I am a big fan of best selling author Dr. Brene Brown. She studies shame and vulnerability and her insights have been more practical and helpful to real life then anything I ever received from fundamentalist Christianity. At the heart of her message is that emotions and feelings must be acknowledged and are valid. This is a world apart from the typical Christian message of bottling up your emotions.
In reading one of her latest books, “Rising Strong” these passages jumped out to me in how they relate to godly women.
I am not familiar with the Harry Potter series, but based on this description it seems this is exactly the type of characteristics that make up godly women (at least in how I define them on this blog). They look so perfect and sweet on the outside. Their blogs are adorned with feminine, cutesy imagery. They talk in a demure voice and knows just how to say certain things in a proper way, but meanwhile is a fan of torturing spanking children.
The obsession with femininity (cutesy, girly stuff) seems to be what is present when there is a lack of “warmth and charity”. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being feminine but some women turn it into the idol of all idols. They hide behind their femininity and innocent sounding voice so that the general public doesn’t know what they are really up to behind the scenes.
How many times have we seen godly women boast to an extreme about how awesome everything is (“I am so blessed”, “#blessed”) and claim that if you are in a negative mood you can simply choose to be positive? I’ve often believe these sorts of statements are indeed masks for something. No one is happy, happy all the time. We all have our struggles, depressions, and moments of anger. The difference though between a godly woman and and an authentic person is one denies and bottles up those emotions and the other acknowledges them, brings them to light, and lets them go.
In my circle of friends, I want to be around those who acknowledge their emotions, who aren’t ticking time bombs of positivity. I’ve theorized why they put up this mask of super happiness all the time is because of the pressure to be that walking glossy marketing ad for Christianity. If they want to win others over to the faith, they have to make it look like their faith is the ultimate happy pill. Truth is, I don’t believe any religion can take away struggles, pain, and negative emotions. These are essential to fully living the human experience. Dr. Brown often quotes “lean into discomfort”. Discomfort is not something to run from, not something to necessarily pray away or bottle up.
Godly women also try to make everything certain, everything black and white. In doing so, they block themselves of truly experiencing life.
Let’s switch over to the other analogy Dr. Brown mentions, “Unikitty”. This too is very spot on. People who are too “sunshine and lollipops” are often wolves in sheep’s clothing. While Christians are called to be “the light”, too much light is blinding and can obscure the truth from the Christian message.
Another analogy of my own is from the movie “Men in Black”. Do you remember this scene where Will Smith has to correctly shoot the alien? There are obvious aliens all around but he chooses to shoot an innocent looking school girl.
He explains the girl was too young, out of place and reading way too advanced books for her age. Of course, based on the rest of the movie, he was right. The real and often worst aliens weren’t those who looked like aliens, but those who took on the human identity (mask). It is similar to the Unikitty.
If godly women, were “always learning” as they claim to be, they would consider the work of Dr. Brown, but I know without a doubt she would quickly be labeled “ungodly, worldly and not biblical”, so therefore nothing can of course be learned from her.
Since my readers are open to learning, briefly I will share the three principles of “Rising Strong”. The book teaches you how to rise after a fall or set back in your life. There are three steps: 1. Reckon with out emotions and get curious about what you are feeling; 2. Rumble with our stories and come to terms with them and 3. Use this practice every day so that it Revolutionizes your life.
Reckoning with emotions is just a skill set godly women stubbornly insist not to acquire. Rather, they go to great lengths to deny emotions and make them out to be evil things that can’t be trusted. I am so incredibly grateful that I got my head out of the godly sand and have opened my mind to other ideas. I am now on a path of true growth and healing, or reckoning and rumbling with my past.
Things Godly Women Say 