Can We Help?

I hope my autobiographical sketch does not put off Janice Fiamengo, Sydney Watson, and Brittany Sellner followers. Bear with me. There is a point for you to consider about feminism at the end of this essay. So, let’s go.

 

In 1976, I finished my MA in Renaissance and Reformation history. At age 24, I felt like pretty hot stuff. After all, I had graduated from college with honors and held an MA at age 24.

I was also a pig headed arrogant Evangelical Christian back in those days convinced I had hold of the Truth (Yes, bold faced with a capital “T” truth). As for the rest of you, you were simply blind fools and ignorant sinners. You resisted my truth, which was The Truth, because you were stuck in your blind stupid sinful ways. I was completely sure of it.

Perhaps you have met someone like I was and were offended. If so, it is understandable. I was pretty obnoxious. But let us get back to the story.

There was one person who knew more than me, my great master teacher, let’s call him John. God’s unique call to John was to bring The Truth to the world. All the other teachers, including Christian teachers, were blind and wrong. He uniquely had the real truth and I was his unique disciple.

”I must be unique,” I thought, “since nobody else takes any interest in John’s phenomenal teachings. Funny that, the total lack of interest.”

Now if this sounds to you like a cult of two, good, because it was. The cult came crashing down when I became suicidal. One day I found myself on the roof of a two story building seriously considering jumping to my death. I did not take the leap because the building did not look quite high enough. Death was acceptable; paraplegia was not. So, instead of jumping, I ran to my master teacher for his profound advice.

”Surely,” I thought, “this trailblazing sage will impart some earth shattering wisdom to stop my sinful thoughts and plans of suicide.” And in a bizarre backhanded way, he did.

”So, you want to play the suicide card, do you,” John asked sarcastically? “You can’t fool me. You don’t have the guts to do it, so your little game to get my attention will not work. In fact, go ahead. I dare you. Kill yourself. Worried two stories isn’t high enough? Well then, let me recommend the bank down town. It is ten stories, the roof is accessible, and the parking lot runs right up to the building. Hitting concrete is unavoidable even for a screw up like you. Make sure you go headfirst and plant your skull into the pavement. Go ahead, I dare you. Go ahead, go ahead, kill yourself,” his words musically diminishing into a soft chuckle of derisive laughter.

Of course what he said is the wrong thing to say to a potential suicide. But, in this particular case, it was the best thing he could have said. I looked at him in wide eyed amazement. John was sure I was incapable of doing it and he was wrong. And if he was wrong about something as important as committing suicide, what else was he wrong about?

”I know, I know” he said with flippant certainty, “you are astounded by my ability to see right through you; but it is so easy. I can see it in your eyes.”

”Wrong again,” I thought, “he really has no clue.”

A week later I was leaving the cult of two. The journey of thinking for myself had begun. I remained a Christian but had a great deal to learn about what that really means.

Here is one of the most important things I had to learn. A prophet in the Old Testament asked, “With what will I come before the Lord? (ESV, Micah 6:6).” He then answers his own question with a rhetorical question to his listeners. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? (ESV, Micah 6:6-8).”

”Walk humbly with your God?” While unspoken in my cult days, I clearly thought and acted as if I knew the spiritual status of every single person in the world. John, the master teacher, had given me the formula. Now if I could actually know such a thing, all of you should walk humbly before me! The ability to know the spiritual state of billions of people would mean I am god. Now there is a wildly insane delusion of grandeur! No formula of human construction could possibly explain the spiritual state of a billion people.

Evangelical Christianity embraced “walking humbly with God” from its beginnings. John Calvin, in many ways the founder of Evangelical theology, wrote, “The beginning of worshiping God … is to think humbly and modestly of ourselves .”ⁱ I began thinking of myself as a Biblicist, so much modern Evangelicalism having departed from its biblical roots.

So what does any of this have to do with the new feminism? Well, on line and in the media I encounter feminists who remind me of myself those many years ago. There is a sense that they know The Truth. They entertain no counter arguments. And much like I received the unquestionable truth from my master teacher, it seems they are receiving the unquestionable truth from their professors.

This new wave of feminism seems to know an immense amount about people, more than seems humanly possible. They have received the intersectional formula from their teachers. It is easy to find places where they declare, for example, that all American conservatives are mysognists. In the United States there are over 100 million conservatives.ⁱⁱ How can these feminists possibly know what 100 million people think on any subject? Granted, the feminist delusion of grandeur is not as grandiose as mine, nevertheless …

In my experience holding grandiose delusional thoughts about yourself and the world is a formula for disaster. Fortunately for me, older Evangelicalism or Biblicism offered me some real help.

My education in a small Christian college included courses in Greek philosophy, logic, and basic theology. Greek philosophy raises questions about what human beings can know if anything. Logic is an excellent tool to put in the toolbox of a self directed person. Basic theology showed me that there are various ways to interpret the Bible.

My MA taught me about the five hundred year history of Evangelical Christianity. In that time Evangelicals accomplished some amazingly good things but also did some downright rotten evil things. The older Evangelical view will own up to failures. Of course failure to do the good is no cause for rejoicing but it is rather expected. As John Calvin said, “Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair because of the smallness of our accomplishment.”ⁱⁱⁱ Truth is, we Christians regularly fail just as I did with my blindness to my own arrogance.

What I have read and heard of this new feminism is concerning. It looks to me like some unspoken grandiose delusions are in place. And worse, I can’t find the avenues of escape from the grandiose delusions in the new feminist viewpoint. I keep finding a firm insistence, couched as confidence, that they know and they are right. Do they have a John Calvin to pull them back from the cataclysmic chasms of delusional self aggrandizement? Does the feminist education provide its adherents with the tools to think for themselves such as I received? Or, are the true believers in the new feminism going to be abandoned, ill equipped to find their own way down the road?

I am concerned for the followers of the new feminism. If my sense of things is correct, arguing with the feminists is pointless. They can no more hear what you have to say about common sanity than I could years ago. But can we say something or do something, now or in the future, to help them if the delusions collapse, as I suspect they will? I am not talking here about evangelizing new wave feminists to Christian faith. I am asking, does anyone see a way to help these people if their delusional worldview comes crashing down?

This much I can say from the authority of experience; if you harbor grandiose delusions about yourself, really bad things can and do happen.