In light of my recent posts on how The Beast is More Dangerous than Gaston, and the discussion that followed regarding domestic violence, I thought this TED Talk was especially helpful at getting at how the Beast masquerades as a Beauty. Leslie Morgan Steiner addresses the question “Why Victims of Domestic Violence Don’t Leave.”
This video is well worth your time…especially if you don’t think you need to watch it.
In a great conversation over lunch with my friend, Terry Tatum, we both celebrated the influence of older Christians in our lives – people who are a generation or two ahead of us who purposely chose to throw themselves into the lives of young men and urge us to godliness.
While I’m grateful for the friends I have that are my age and who desire to serve God, I have become increasingly grateful for those people who have taken their wisdom and their experience and stooped down to me, in whatever ridiculous mire I constantly find myself, and invested of a piece of themselves into me.
I have observed that my generation and those younger than me often do not appreciate the contributions of older believers. From children’s ministries, to middle school, to youth, to college, to young adult classes, we often segregate ourselves and are segregated based on age.
And I lament this.
I wouldn’t be near the Christian I am today if it weren’t for older Christians.
If I can give one piece of advice to young Christians it is this: Surround yourself with older, wiser, grayer, more experienced, seasoned Christians. Join their small groups. Go to their Sunday School classes. Have dinner with them. Ask them questions. Pick their brains. Do what they say. You need them.
If I can give one piece of advice to a seasoned, veteran Christian with gray(ing) hair it is this: We need you. We may not know it, but we do. We have no chance to be the people God created us to be without you and your wisdom and influence. We need you to be there for us and with us and even against us, if need be. We need you to join our small groups, teach our Sunday School classes, invite us over for dinner, pick our brains and let us pick yours. You might even be surprised at how young we keep you!
Here are the seasoned Christians in my life that deserve much more than a blog-post-thank-you…
(In chronological order of influence)
Jack and Robin Tenney, who had me into their home everyday after school my junior year of high school, and were the first to teach me what it meant to love Jesus.
Alan and Neena Lord, who not only gave their daughter to me, but poured their hearts into me in college and after.
Lonnie and Kim Nelson, who to this day mentor my wife and I, mourn with us, laugh with us, and encourage us.
Marty and Kim Allen, who showed us the meaning of hospitality, awkward humor, and the beauty of redemption!
Doug and Sandy Pennington, who have shown us the ropes of ministerial life and given me, in particular, grace upon grace to make mistakes. (They don’t have to show much grace to Cassie, she’s pretty well perfect.)
Summing up part 1 of Why the Beast is More Dangerous than Gaston, I suggested that the Beast is the face of a new kind of patriarchy – a patriarchy that looks soft and sensitive, but is still controlling at its roots, and assumes a hegemonic relationship that looks like love but is still rooted in ownership.
So the question becomes, what has my daughter learned by watching this film?
Nevertheless, I’m afraid here that Disney has also played on the larger pop-cultural stereotypes that all men are idiots, womanizers, abusive and in need of being housebroken by a good woman. Which brings me to the second lesson my daughter has learned…
I don’t know that it would make for a better story, but a better message would certainly be: Whether they guys is overtly forceful like Gaston, or more subtly controlling like the Beast (who I don’t believe ever, EVER, says, “sorry,” by the way!), little girls need to know that control is control, manipulation is manipulation, abuse is abuse, and the best thing for you to do is get out of the relationship as fast as you can.
It’s not your job to play the hero. You have no emotional, psychological, ethical, or spiritual reason to keep yourself in danger.*
In the end, the Beast is more dangerous than Gaston because he appears to be the protagonist, when in actuality, there’s merely a difference in degree and not kind.
Finally, is there any value to my daughter watching this film?
Absolutely. But only if I am there to talk to her about the messages of the movie instead of just letting her passively ingest its messages.
One of those values is, while I wish it would go further, it is leaps and bounds ahead of Disney’s earlier non-efforts to portray relationships of gender equality. (It is, nevertheless, far from the gender dynamics of The Princess and the Frog. )
While I think the Beast does move past the his emotional abusiveness when he learns to give up Belle for her benefit, the best part of the film is when Belle continues to stand up for herself, even before they fall in love. She lets the Beast know clearly that he is not to treat her abusively.
She draws clear boundaries and teaches him how to treat her.
And I will point this out to my daughters. We teach people how to treat us. We are responsible for drawing boundaries to protect ourselves from hurtful persons. Belle does this, for the most part, admirably.
I merely wish that the writers would have shown that part of her boundary drawing needed to be a recognition that focusing on drawing boundaries with the Beast’s emotional abuse is to miss the forest for the trees. Yes, he is emotionally abusive. But his power lies, not in his tempter, but in his captivity. He controls her world. And even if she draws boundaries in one little part of that world, she still lives under his regime…until she gets permission to leave. But even this provides another talking-point for me and my daughter.
In the end, I’m glad Belle and the Beast fell in love – even if I still think outdated gender roles are involved. But I don’t think she should have been in that situation long enough to fall in love.
*Wait for a 3rd post, specifically dedicated to this.
Yesterday I took my family to Taco Bell for lunch. We ordered our meal, about $12 worth, and ate it. As we were winding down, Cassie told me she had an extra dollar in her purse if I wanted another taco. So took her dollar, went and stood in line, then ordered a taco with only cheese, received it, then went to sit down to eat it.
When I tore off the paper, I saw, inside the hard shell taco, that there was only meat on one half of it. The left half of the taco had a minimal amount of meat and cheese, and the right half of it had nothing…but a trace. And by ‘trace’ I do not mean meat particles, but meat-sauce stains, where it looked like there had been meat there.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten Taco Bell for years, I know they’re stingy with the meat and cheese. But meat and cheese only on half of it was a bit ridiculous.
