My Top Five Posts of 2015

2015 may have been the year I spent recovering from everything that happened in 2014, mostly a horrible relationship that managed to hit the traumatic trifecta of my personal life, professional life, and spiritual life.

The question of 2014 was, "How will I ever heal from this?"

The answer of 2015 was, "Through writing. And by the grace of God."

Writing has been one of the most healing practices in my life—and I'm beyond grateful to be able to do that here.

On that note, here are my five favorite posts from 2015, in the order they were written:

Photo by Matthias Ripp

1. Why is Church Cliquey? Part 4

"There's that familiar narrative we tell each other after a breakup: Time to move on. You can do better. There are plenty of denominations in this diocese, or something like that. And I feel a bit silly. Like I'm all torn up over a breakup where the guy was never really that into me in the first place."

I don't know if I would describe this as a personal favorite, but as the latest in my "Why is Church Cliquey?" series it feels significant to my journey as a Christian and (post) Evangelical. Looking back, I can see how even though I left my church for personal reasons, the exodus was both a long time coming and to a certain point, inevitable. I can feel part 5 coming on like a case of norovirus. You're welcome in advance.

2. The INTP & Giving Zero Fucks, Parts 1, 2 & 3

"You don't care," is also emotionally coercive: "You should care. Shame on you for not caring. If you were a good person, a good Christian, a good girlfriend, a good employee, you would give a f*** about what I want you to give a f*** about."

This series was so much fun to write (not least because who doesn't like to drop the F bomb every third sentence, amiright?) Numerous people (two) told me that they also found it amusing, so mission accomplished. Apparently, there is a huge (in the 100s) blog market out there for INTP-related content, so expect to see more in the future. One of my most googled posts is "INTP = Asshole?" and I laugh every single time it comes up in the search keywords.

3. The Church & Mental Health: Interview with a Therapist

"There's an old saying one of my bosses likes, it goes: 'Feelings buried alive never die.' And what happens is they come out in other very nasty ways."

Addressing the intersection of Christianity and mental health, the interviews in this series brought healing when I least expected it. I can't emphasize enough how thankful I am—how God used conversation, and questions, and writing to bring healing and resolution to some traumatic things that happened in 2014 around the issue of mental health, and even more inexplicably, to a trauma that I have struggled to make sense of for over 10 years (I haven't published that interview yet. Bring it on 2016!) I don't know what to make of it. It's a miracle in its own right. And for me, it was one of the most grace-filled moments of 2015.

4. Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - Entitlement

"It's not anger. Because anger doesn't cause abuse. It's not pain. Because there are many, many men (and women) who experience intense, searing, heart-rending pain and yet fail to abuse anyone. It's not that they rage--it's that they feel justified in their cruelty."

Wow, talk about raw pain. The "Undateable" series might be the most popular series I've ever written—and some of the most appreciative readers have been men, which is awesome. I've used the series in part to process one of the most traumatic relationships of my life, and I think this post gets at the heart of why dating men like this can make you question your spiritual and religious beliefs. Because unfortunately, Christian men and men in the church are no less entitled (some would say they are more entitled because of historical Christian misogyny) than non-Christian men. What happens when you would no longer like a side of misogyny and sexism with your Christianity (thank you, but I don't like mushrooms). Do you give it up altogether?

5. Jessica Jones, Sex Robots for Jesus, and the Love/Respect Binary

"So I'm going to call 'Love and Respect' what it is: a false doctrine. Idolatry. A dangerous, misogynistic, and abusive ideology masquerading as the biblical, magic pill solution to all male/female relationships."

Hello misogyny, my old friend. Speaking of misogyny and the church—I've always had something of a personal vendetta against "Love and Respect" the franchise. But I had never actually read the book. HOLY BLANKETY BLANK. It was so much worse than I thought it would be, and that's saying something. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this book is evil. And if even one person questions 1/100th of its assumptions about men, women, gender roles, and marriage, I will consider that a success. I see more writing about complementarianism and "Love and Respect" in my future, God help us all.

