one pharisee, coming right up: reflections on war-torn sudan
April 11th, 2007
“No,” I assured her. “No, it’s not the first time.”
I didn’t explain that I had been reading news magazines and online accounts of the situation in the Sudan for years; it didn’t matter because I didn’t intend to explain away my tears. Sometimes weeping is the only response.
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It was a Thursday evening, and we had just finished watching “The Invisible Children,” a powerful documentary detailing the hell the Sudanese people are facing at the hands of rebel forces in a war-torn country. The documentary particularly focuses on the thousands of Sudanese children forced to flee their homes every night to seek refuge and shelter in the cities out of fear of being captured and enslaved by rebel forces — enslaved into a life of calculated killing and terror, brainwashed soldiers-in-training.
As the images flashed upon the screen and the stories were told, my response was an emotional, broken response. As I sat there, with tears streaming down my face, I thought to myself, “Christen, pull yourself together.” Thirty college students surrounded me, thirty students who will be, in part, my students next year when I come on full-time staff with Intervarsity, and here I was, sobbing. It was an uncomfortable few minutes as I wrestled with what my response should be; students looked at me out of the corners of their eyes, unsure of what to do. I am one of the ones who is supposed to be strong, and yet I found myself with tears streaming down my face. My heart, broken. Answers, I had none. Except the plea, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus” and the prayer, “Have mercy, Lord.”
And I couldn’t help but question how many times are we faced with the uncomfortable fact that we have been born into privilege; how many times have I genuinely faced the hard, cold fact that for the first twenty-three years of my life, I lived in the third richest county of the United States? I am one of the “rich” Jesus talks about who will have more trouble entering into heaven than a camel will have entering in through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). Yikes. I wish Jesus had never said that. It’s not something I want to deal with. I remember a conversation with my father during a car ride years ago; he pointed out that we were the “rich” ones Jesus was speaking about in that passage. I remember thinking to myself, “What in the world are you talking about, Dad? We’re not rich; our couches have stuffing coming out of them, we have duct tape on our stairs, we drive old cars…” but the older I become, the more I realize my father in his wisdom knew something I didn’t.
Compared to the rest of the world, I am faced with extreme richness and opportunity, and here I am, talking about trying to “make ends meet” in the struggling Michigan economy while the children of the Sudan are living a literal hell. And what provokes me is that despite their circumstances, they are still both praising Jesus and displaying great joy and hope. I should be ashamed of myself for ever complaining about anything or being tempted to complain. Period. I confess that I have been jealous of those around me who aren’t struggling financially; who by their financial status make me feel poor and who give me the “excuse” to feel self-righteous because of the way I choose to spend my finances. I think “Well, God, you’re pretty lucky to have me because I’m frugal and I manage your money well.” What a dreadful disease pride is, allowing us to rank ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, against those around us. And then I am confronted with the documentary “The Invisible Children” and I am immediately brought to my knees in repentance for being a Pharisee and priding myself on how I am not materialistic.
And I sit there, sobbing, because the reality is that the tears streaming down my face expose the realization that I could be doing so much more. As I watched those beautiful children, scarred — emotionally and physically — praising our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, with joy, hope, and resilience etched upon their faces, I was forced to examine my own heart; if I faced the same circumstances, would I have the same response, and furthermore, with the privilege and power that I do have, what is my response to their plight and the plight of so many others around the world?
It’s one thing to have empathy for another, and empathy is certainly one of the first steps, but the true question we should be asking ourselves is, what do you do with that empathy?
So I ask you: in light of this broken, messed-up world, with nations being torn apart by war, with men and women committing atrocities, with children growing up with delinquent or absent parents, with disease ravishing bodies, with the poors’ needs not being taken care of, what are you doing? What is your emotional response? What is your physical response? Or would you rather not think about it today and deal with it tomorrow?
Some of these children will not have a tomorrow.
- Christen Patterson
April 2007
degrees of rights
April 11th, 2006
There’s no denying that a woman has rights, but since when did we grant a right-to-choose over a right-to-life?
