture of anger and despair - and I realized why I didn't want to write this section.

My freshman year English teacher committed suicide when I was a sophomore in high school.  I wasn't particularly close to this teacher, but he was a damn good English teacher who forced me to buckle down and improve my expository writing skills.  I brought a pile of candy canes to school with me the last day before Christmas and was passing them out to my friends and anyone who wanted one.  At the end of English class, I walked up to the teacher's desk and offered him a candy cane.  He looked deeply touched by my offer and wished me a Merry Christmas.  Even as a rather naive 15-year-old kid, I felt saddened by how much my random offer of a candy cane meant to him; I wondered how lonely or painful his life was outside of school. 

His suicide crushed a lot of students.  A friend of mine has never forgiven himself for the fact that he and his friends acted like complete assholes in the teacher's class the year he died.  I grew up as the daughter of a teacher.  I tried to explain to my friend then - and now - that any teacher who survived the first 3-5 years of teaching wouldn't quit teaching - let alone commit suicide- because his students were jerks; that's one of the expected downsides of teaching. 

No, he committed suicide because the pain of his mental illness was too much to bear anymore.  I remember thinking that he couldn't have expected his own death to cause the amount of trauma for his students, colleagues and family that it did - and that I would keep that thought in mind if I ever felt suicidal.

I know this because four years later I had a severe episode of depression where I started having suicidal thoughts.  After my teacher died, I promised myself that if I was ever suicidal, I would do everything I could think of to get better before I attempted suicide.  I went to a doctor on got on an SSRI.  I started therapy.  The therapy was helpful - but it was overwhelmed by the fact that the first SSRI I tried caused me to have intense suicidal impulses.  Now, that drug has a black-box warning about that side-effect in teens and young adults, but I missed that warning by 18 months. 

After a few months of fighting the urges, I was so, so exhausted and my will to fight was slipping away.  I remembered that one of the things I had promised myself was that I would seek inpatient treatment at a local psychiatric facility before I attempted suicide.  I was so depressed and anxious at that point that I didn't think inpatient treatment would actually help me - but I wanted to be able to say that I had tried.

Well, inpatient treatment did help me a lot.  The professionals there got me off the SSRI that was not working well for me, tried a combination of other SSRIs and added an anti-anxiety medicine.   Truly, the anti-anxiety drug was a game-changing addition.  By taking my undiagnosed anxiety from a 11+ out of 10 down to a 1 or 2, I had enough mental energy left to start working on techniques to manage my depression until the SSRIs kicked in.

Slowly, but surely, I got my life back onto the track I wanted.  I transferred to a college much closer to home and started part-time.  I saw a therapist.  I exercised.  I met new people at college.  I started working in retail again.  I felt like a person again instead of an amorphous grey blob. 

The most ironic thing?  I was such a timid little mouse of a person at that point that I had no particularly interesting sins on my conscience.  I was a non-drinking virgin who had gone on sporadic chaste dates.  I attended church regularly.  I honored my parents and got excellent grades at school.  Hell, I grew up in a family that some people treated like pariahs - not everyone deals well with disabilities and death - so I didn't even go through a clique-ish, catty phase in junior high school; I was nice and friendly to everyone.

Stacy McDonald is a self-righteous prick whose ignorance is only outweighed by her prejudices.  Don't listen to her shit - she's a toxic whack-job. 

Next quote is a great example of how NOT to write a paragraph.   

Ours is an adulterous generation. The reason for the rise in " unwanted" pregnancies (fornication), abortion (murder), homosexuality (sodomy), alcoholism and drug abuse (drunkenness), and suicide (murder and faith in man, rather than God) is sin pure and simple. It's not just the fact that people are sinning; people have been sinning since the Fall. Our response to sin is the problem. When we redefine sin as " emotional problems" or a " sad result of a difficult childhood" we allows sin to remain hidden in the hearts of hurting people. (pg. 120)

Words have meanings.  This paragraph makes so little sense if we define the words that it gets ridiculous. 

Adultery is any form of extramarital sex - and nothing else in the paragraph talks about adultery. 