Runners up:

Why I kept Quiet About Being Sexually Harassed
Should I Stay or Should I go?
"Give Me Sex Jesus"

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - Anger

I've written about anger in this series before--in the entry on Entitlement and in the entry on Cowardice. In fact, if I've written about anger in every entry in this series, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.

Photo by Ferran Jordà

This is not about a normal, everyday kind of anger. Anger--the kind of anger I'm talking about--is tightly wound up with entitlement and an underlying sense of victimization:

Victimization: I have been injured.
Entitlement: I have a right to be angry.
Unspoken Assumption: I have the right to enact revenge and/or even the score.

This kind of anger feels dangerous, because it is so deeply rooted in a sense of righteous justification.

Instead of calling it "anger," it might be more accurate to refer to it as bitterness, resentment, or rage--an anger cherished, nurtured, held close.

I'm writing about anger not just because I drew it out of the jar as a writing topic (which I did), but because--

Anger is my Achilles' heel.

If you want something from me, try getting angry. I might just crack.

For whatever reason (maybe getting yelled at as a kid, I dunno), anger has an unpleasant effect on me: My throat tightens. I get quiet. I go numb.

I've learned that anger can be a form of manipulation and control. And it works. I can't think of a single abusive dynamic that I've been a part of that hasn't involved this kind of anger.

One guy I worked with would yell at me, then get even angrier when I responded neutrally instead of emotionally.

He would consistently tell me about how angry yet another guy was with me (triangulation).

This happened again in another situation, where one dude capitalized on the anger of another dude to overcome a break in our relationship (bonus points if it's someone in a position of power, authority, or influence):

"___ is very angry with you. You need to do something. I can help you fix it."

Essentially, Dude A used fear of authority, specifically fear sparked by someone in authority (Dude B) being angry with me, to get what he wanted.

I mean, it worked--maybe a little too well: I soon after entered into an abusive dynamic with Dude B, a dynamic centered around anger, fear and control. It felt a little too much like being handed from one abuser to another.

That was last year. This year, I found myself once again sitting across from one man telling me that another man was "very angry with me." I find this funny (rule of 3; first time tragedy, second time farce). If you find yourself in a conversation where one person is earnestly telling you that another person is angry with you, and what are you going to do about it, I can say with certainty that something is wrong.

But I digress. Achilles' heel.

This is about anger and Christian guys and being undateable.

I had an epiphany once, while working on this series: "Christian men don't actually respect women." And then that thought kept me up all night the way that 3am thoughts sometimes do.

I think there's some truth to it: some men and some Christian men do not see women as equals. They do not see women as fully human. And it's hard to respect someone unless you view them as fully human.

I've heard from a reliable source that "anger is a gateway emotion." If we think about shame as the root of this kind of anger (abusive anger), a disproportionate response to perceived slights* makes a lot of sense:

How would you feel if something not quite a person (that you don't regard as an equal) made you feel completely worthless? Especially when everything you believe about yourself and everything society encourages you to believe tells you that you are superior, the genuine article, the real thing?

It would be incredibly enraging. The balance must be restored. Someone or something must pay. Shame is an unbearable emotion, and it must be displaced onto the body of another.

In this case, violence is just settling the score, evening the debt, restoring the equilibrium.

Where does the shame go?

I've written before about how the burden of shame accrues to women. Even the way we talk about and think about anger contributes to this burden. Anger more than almost any other emotion is seen as "out of control" or "out of my control," serving as a justification for violence.

The less that men are "in control" of their own emotions or passions, the more women are responsible for the outcome of those emotions.

This is not to blame shame for the abusive anger of men--rather, the underlying belief that men are more valuable than women, more human than women, more entitled to respect, dignity, rights, justice, power, autonomy, etc.

Yes, I blame misogyny. I blame Christian teachings that emphasize complementarian gender roles. I believe that a system that enforces rigid, narrowly defined gender roles enables and encourages the abuse of women.

As men displace their shame onto women, they feel better, while women feel worse. Messages from our culture that implicate women in their own victimization serve to reinforce this sense of reverse responsibility: You are the one at fault. You caused your own abuse. You caused your own assault. You were not hyper-vigilant enough.

I suspect that just as men cannot heal the shame of women, women cannot heal the shame of men. And women are definitely not responsible for the underlying misogyny of men's anger.