My wife also saw and she immediately said, “You need to take that back up there.”
So took the taco, waited patiently in line again, and when I got back to the cashier, I politely (it was not her fault) informed her about the nature of my taco.
Cashier: Well, I can get you another one if you want.
Me: Ummm….no thanks. I’m not really in the mood for another taco now. Can I just get my dollar back?
Cashier: I don’t think I can give you your dollar back. Usually we just replace messed up orders.
Me: Yeah, this is a little different. Besides, I’ve been waiting in line for a while and my kids are getting restless. I’d just like to get my dollar back.
Cashier: Well, I’ll have to ask my manager if we can do that.
Me: No problem.
So I hand her my taco so she can show the manager. I see her take it back to the lady. They have what looked like an intense conversation, regarding which, I thought, “Oh, I sure hope that cashier’s not getting in trouble, it wasn’t her fault.”
Next thing I know, the manager is coming up to the counter with my taco in hand. She has a pretty angry look on her face…but it was a scowl directed at me.
Manager: This taco only has half the meat on it!
Me: Uh….right…that was my problem with it, too.
Manager: No. This taco only has half the meat on it.
Me: Right. That’s why I brought it back up here.
Manager: But there used to be meat on this other side. I can see the meat sauce where it was there.
Me: Yes. I can see that, too.
Manager: Well, there was meat there and now there’s not.
Me: Right! And if you think someone ate half that taco meat, you’d better check with your employees because it wasn’t me.
She continued to eye me incredulously, looking for a sign of me having lied about the taco meat.
Me: Look, I don’t know what the problem is. I just ordered this thing. The cashier can tell you. I’ve already eaten a full meal here. And I’ve been entirely polite about this thing. But I didn’t eat that meat and I would like me dollar back.
With that accusatory scowl still lingering on her face, she crumpled up the taco and threw it in the trash. She then, in a huff, got into the cash register and forced the dollar into my hand.
I walked away, not sure if I was more angry or more amused.
Random Guy: What was that all about?
Me: The manager just basically accused me of ordering a taco, eating half the meat off it, and then bringing it back. Heck, if I was going to bring it back, I could’ve come up with a better story than “it wasn’t there to begin with.”
Can someone tell me what Wesley means in the following paragraph. His larger discussion is about how faith and grace have freed us from sin and it’s guilt…therefore, we believers are not bound to it.
But this wording is so awkward and, maybe, archaic, that I’m not sure what he means.
Nor (4.) Doth he sin by infirmities, whether in act, word, or thought; for his infirmities have no concurrence of his will; and without this they are not properly sins. Thus, “he that is born of God doth not commit sin”: and though he cannot say he hath not sinned, yet now “he sinneth not.”
Slap some glasses on Emperor Palpatine…
…and call him John Piper.
And here he is using the force…
And again trying the Jedi Mind Trick…which won’t work for him.
Brent: My high school teacher used to have a poster on her wall that said, “If you aim at the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
Me: That’s encouraging.
Brent: When I tried to explain to her that it is astronomically impossible, she didn’t understand what I was talking about.
Me: She must not have been a natural literalist.
Brent: Yeah. That AND I was smarter than her.
I love getting to work with this guy. Sometimes I feel bad for Candy when Brent and I go off on our random tangents.
I’ve always imagined when I’m praying that my spirit is transferred up to the throne room of God in that moment. That while my body is kneeling beside my bed or driving in my car, my spirit is raptured into the holy of holies, into the presence of God…who is there, but not necessarily here.
For several years now, however, I’ve been increasingly convinced that the biblical idea of “Kingdom of Heaven” is a very this worldly reality. That the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus in this world means that the Kingdom of Heaven is not elsewhere, but present and active here.
It’s funny how paradigm shifts tend to take a while to apply.
The implications of the hereness of the Kingdom of Heaven immediately convinced me that a place called Heaven is not the ultimate goal of the Christian life. But up until recently my imagination in prayer still took me up to a remote, distant, heavenly throne room.
Reading this morning in the Sermon on the Mount (Jesus’ most explicit delineation of the Kingdom of Heaven!), I saw the error of my praying ways. Jesus prays for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The implication here is that prayer, like church gatherings, aren’t mini Christian vacations into heaven. They are not temporary forays into the next life or another world. Prayer, like church gatherings, are a full engagement with this world. Prayer takes place within and for this world. It does not long for a time to escape, it is an expression of a soul already fully engage in God’s redemptive purposes for this world. I love how Eugene Peterson says it, “Prayer is not an escape from what is going on around us. It is gutsy participation in every earthly detail.”
If heaven is God’s throne, then earth is his footstool. And I can pray at His footstool because that’s where God’s feet touch our ground.
One of the hardest things for a young basketball player to learn is that she needs to use her whole body not just her hands. Whether it is in shooting, dribbling, or defensive positioning, getting your body in the right position results in success. Good hands mean nothing if they’re accompanied by clumsy or lazy body use.
This is true for preachers, too. Some of us have excellent hand gestures. But that’s all we have. We never walk out from behind the pulpit. We never kneel down before the audience. We never incarnate the message through our full-body posturing. We are still. We expect our hands to do all the work. And that’s a weakness.
Come out from behind that pulpit. Let the vulnerability wash over you and your audience by refusing to hide your body behind the lectern. Move your feet. Use your legs, waist, and torso in the drama of the sermon. Give your audience something to look at, not just something to listen to.
Manu Ginobili knows how to get his full body involved in every play.
I’m working on my sermon on Jesus washing the disciple’s feet in John 13. Structurally, it’s the opening scene that leads to the cross, in John’s gospel.