With the recent Supreme Court appointments of Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts, it looks like the right-to-life of an unborn child will trump the right-to-convenience of a mother and be protected at the federal level, and rightly so.
We can only hope as a nation that the genocide that 1973’s Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision sanctioned will be undermined.
Yes, a woman has rights. And a woman’s rights are important. No one is denying that. But amidst all the clamor and arguments surrounding the national abortion debate, rarely do you hear about the unborn child’s right-to-life trumping a mother’s right-to-convenience. The issue isn’t whether a woman has a right to choose; the issue is whose rights trump another.
Life always trumps convenience and preference. Abortion-on-demand has to go. We have no authority to protest against the war in Iraq taking innocent lives when we turn a blind eye to the mass genocide happening in our country. Over 43 million abortions have occurred since the practice was legalized.
If we don’t speak out against abortion, we have, in effect, just as much moral responsibility as those in Nazi Germany who refused to speak out against Hitler. Are we willing to bear 43 more million Americans’ blood on our hands?
can women have it all?
March 25th, 2006
Women can’t have it all. We’ve been sold a lie that we can effectively juggle both family and career, and our mothers bought it, hook, line and sinker. However, today’s woman knows better.
In the wake of Betty Freidan’s death on February 4, unanswered questions remain — questions highlighted by Freidan’s activism in the 1970’s that started what many call the second wave of feminism, questions about women’s role in society and what it means to be a woman, questions that every woman has to face in today’s fast-paced, post-feminist world.
Society is still reeling from the effects of the modern feminist movement propelled by Freidan’s book The Feminine Mystique. While we can thank Freidan and other activists for many of the freedoms we enjoy today as women, we should also be aware that many of Freidan’s liberating ideologies are not so liberating after-all. Presupposing the assumption that women who are homemakers, wives, and mothers are somehow not all that they can be, the underlying message has hurt a generation of children and has resulted in a generation of stressed, burned-out mothers trying to juggle family and career.
Women should have the choice to pursue a career or to stay at home with their kids; but the feminism propagated by Freidan failed to acknowledge that some women want to be stay-at-home moms. To deny the value of a woman’s choice misses the whole point of the feminist movement – to give women the freedom to choose and be proud of their choices.
Thus, in the spirit of “choice,” women find themselves today on the opposite end of the pendulum from their mothers in the 1950’s; instead of being expected to be a homemaker and raise children, women are now expected to be super-moms while simultaneously pursuing careers.
Yes, many advancements have been achieved in the name of egalitarianism – the push for equal pay, gender-neutral want ads, the ability to pursue a career, etc. – but there is still very little “choice” for a woman who chooses to have a family; she is either looked down upon by society if she chooses to forgo working outside the home or she is obligated to try to be “super-mom” while juggling a career in a working world that is not “mom-friendly.”
Today’s women are realizing the reality of which they were never forewarned — that they must either pledge their allegiance to a career or a family but that they cannot successfully do both without sacrificing their quality of life and their well-being, not to mention their family’s.
Is it possible to work fulltime and raise well-balanced, healthy children who are rooted in love? Yes. But it is very difficult, and usually, by choosing to do so, a woman sacrifices her career, for her attention is necessarily divided. Today’s woman cannot pursue the corporate ladder full tilt while being fully involved in her children’s lives. To believe she can is to buy into the lie and will only leave her unsatisfied when she realizes she is not able to give either domain her full attention.
Thus in the wake of a generation of children who grew up with both parents working, the next generation of women are realizing that the system isn’t working. Exhausted, harried, overwhelmed — women are now bucking the status quo and are, in fact, demanding true choice — the choice to pursue a career or the choice to be a mother without having to give justification for not working “outside the home.”
Freidan, in an attempt to free women, effectively tightened their chains, replacing one set with another. How did we so easily swing from one end of the spectrum to the other and miss the point of choice?
By finally realizing the lies surrounding Freidan-feminism, we, as women, can confidentially assert our right to choose – to either pursue careers or to pursue being mothers and not have to stretch ourselves thin trying to do both because society dictates that we must.