Self-Reliance Versus Charity

For the past few months, I've been working as a freelance writer for a food storage company. It's been a completely different experience for me - I've always found emergency preparedness and food storage boring before. Now, I actually find it quite interesting.

Frequently, I run into resources that are affiliated with the Church. The books I read are mainly written by authors living in Utah, website I come across are made by members, etc. I don't think you could be a prepper or survivalist without being aware of the Church's involvement with emergency preparedness.

It really shows this attitude that members of the Church have. Because the Church has constantly pushed emergency preparedness, members develop a deep appreciation for self-reliance. And I can understand that - I think it'd be awesome to grow my own food, be prepared for any type of emergency, have parts of my house run on solar power, grown-up stuff like that. Those are goals I want to achieve, for the sake of saving money, being environmentally friendly, convenience, and as activities that will make me feel good about myself. As soon as my husband and I are in the phase of home-ownership, that is.

You can also see how the self-reliance attitude enters in to all parts of members' lives. I always marvel at how many Latter-day Saints can be so conservative in their political beliefs when it seems like liberalism falls more in line with the charity of Jesus Christ. Of course, socially, stances on abortion and gay marriage are similar between LDS doctrine and conservatism. But I'm thinking more like socialized healthcare - aren't we supposed to be taking care of our neighbors without judgement? Of course, that is a different issue I don't want to get into now.

I just believe that the attitude of self-reliance and the attitude of constant charity clash. Members are so proud of self-reliance that they stop being charitable indiscriminately. A problem arrises when self-reliance becomes so important to members that they reject receiving or giving outside help in any areas of their lives. They start to decide that one group or person does not deserve their help or charity because they are homeless, they are immigrants, they have made poor life decisions, or they wear pajamas and eat McDonald's all of the time.

The attitude of self-reliance should not be one that interferes with Jesus's ultimate commandment, which is to love one another. When Christ says in Matthew 6:3

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

I have always interpreted that to mean that you must give indiscriminately. I grew up hearing the excuses of why you should not give to homeless beggars or panhandlers because they'll use the money for drugs or booze, or because they should be trying to find a job instead of wasting their time begging. I've heard that you should try to buy them a sandwich instead of giving pocket change (which isn't terrible, and probably is the option that most people feel comfortable with, including myself). But Jesus never said "only give to the people who you know will use it the way you want them to use it." He never had caveats. In fact, He's a big proponent of not judging anyone, remember? He only said give!

So to me, self-reliance means that you must have yourself and your family fully taken care of before you can fully give indiscriminately. Self-reliance means not making yourself someone in need of charity while you are trying to give charity yourself. It does not mean holding out or judging others.  

And, absolutely, self-reliance is not more important than charity.

Personal Feminist reading of scriptures

Wow, I haven't posted anything in a long time. Sorry about that!

I decided to take the Women in the Scriptures challenge (outlined here by another blogger). I'm really enjoying it so far, and learning a lot. I would recommend doing this for any religious person, especially women. I feel like there's much we could learn from women in the scriptures, but common Sunday School lessons just pass over them in favor of the easier-to-interpret male stories.

The Importance of a Feminist Reading of Scriptures
Recently, I found a blog that used The Avengers as a way to introduce Book of Mormon heroes to little boys in an FHE lesson. While his goal was admirable (using something his sons already enjoyed to bring a modern and easier-to-relate-to twist to ancient scriptures), I disliked his end result. He included all of the male Avengers and Loki, but did not include Black Widow/Natasha or Nick Fury. You could excuse this by saying that the maker of this lesson didn't want to include Nick Fury because finding a colored character in the Book of Mormon would be racist. But I think it is more troubling to exclude both Nick Fury and Black Widow/Natasha because they have been "othered." By not bothering to find someone who fit into his analogy, even someone who is assumed to be white for Nick Fury, we are not acknowledging the white (assumed white, because the characters in the Book of Mormon were Middle Eastern in descent, but no one seems to remember that) male privilege that exists in Christianity.

And this made me very sad. The man didn't even recognize the implications of what he had done. But instead of attacking this man for racism and sexism, let's think about what was left out. Why was it not important to this man, and many others, to find a female religious example for his sons? Does he not think that his sons can have female role models? Why do we not even recognize the importance of having female spiritual role models for our daughters, let alone our sons?

The Male Gaze
"The Male Gaze" is a term coined by Laura Mulvey in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," an essay that I absolutely love. Basically, the male gaze refers to the bias that men have as narrators. You can see this in different instances in scriptures when women aren't named, women are passive, female characters are depicted as seductresses who lead righteous men into temptation, etc. (I'm really not enough of an expert on feminism or scriptures to name every time when you can see the male gaze.)

As a former English major, I absolutely believe in the power of personal interpretation of a text. Basically, this means that the author's original intent when he/she wrote the text is unimportant. What matters more is what it means to you. There's no denying that somewhere in the Old Testament it says "wives, submit to your husbands." We can assume that the author literally meant for a patriarchal society where the "weaker sex" was controlled by the men with authority from God. But we do not have to assume that God meant that. We can assume that that exact phrase is part of the male gaze and the authorial bias, and not inspiration from divinity.

How to Do It
Characters may exert sexism within the Bible and Book of Mormon, and there's nothing we can do to change the actions of those ancient characters. But what about the narrator? Do we have to accept it when the narrator uses feminine derogatory terms, such as "the whore of all the earth," to describe evil?

I believe we don't. I think it is obvious that not every scripture is inspired by God, and that we can pick and choose meanings. Yes, this is taking liberties; English majors have to have "evidence," have to back up their different interpretations. But when it comes to spiritual matters, we are invited to find evidence through prayer, personal revelation, and personal impressions.

I'll give you an example of what I mean from my personal study and the Women in the Scriptures challenge. When I began to read Genesis, I decided to focus on Eve, especially Eve as a woman. Everything kind of goes okay until you get to chapter 3, where it says

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee (16).

Obviously, I dislike the idea of Adam ruling over Eve. But I decided what it meant is that Eve's relationship with Adam will be one of the most important she has. She wants to see him happy, healthy, etc. His needs will always be in the back of her mind, particularly when she makes big decisions. Adam does the same for her - at least, this is how I want my modern-day relationship to be. It does not literally mean "rule over," to me, so much as "preoccupied by."

I hope I'm explaining this okay. Either way, I believe it is up to you to decide what these verses mean. You do not have to take them the way the author meant.