The Roman Road is a series of verses from the Book of Romans that walks people through the stages needed for a correct conversion experience and away from their previous unsaved sinful lives.
The reason this is a rite of passage is that watching your friend attempt to recite something like 6-8 verses from Romans in the correct order is rather agonizing to start with. Even the most zealous teenager starts to make minor mistakes like inserting the chapter and verse numbers at the end of each quotation. That's a shame because "The Roman Road" is more like a Drunkard's Path quilt than a straight line; the verses are not sequential let alone consecutive - and the teenager is generally unprepared for having a friend say "Why are the verses out of order?" (Some other questions/comments that generally stop the conversation dead are "You realize we read Romans in church a lot, right? This is not new information to me" or my favorite "Are you sure you've memorized that verse correctly?).
After belaboring their way through a few paragraphs on how much weight God puts on obeying him mindless by following ideas like the Botkin Response against sin, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin finally decide to start laying out the four easy (or agonizingly hard in their opinion) steps to responding to sin. Here are the steps in my words:
- Tell the other person what they are doing is wrong.
- Separate yourself from the person who might sin against you.
- Yell for help.
- Tell authorities about what happened.
Simply scanning the article for the Bible verse references they use brings up Genesis, Proverbs, Romans, 2 Timothy, Luke and Deuteronomy. The verses are not sequential or consecutive - and the Botkin interpretation of the vast majority are suspect.
Allow me to start with the most egregious example.
Anna Sofia and Elizabeth gleefully hold up the story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife as an example of how Joseph followed the Botkin Response for steps 1 and 2.
I'm still trying to figure out how.....why.....who in their right mind would pick that story to support a method of self-defense that is supposed to be "devastating" to attackers.
Allow me to start with the most egregious example.
Anna Sofia and Elizabeth gleefully hold up the story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife as an example of how Joseph followed the Botkin Response for steps 1 and 2.
I'm still trying to figure out how.....why.....who in their right mind would pick that story to support a method of self-defense that is supposed to be "devastating" to attackers.
Allow me to do a fast recap of the story in Genesis 39. Potiphar's is Joseph's Egyptian slave-owner. Joseph is a handsome man and Potiphar's Wife wants to have an affair with him. He says no. She propositions him repeatedly. He says no repeatedly.
The Botkin Sisters rave happily over Joseph's incorruptibility! Following God is great!
This is the point where the Botkin Sisters drop the story like a hot potato because the rest of the story might scare off their readers. See, one time Potiphar's Wife gets a hold of Joseph's clothing causing him to escape without his clothing. She hangs onto his clothing and accuses him of attempted rape. Joseph is sent to prison.
The second half of the story is important if you are a CP/QF woman because it demonstrates that society frames a discordant story to blame the victim so that the rest of the group avoids uncomfortable feelings. The idea that Potiphar's Wife would willingly have an affair with a foreign slave - even a handsome, skillful slave like Joseph - was repugnant to the other members of the household. That situation would weaken the authority of Egyptians over foreign slaves while the attempted rape of Potiphar's Wife demonstrated that foreign slaves were untrustworthy and dangerous and deserved to be kept under close scrutiny. In CP/QF society, men are religious leaders in authority similar to Potiphar's Wife while young, unmarried women are in a powerless group of people like Joseph. In much the same way, when women accuse men of sexual misconduct in CP/QF society, the community coalesces around the men who are accused by questioning what the woman did to seduce the man.
I have two more minor points on this issue.
First, Joseph didn't follow the second step of separating himself from Potiphar's Wife as thoroughly as the Botkin Sisters claim he did. How could he? He's a slave who cannot leave his master whenever the slaves pleases. In one of the paragraphs, the Botkin Sisters snidely deride a victim of Harvey Weinstein for allowing herself to remain around him when he's crossed personal boundaries. The Sister's lack of compassion or empathy is staggering - but it is also a natural side-effect of having lived a sheltered life where they have never needed to earn a living. Quitting a job has both short-term and long-term ramification on a person's life; storming out of a producer's office and quitting in a huff means taking an immediate financial hit since the person loses their income when they quit the job. The person who leaves is putting an ugly black mark on their career. People who worked with them who are unaware of the harassment will be under the impression that the victim left a job without notice for whatever reason the harasser decides to tell everyone else.
Second, Joseph never told the authorities what happened to him. Joseph - the beloved of God whom fortune smiles on - understood intuitively that attempting to rebut Potiphar's Wife's story would only create more danger for him and so stayed silent. CP/QF young women are in the same boat. Until this post was published, our best guess as to how Anna Sofia and Elizabeth would respond to a person disclosing a sexual assault to them is that they would blame them partially unless the woman could prove she screamed when attacked. And as a frequent commentator pointed out, that was the liberated viewpoint in the family; Geoffrey Botkin has recommended bring back the death penalty for fornication - including women who didn't scream when raped. Vision Forum's sister-cult of IBLP/ATI has an entire worksheet to help counselors work through how best to blame victims for sexual crimes. The SBC is struggling with newly surfaced documents about how Paige Patterson discouraged a seminary student who was raped from reporting the attack to the police because it would reflect badly on the church - and put the victim under probation.
If you are a CP/QF girl, I can see where Joseph's story makes sense. In a situation where Joseph was powerless, he stayed silent and eventually God rescued him. Sometimes that's the best option. Sometimes that's the only option....but not always.