Another important point: Submission to this type of anger is a bad idea. For so long I bought into a conception of Christian reconciliation that entailed submitting passively to unhealthy and abusive anger. I thought that by demonstrating humility I could heal the relationship and reestablish equilibrium. I even apologized to my very first abuser for treating him poorly (not listening to him, not respecting him). Not even joking.

For one, it doesn't work. It can even intensify the abuse. For another, there is nothing Christian or holy about submitting to dehumanizing behavior. Any theology, church, person who tells you otherwise is selling you an abusive crock of ****.








*I owe this idea to a discussion of Roy Baumeister's writing about abuse at WenatcheeTheHatchet. While I don't agree with Wenatchee's interpretation, I did find Baumeister's ideas about men's rationalizations for domestic violence helpful.

The Church, Dating & Mental Health

This is a scary place to find a date. Probably because it's haunted. [Photo by A Quiverful of Fotos]

I wanted to write a brief (or maybe not so brief) companion piece to my "Undateable" series about the complexities of mental health within the context of church dating.

Let's say you are a Christian and you want to date someone who shares your beliefs. Are you more likely to end up dating someone with a personality disorder (or other mental disorder) if you choose to date within the context of a church?

To be clear, I am not saying that suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, OCD, or any other mental disorder or illness disqualifies anyone for dating or makes a person undateable. I do not believe this at all.

Nor am I saying that a person must have resolved all of their emotional issues before dating. If that were case, no one would ever date, myself included.

Disclaimers aside, I think there are certain personality disorders that might make a person more likely to cause harm to others within the context of dating. And those who have these personality disorders may be predisposed to attend church.

In my "Undateable" series, I write about different attributes I've encountered dating (or not dating) Christian men--things like misogyny, cowardice, racism and not taking "No" for an answer.

Although these attributes are not necessarily related to mental health, in some cases, I feel like they are caused by or co-occur with a personality disorder.

[This is not to take away from the fact that a person with a personality disorder is fully human and fully worthy of love, respect and acceptance, but never at the expense of another person's safety.]

Some examples of potentially damaging behavior within the context of dating include physical and emotional abuse, stalking, obsessive pursuit, disrespect of communicated boundaries and rigid gender roles.

I want to be careful here--diagnosing anyone with a personality disorder is obviously not something I am qualified to do.

However, I can hypothesize that in some cases, mental health is the issue. I would also argue that the culture of dating within the church is inherently dysfunctional, and thus encourages dysfunctional behavior and ways of relating to the opposite sex.

So, to make the point I came here to make:

I think that racist or sexist remarks can be a sign that the person you are dating has a personality disorder, particularly if they make little sense within the existing social context (i.e., the surrounding social group is usually neither blatantly racist nor sexist).

Also, racist or sexist jokes or statements can be a precursor to abuse. It might be worth thinking more about our collective tolerance for hateful or devaluing statements about the Other and whether or not we are encouraging or enabling an abusive dynamic to take place between the church and the culture, as well as between one individual and another.

To what extent does the church tolerate sexism, racism and homophobia and to what extent does this tolerance contribute to abuse, particularly of those who are the most spiritually and emotionally vulnerable?

Perhaps we could love and accept the broken (all of us, according to Christian theology) while also being wholly intolerant of anything that devalues another human being.

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys are All Dented Cans - The Myth of Persistence

Photo by quinn.anya

So I've started doing this thing where I'm completely honest with men. Why?

Well, for one, it amuses me and my dark sense of humor. I get to say fun things like:

"I'm not interested in pursuing anything romantic with you."
"Hitting on one person on the fb status of another person is kind of a douche move."
"You fondled my earring at a BBQ and it made feel uncomfortable and disrespected."
"When you grabbed me from behind around my ribs directly under my breasts [yeah, that happened], I felt unsafe and violated."

Yep. That's right. Just waiting for the marriage proposals to roll on in.

For another, I'm done protecting a man's feelings at the expense of my own personal safety.

And that brings me to the topic for today in dented cans: THE MYTH OF PERSISTENCE. And yes, it definitely deserves to be in all caps.