Fornication, on the other hand, is premarital sex where neither partner is married to someone else. 

An unwanted pregnancy can result from adultery or fornication, but it can also result from completely lawful marital sex since the unwanted quality comes from the readiness of the parents, not the marital status of the parents.  At the same time, some people who are technically fornicating have very wanted pregnancies.  (The world is a wide and varied place, Mrs. McDonald.) 

At all points of publication of this book, the rate of abortion in the USA has been dropping; strong economic times and easy access to hormonal birth control tend to do that. 

The Biblical fears around homosexuality I believe should be treated in the same way as the Biblical stipulations on legal slavery - a historical abominations that we have moved beyond into a more nuanced understanding of human rights and human sexuality.

Any rate of murder or suicide is too high, but modern rates are really very low because the rule of law tends to tamp down on the number of revenge killings and we have some medical options for dealing with some mental illnesses.. 

Drunkenness is a completely different can of worms than being chemically dependent; people with severe chemical dependencies may not get high or drunk but still require a substance to maintain a semblance of functionality.

So....is sin the problem or is our reaction to sin the main problem?  They can't both be the problem, Mrs. McDonald.

Personally, I think the main problem is that Mrs. McDonald likes knowing gossip about everyone around her far more than she likes behaving as a Christian.  In the Protestant ethos I thought there's no good reason for anyone to need to know the sins of anyone - that forgiveness was between a person and God.    As a Catholic, sometimes a person needs to confess their sins to a priest - but the priest is forbidden on pains of excommunication from ever revealing the confession.  Priests will also let you know (if you ask) that they don't remember who tells them what sins - partially because they are trained that way, but mostly because people confess the same 5 sins over_and_over_and_over.    Mrs. McDonald's fascination with digging the sins out of the hearts of hurting people from traumatic childhoods feel ghoulish to me.

The last quote for today is some nice revisionist history for us:

Not so many years ago, our country held to many biblical principles. Sin was usually treated as sin. Our laws reflected a biblical foundation, and the people -- Christian or not -- lined up with that thinking. There was a time when it was a shame for a young Maiden to even be alone with a boy. It was a disgrace to be found pregnant out of wedlock, and abortions were considered... murder! Homosexuality was so repugnant that it was rarely even whispered about! Now if we turn on the news, abominations are brazenly performed before our eyes, and we are told that we are judgemental, fanatical, or critical for calling these things sin. (pg. 120)

Ummm - when was that?   You can't just backward fundamentalist-Baptist-wash history. 

The early colonial USA averaged 20% of births to unmarried women - and more than 30%  when couples who gave birth to a living child 8 months or less after their marriage.  Even during times when sexual mores were more strictly adhered, women feared being exposed by a premarital pregnancy far more than they worried about being alone with a boy. 

Concerns about abortions were completely different than the current state of affairs; the major landmark involving abortion was "the quickening" which is when the pregnant woman can feel fetal movements at 15-22 weeks.   The concerns were somewhat about the life of the child - but as much about the fact that abortions prior to modern surgical techniques and access to antibiotics were as likely to end the pregnancy by leading to infections or bleeding severe enough to kill the mother.

I doubt we have a realistic picture of the number of people who were homosexuals in the past.  First, a lot of conservative pastors seem oblivious to the existence of lesbians.  Oh, they get all freaked out about gay men - but some percentage of "spinsters" and "old maids" who lived together were actually living with the woman they loved.  Secondly, people could be married to a partner of the opposite sex while having extramarital relationships with someone of the same gender. 

The local news that Mrs. McDonald watches is much more fascinating than mine!  Our channel focuses on local sports and events with a quick update on local crime.  We don't have abominations on tap - alas!

That last sentence is the crux of conservative Christianity hypocrisy.  Mrs. McDonald wants to be able to criticize everything and everyone freely - but no one else better dare criticize her!

Mrs. McDonald, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.  If you want to call people unnatural abominations because of their sex life, you should be able to handle being called a judgemental fanatic because of what you say.

The last page and a half of the chapter is a surreal turn-around where she encourages girls to have self-esteem because they are saved....but it is completely unbelievable after her rant on our depraved nature.