The Botkin Sisters ignored the story of Tamar and Judah in the previous chapter. Judah withheld one of his living sons from becoming Tamar's wife when she had been widowed previously without children. Tamar fought back by dressing up as a temple prostitute and getting pregnant by Judah. I concede that her revenge is specific to the time and culture in which she lived, but she was as powerless as an unmarried CP/QF daughter is today, but she managed to right a wrong through cunning and perseverance.
IMHO, she deserves as much discussion as Joseph in this story because she demonstrates that sometimes the road to justice can be long, exhausting and dangerous - but that some people in some circumstances can travel that road.
My husband's grandmother passed away last night peacefully in her sleep. I will most likely be off-line more than normal this week to support my husband and his family during this time of grief.
The Botkin Sisters rave happily over Joseph's incorruptibility! Following God is great!
This is the point where the Botkin Sisters drop the story like a hot potato because the rest of the story might scare off their readers. See, one time Potiphar's Wife gets a hold of Joseph's clothing causing him to escape without his clothing. She hangs onto his clothing and accuses him of attempted rape. Joseph is sent to prison.
The second half of the story is important if you are a CP/QF woman because it demonstrates that society frames a discordant story to blame the victim so that the rest of the group avoids uncomfortable feelings. The idea that Potiphar's Wife would willingly have an affair with a foreign slave - even a handsome, skillful slave like Joseph - was repugnant to the other members of the household. That situation would weaken the authority of Egyptians over foreign slaves while the attempted rape of Potiphar's Wife demonstrated that foreign slaves were untrustworthy and dangerous and deserved to be kept under close scrutiny. In CP/QF society, men are religious leaders in authority similar to Potiphar's Wife while young, unmarried women are in a powerless group of people like Joseph. In much the same way, when women accuse men of sexual misconduct in CP/QF society, the community coalesces around the men who are accused by questioning what the woman did to seduce the man.
I have two more minor points on this issue.
First, Joseph didn't follow the second step of separating himself from Potiphar's Wife as thoroughly as the Botkin Sisters claim he did. How could he? He's a slave who cannot leave his master whenever the slaves pleases. In one of the paragraphs, the Botkin Sisters snidely deride a victim of Harvey Weinstein for allowing herself to remain around him when he's crossed personal boundaries. The Sister's lack of compassion or empathy is staggering - but it is also a natural side-effect of having lived a sheltered life where they have never needed to earn a living. Quitting a job has both short-term and long-term ramification on a person's life; storming out of a producer's office and quitting in a huff means taking an immediate financial hit since the person loses their income when they quit the job. The person who leaves is putting an ugly black mark on their career. People who worked with them who are unaware of the harassment will be under the impression that the victim left a job without notice for whatever reason the harasser decides to tell everyone else.
Second, Joseph never told the authorities what happened to him. Joseph - the beloved of God whom fortune smiles on - understood intuitively that attempting to rebut Potiphar's Wife's story would only create more danger for him and so stayed silent. CP/QF young women are in the same boat. Until this post was published, our best guess as to how Anna Sofia and Elizabeth would respond to a person disclosing a sexual assault to them is that they would blame them partially unless the woman could prove she screamed when attacked. And as a frequent commentator pointed out, that was the liberated viewpoint in the family; Geoffrey Botkin has recommended bring back the death penalty for fornication - including women who didn't scream when raped. Vision Forum's sister-cult of IBLP/ATI has an entire worksheet to help counselors work through how best to blame victims for sexual crimes. The SBC is struggling with newly surfaced documents about how Paige Patterson discouraged a seminary student who was raped from reporting the attack to the police because it would reflect badly on the church - and put the victim under probation.
If you are a CP/QF girl, I can see where Joseph's story makes sense. In a situation where Joseph was powerless, he stayed silent and eventually God rescued him. Sometimes that's the best option. Sometimes that's the only option....but not always.
The Botkin Sisters ignored the story of Tamar and Judah in the previous chapter. Judah withheld one of his living sons from becoming Tamar's wife when she had been widowed previously without children. Tamar fought back by dressing up as a temple prostitute and getting pregnant by Judah. I concede that her revenge is specific to the time and culture in which she lived, but she was as powerless as an unmarried CP/QF daughter is today, but she managed to right a wrong through cunning and perseverance.
IMHO, she deserves as much discussion as Joseph in this story because she demonstrates that sometimes the road to justice can be long, exhausting and dangerous - but that some people in some circumstances can travel that road.
My husband's grandmother passed away last night peacefully in her sleep. I will most likely be off-line more than normal this week to support my husband and his family during this time of grief.
Brilliant post.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear about his grandmother! Bless God she didn't have prolonged pain.
Sorry to hear about your husband's grandmother. I wish you and your family well in this difficult time.
ReplyDeleteCondolences to you and your family, take all the time you need!
ReplyDeleteRegarding this post... I've heard someone once say that the fact that Joseph was put in prison and not killed was proof that Potiphar actually knew what his wife was like and probably knew Joseph was innocent, but couldn't publicly ignore her accusation.
If the Botkin sisters have never been in a situation where in some way their intuition has told them that appearing to consent is safer than overtly fighting back, then I'm glad for them, but they are in the minority.
This happens every day. Women have been socialized to blame themselves and to excuse misogynistic behavior. On top of that our intuition often tells us that it would be more dangerous to make a scene than just to quietly do whatever we need to do to escape a situation that feels unsafe. It breaks my heart that they are blaming victims out of a misguided sense of moral superiority.