There's this weirdly longstanding myth out there that women want men who will continue to pursue them even in the face of blatant rejection (see also, "The Notebook").

You say, "I just want to be friends."
He hears, "I just want to be friends until I change my mind and decide we should definitely get married and have five kids."

You say, "I'm not interested in you in that way."
He hears, "I'm not interested in you in that way, but you should definitely grab me and try to kiss me."

You say, "I like someone else."
He hears, "He's probably a douche-bag--so you still have a shot!"

To the men that believe this myth, "No, I'm not interested" means "Try harder. You're not trying hard enough. Persist long enough and I will say 'Yes.'"

Except it doesn't mean that.

No--when you persist in pursuing me after I have made my feelings clear, I can only assume that there is something wrong with you either emotionally or mentally. And the last thing in the world that I desire is to have an emotionally or mentally unstable man pursuing me, or worse, believing that I owe him something--a date, friendship, my time, a second chance.

In short, when a man will not take "No" for an answer, all my self-preservation instincts kick in, and all I want is for him to stay the **** away from me.

I feel fear and anger.

Fear--because if this man apparently can't understand or chooses not to understand the words that I use to communicate (perhaps if I did an interpretive dance?), who's to say what other boundaries of mine he won't violate due to this "misunderstanding"? If he has already violated my verbal boundaries and made me feel unsafe, there are still other boundaries he has yet to cross: emotional, spiritual, mental, physical.

But truthfully, I have trouble understanding the level of pure terror I feel when a man refuses to take "No" for an answer.

My best guess is that this is a dehumanizing experience--I am not a person to these men. I am the projection of all of their baggage about women. I "owe" him something--my body, my "Yes," a chance for him to prove that he is the man of my dreams and we are meant to be together-- In short, I cannot give consent because I am not fully human. His pursuit has very little do with me, and so much to do with the fantasy world he has created in his mind: A world in which I should say, "Yes."

At a certain point this fantasy becomes far more important than my humanity. And that is terrifying (cue visions of being chained up in a dungeon somewhere by a man who "just wants to love me," and is willing to wait as long as it takes for me to realize that).

My guess is that many men fail to understand this as well--they have never experienced fear for their personal safety in the context of romantic relationships, partially because women are not encouraged to pursue in the face of rejection, in fact, quite the opposite. Any romantic rejection is humiliating and shameful.

And what about "Not Leading Him On," that crime that women seem to be accused of at a substantially higher rate than men? Why do women so often take the path of least resistance, trying to "let him down easy." It goes back to fear, again. Women have been taught that saying "No" is not only rude, but also dangerous.

A stranger came up to me in the 99 cent store and told me that I was "beautiful." He followed this up immediately with, "That's a compliment you know."

Of course, I enjoy compliments most when they are followed by vaguely hostile or threatening statements. I also enjoy being put in a situation in a public space where I am expected to thank a stranger for harassing me or be subjected to the accusation of "ungrateful b___ who can't take a compliment."

Unfortunately for me, as a woman, I fear for my physical safety. Therefore, I try not to engage with men in an aggressive or potentially escalating manner.

The same goes for turning down men who are romantically interested in me--but as it turns out, it matters very little what I say:

I've had different Christian guys: Corner me in a car and demand repeatedly that I go out on a date with him, then text me to apologize and tell me that he really "respects" me; Tell me my job is on the line unless I let him back into my life (as a friend, of course); Ignore my request to be "just friends" by grabbing me and dipping me for a kiss, all while citing the scene in "Hitch" when Will Smith and Kevin James accidentally make out ("You lean in half way, then wait for her to go the other half").

Then there's the anger--yeah, being seen as not quite human kind of pisses me off. And there's the icky, would rather not think about it, idea that my biracial, "exotic" looks only contribute to the extent to which men are able to project their own fantasies onto my very real, non-white (but still human!) body.

The intersection between race and perceived sexual availability is a fraught one at best--but whether it applies here or not, let me just say:

I don't want to be touched, grabbed, or groped in public by men I don't know.
If I say I don't want to date you, I mean exactly that, and I don't care to repeat myself.
I am in no way obligated to explain to you why I am not interested. I owe you no justification whatsoever.
If you won't take "No" for answer, consider yourself banned from my life.

