"This Doesn't Make Sense, But It Must Be Right"

Jasmine and Rajah look skeptical. Image source.

Recently Libby Anne has written a bunch of posts responding to some nonsense from Lori Alexander. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and probably more.) Lori Alexander is an extremely complementarian woman who believes all kinds of horrible misogynist things about how God wants women to submit to their husbands, and have sex whenever their husbands want, and not have jobs, and all women are bad at being leaders, and women's own desires and choices don't matter.

When I was an evangelical, I was complementarian, of course. Because I believed "that's what the bible says" and so of course all good Christians had to be complementarian. But I never took it as far as Lori Alexander does- believing it's BAD for women to have any kind of career at all, believing that women are supposed to have a ton of kids and don't get any say in the number of kids, and so on. I never heard Christian role models teaching that. And I never heard of Lori Alexander, back then.

So when I read Libby Anne's posts about whatever nonsense Alexander published on her blog, part of me is like "this isn't like my experience in evangelicalism at all- Lori Alexander is wayyyyy out there, let's just ignore her." But ... also, there's something about her that gets under my skin. Something about her that scares me because, if I had read her writing back when I was a good evangelical, I wouldn't have been able to recognize "this is wrong and so I shouldn't listen to her."

See, back then, there were some "wayyyy out there" Christians that of course I immediately recognized as "this person is clearly a crackpot, this is not how Christians are supposed to be, ewwww." Like Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps. But at the same time, I bought into Ken Ham's and Kent Hovind's stuff- even though I didn't have Christian role models in my life who told me I should. I just found it on my own, and their language and ideology was sufficiently similar to what I had been taught in church- even if the actual content wasn't.

And Lori Alexander, wow the language she uses is EXACTLY the evangelicalese that I always heard in church. If I had read her stuff back then, first of all I would have been very confused, because her ideas didn't fit with other things I had been taught in church. (For example, this post where she seems to think there's something *bad* about a woman not getting married until age 54 because she was "waiting on God's best." The purity culture I followed back then very much believed "God has picked your future spouse for you, and God has a plan to get you together, and hey maybe that plan is you don't meet them until you are 54, *shrug* well that's the way it is, you're going to be single until 54, nothing you can do about it, just trust God.") But even though I would have been extremely confused, I wouldn't have outright rejected it. I wouldn't have said "oh, then Alexander must be wrong about this." I would have felt like "well she is a good Christian role model and therefore this is true, but the problem is my inability to understand how it fits in."

So. That's why it creeps me out, to read her writing.

But here's the thing: This issue about "I have trouble rejecting a really bad idea if it's presented in a similar way to things I already agree with" isn't just about evangelicalism. I see some ways that I still have that problem now. I read a LOT of things, and sometimes I find myself reading something from an apparently "good feminist" source that's "on our side" and so I assume they must be right, even though I can't really make sense of what they're saying. 

Oh dear.

And now that I'm thinking about it more, doesn't everyone have this problem? You hear some teaching, and it *seems* like it's supposed to be something you should agree with, but it doesn't make sense to you. But you can't just reject it, because you don't believe yourself to be qualified to make that kind of judgment- maybe because "the heart is sinful, we must 'lean not on our own understanding'" or because "you have to believe marginalized people when they talk about their own experiences." And you can't ask honest questions to help you understand, either because "this is what the bible clearly says" or because "it's not people of color's job to do emotional labor and educate white people about this."

Sooooo I'm not sure how to solve this problem. The best I can come up with is it should be okay for people to say "I'm not sure I agree with this, because it doesn't make sense to me, but if you have any resources for learning more about it I would be interested." At the same time, though, this isn't a perfect answer... I'm thinking of pastors who get criticized for trying to stay in some kind of "middle ground" on the issue of LGBTQ inclusion- trying to stay in that "middle ground" forever and never take a stand. And I agree with that criticism. There's a point where saying "I am still learning about this, so don't be mad at me for holding the wrong opinion about it" starts to sound dishonest... you're not *actually* doing the work to learn about it. But there's no reliable way to know if people are being honest about that or not. So, this isn't a perfect solution.

All right so here we are. I thought I was writing a post about how evangelicalism didn't give me the tools to realize I shouldn't listen to Lori Alexander, but then I realized I've seen that same problem in the progressive/feminist community that I'm now a part of. And there are things we can do to address and minimize this problem, but I don't think it's actually solvable.