So why is it that Christian men are so horrible at grasping the concept of women as fully human?

The word "consent" is quite the buzzword these days, but I believe there are many Christian men who do not grasp the concept:

Consent (or if you prefer, "Respect") isn't just about sex. It's about respecting the boundaries of another human being--seeing them as fully human--in every single interaction, romantic or not.

There are certain things that "Nice" Christian guys tend to believe or say that are inconsistent with consent:

One, believing that if you go to the trouble of asking a girl out, she should say, "Yes," just because you took a risk and put yourself out there.

Two, if you ask a girl out and she says, "Yes" even though she is not ultimately interested, then she is leading you on.

Three, you are a "Good Christian Man" but every girl you ask out says, "No," meaning that there is something wrong with them, not you. You are a victim of feminism, shallow female whims, or unfair discrimination.

Four, if a girl says "No" before the first date or after five dates, you deserve a full, complete, and honest explanation as to why.

Five, women don't actually know what they want. They read romance novels and "Fifty Shades of Grey" and then complain that they don't want to be raped, beaten, sexually harassed, or coerced into sex. What gives?

One and two are obviously contradictory, but I have heard both. Trying to control whether or not someone says "Yes" or "No" to a date is contrary to the idea of consent--and trying to control a person's motivations in general feels fishy.

For three and four, being rejected sucks, obviously. But believing that someone else is "wrong" for rejecting you or that the the entire female population is delusional because they are not romantically interested in you is also contrary to the idea of consent--particularly to the idea that a woman should be able to choose to date or not date someone for any reason. Yes, any reason, even one you think is shallow or stupid.

Also contrary to consent is manipulating a person into unwanted contact of any kind.

For five--well, perhaps that is the subject of another blog post, but it boggles the mind that women are still not allowed to be complex or contradictory beings with a freedom of choice and personal autonomy that transcends one particular sexual fantasy or choice of reading material. "Women don't know what they want" seems highly correlated with the myth of persistence--"Women don't know what they want" but "I (a man) know what they should want." Gross.

In conclusion, if a guy will not take "No" for an answer he is, in my opinion, undateable.

Up next in the Dented Cans series, a post on entitlement.

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Racist

Coming never to a store near you

[Catch up on the premise of this series here.]

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for this next installment--

And on the docket today for cringey subject matter, racism.

It probably won't shock you to know that, like misogyny, racism is a deal-breaker for me in a dating relationship. This hardly feels like ground breaking territory.

After all, how many of us look at a prospective dating partner and think, "You know what would be really awesome? If he/she were just a little bit racist every once in while, just to keep me on my toes as an ethnic minority."

No. Highly doubtful.

But despite that generally accepted reality, I dated a racist Christian guy.

This is embarrassing and shameful for me to admit. How could that even happen? I'm a college-educated, biracial feminist who studied English literature. I've read Spivak and Bhabha for crying out loud. That **** takes commitment (and roughly four cups of coffee or 20 cups of tea, depending on whether you're stateside or across the pond).

Here's my theory: we tend to work with a simplified framework of reality when it comes to other people.

So in my non-hypothetical case, I have a framework in my mind about Jack's character. I think of him as highly sensitive and extremely compassionate based on the sum of all my interactions with him (the mathematical function of our relationship).

So when Jack says something that doesn't fit within the framework--"Sensitive to other people's feelings," "Compassionate," my mind places these utterances outside of the established framework as rare exceptions.

The same holds true with racist comments. Far from pouncing on a statement with a gleeful, "Aha! I knew it! All white people harbor secret racist thoughts," my mind seeks to integrate the new information into previously held conceptions about Jack's basic character.

There's no way someone this empathetic could be racist. Right?
I must have misunderstood what he said. I think he meant something different.
But he's a Christian.

To return to the subject of this post, whether or not someone is a Christian seems to be only a very mild marker of whether or not he/she is also racist (completely debatable of course).

Observationally, however, a shared belief system like Christianity can function much like a shared disgust for the Other, whatever or whomever that Other might be.

"We're Christians so of course we think ____ is disgusting/sinful/wrong."

More observational thoughts about the intersection between being a Christian dude and being racist.:

The "Other" and Disgust

When I've heard Christian guys that I dated (or didn't) say something racist or bigoted or prejudiced, I couldn't help but register the tone of disgust.

Isn't that what racism is, in a way? Gut-level disgust about this inferior group of people? Whether they're destroying America, rioting in the streets about injustice, or brutally asserting their worth as human beings, nothing done by "people like us" ever seems to elicit an even remotely similar reaction.

Even if it's not aimed at you, you feel it like a punch in the stomach.

I want to make a quick note here about the possible connection between racist remarks and having a personality disorder. I mention this later on, but I hypothesize that there is a potential connection--and I want to point it out as a red flag: The person you are dating might not only be slightly racist, but also emotionally dangerous.

The "Other" and Forced Teaming

Gavin de Becker talks about forced teaming in his great book "The Gift of Fear." Basically, the predator uses the tone and language of "we're in this together" to establish rapport and trust with his victim. Example: a stranger points out that you're both unprepared for the rain, commiserates with you about your lack of an umbrella, and then offers to give you a ride in his car. [STRANGER DANGER]

Racist remarks can function in much the same way. A conspiratorial lowering of the voice (ooh, I'm being so daring and countercultural right now, I can't even). The message:

We're in this together.
We both feel the same way about this controversial issue.
We're superior and better than those other people.
You agree with me by default, because you're clearly not part of an inferior racial minority.

My silent response making me a co-conspirator, implicating me in the same kinds of beliefs--to challenge them would be to lose the relationship. I betrayed myself. And I hate myself for it.

I reached a turning point in dealing with this particular relationship when I realized that the racist (and sexist) remarks were far from the exception to the rule--they were beyond calculated and intentional. Far from being the isolated pinpricks in a compassionate, honest and loving relationship, they were the deliberate wounds of an abuser.

He discovered my deepest vulnerabilities. And wielded that knowledge like a weapon to hurt, manipulate and control me.

The "Other" and Political Correctness

Something odd tends to happen if you even hint to a man that he might be racist or sexist.

He begins clutching his pearls (haha), crying, "No! Not me! I would never believe such things. What kind of sick, twisted monster do you think I am?"

Because apparently, calling someone a racist is stopping just short of calling them a child molester.

Well, let me be neither the first nor the last to say:

"He doth protest too much."

Often, after letting you know that you've offended his delicate, white male sensibilities, he follows with, "Well, I'm not politically correct if that's what you mean."

I have a theory about not being politically correct:

Speaking the language of politically incorrect is a way for those without any real power to puff themselves up--like the so-called "alpha male" who is secretly insecure and terrified of his own weakness.

Why are Christian men politically incorrect?

1. They feel personally disempowered in their lives and adopt what they perceive to be the vocabulary of power (politically incorrect speech) as a posture of "I can say whatever I want whenever I want, but only around people who are like me and agree with me and only about people who are less powerful than I am and unlikely to fight back." See also, cowardice.

2. Christian dudes refrain from challenging other Christian dudes in Christian Bro-centric environments.

Being politically incorrect is putting on a brave face for the lads--what with all the oppressive powers of feminism making it impossible to be a "real man," because God knows, merely having a penis is just about enough to get you locked up these days.

Church & Patriarchy

Speaking of power, perhaps the church tends to attract men who feel disempowered in other areas of life. The church, unlike other contexts, tends to place a premium on male leadership--even more progressive churches do this. So a man who is not a leader in any other part of his life might find himself an integral part of church leadership.

Of course this is speculative, but I would observationally argue that men who attend church might feel a greater sense of being victimized and disempowered in other parts of their lives, and so seek out greater involvement at a church that values them and their contributions. They might lack power politically, socially (be socially awkward, for example), economically (unemployed or underemployed), or romantically (perceive themselves as the "nice guy" that women always reject).

Just to reiterate: We are all dented cans. Male or female. White, Black, Asian or Hispanic. However, the sense of victimization that seems to come from the gap between being apparently privileged--you're white and male! Go you!--and the reality of working at Coffee Bean, relying on your parents for gas money, and asking women out only to be repeatedly rejected--feels somewhat specific to the demographic I am writing about.

Again speculatively, in this day and age for white men, I'm not sure if racism or politically incorrect language can be entirely separated from a personal sense of victimization.

Note: Playing the victim is a common sociopathic trope.

Clearly I am not saying that all men who say racist things are sociopathic (just the guy I dated).

But, I think that this sense of victimization dulls a person's empathy to any and all who are perceived as Other. After all, if you gain part of your sense of self from being a victim of society, why the hell would you want to share that power with someone else?

And what defines a sociopath? Lack of empathy. And that's not the kind of guy that I want to date.

So to conclude an overlong post: Racism bad. Racist guy bad. Racist Christian guy--the worst.

Have a great day.

Up next in the series, men who won't take "No" for an answer, or The Myth of Persistence.

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - Introduction

I love the miscellaneous sale section at Ralphs. Tucked between the dairy section and the packaged meats you can find nine dollar bottles of wine, congealed donuts, leftover Halloween decorations, six-day-old apple pies, Duck Dynasty costume castoffs, cartons of pedialyte, bruised apples, liver-spotted bananas, and Barbie bandaids.

Way, way in the back, hidden behind a few dubious boxes of laxative tea and 100 count bottles of aspirin, it sits.

Our friend, the dented can.

Back when I worked full-time at a book warehouse, I used to read a lot of books (more like skim, but who's judging). One of those books was a chick lit novel called The Big Love written by Sarah Dunn.

The twist in this particular novel is that the heroine was a lapsed evangelical Christian. And there was this one passage that stuck out to me, which I've excerpted at length below, that made me go Yes Yes I SAID YES:

Photo by labullets.blogspot.com

I should have known about Gil, of course. I should have known the way you know about a dented can. But this is the thing: everyone has been warned about dented cans, but surely not every dented can is bad, or they wouldn’t be allowed to sell them, right? Someone’s buying those dented cans. Someone’s taking them home and opening them up and examining the contents and then making a bet about whether or not the stuff inside is safe to eat. And let me tell you, when you’re twenty-five, and a virgin, and you refuse to date anybody but a Christian—and not just any Christian but a certain kind of Christian—your options are all dented cans. When Gil and I finally broke up, I took another look around the church basement, and I had the closest thing I’ve ever had to an actual vision. There sat Brian Berryman. Single. Thirty-two. An attorney. Crown prince of the church basement. So morally upright he didn’t believe in dating; he believed in praying. He’d been praying for a wife since he was sixteen. He’d drawn up a list of all the qualities he wanted her to possess, a list which he was continually revising, and then praying about, and then revising some more, and then informally circulating among the single women at the church. A woman of pure heart, the list would go. A gentle and quiet spirit. A submissive nature. Is this what you want in a husband? I heard a voice saying. Well, not an actual voice, but it was as clear as day. I realized that if I kept searching for husbands in church basements I was going to end up with a seriously dented can. [from The Big Love by Sarah Dunn, emphasis mine]

"So, what, Ms. Blogger, are you saying that all single Christian men are dented cans?"

Yes. Hell, I've dated a few of them.

No, but it sure feels like it sometimes, as if I'm walking by the sale section, scoping out the goods and thinking, "Oh please, Lord. Not that one."

When it comes to dating within Christian evangelical culture, it often feels as if you're screwed if you do, and screwed if you don't (or not screwed either way, now that I think about it).

That's the honesty part of this post--the hopelessness part. But this series (Yes! A series!) is not about hopelessness--it's about those qualities in single Christian guys that make them undateable.

I'm well aware that we are all dented cans. But perhaps a distinction can be made between the can of diced tomatoes sporting a few delightful and adorable indentations from being dropped on its head a few times and the can of sliced yellow peaches in a light syrup that gives you a fatal case of botulism.

Join us next time for a lighthearted take on:

Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Misogynist
Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Coward
Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Racist
Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - The Myth of Persistence 
Undateable: Why Single Christian Guys Are All Dented Cans - Entitlement