Respect as Women

[ILG]

After reading a number of posts by people who were in the church at a young age and felt that there was less respect for women and more pressure to avoid fornication involved, it got me to thinking. I had a dream back when. I believed in the dream. I loved the dream. Right after I was saved, and had a truly miraculous conversion, I was full of God, love and hope. I transferred all this hope into what I was taught. I would like to write up the standards that were taught, what I believed about them and what I came to believe the church actually taught...which was different than what I actually believed. These differences were so pronounced, they caused me to leave the church, believing the whole movement was toxic.

Make-up:
What I believed the teaching represented:
1. I was beautiful just the way I was.
2. I did not need to be any more than just what I was and who I was and I did not need to try and please men with my looks the way the media teaches.
3. The men in the church believed and respected this.
4. I was free and accepted as a woman rather than a sex object for men to behold.

What the church seems to have taught in reality:
1. Women who wear make-up are whores who want sex.
2. Women who wear make-up are lost.
3. Women who wear make-up are spiritual Jezebels wanting to seduce men.
4. If you wear make-up, ever, for any reason, you are backslid and will be cast into outer darkness.

I was so confused by this. What I saw as a beautiful message became twisted into something so ugly. If the church taught and believed what I had initially thought, only compassion would be shown to those who stray, there would be no need for hell-fire and Jezebel-harlot teachings. The first set of teachings are beautiful. The second set are so twisted to be so ugly, and, I believe, an abomination to God.

Pants on Women
What I originally thought and believed:
1. Being a woman is special and should be respected.
2. I don't have to try and be like a man because there was a special place for me in this world and that place mattered and I did not have to be ashamed of it.
3. Feeling feminine, rather than masculine, for women is good. You don't have to run the rat race, burn your bra, and try to be tough. You can be soft, feminine you.
4. You can be respected for who you are and what you are and wearing a dress represents this in a traditional way, reminding yourself and others that being a woman is important and good.

What the church ends up teaching instead:
1. Women who wear pants are an abomination to God.
2. Women who wear pants promote homosexuality (took right out of a book by DK Bernard) because they blur the sex lines.
3. Women who wear pants are backslid and God-haters.
4. Women who wear pants want to be men.

Again, if the church was confident in it's stance and actually believed the first set rather than the second, you would see only compassion towards people who are different than they are. Instead, there is a sheer ugliness and vitriol towards those who are different than them, much like the Westboro Baptist Church is to homosexuals. You may not believe homosexuality is right, but in the Westboro church, there is a sick vitriol towards them. I would rather hang around with some homosexuals than I would the Westboro church.

Jewelry
What I believed:
1. I am beautiful just as I am. I am a jewel of God.
2. Jewelry can be about status. Status is not important. We are all important as individuals no matter how much money we have.
3. We should not flaunt ourselves.

What the church taught:
1. Status means a lot. Wear any jewelry that you can, like wedding rings, tie tacks, hair doo-thingy's etc. but NOT necklaces or you will get into trouble.

Costly array:
What I believed:
1. Same as jewelry. We should not flaunt ourselves. We are important AS A PERSON, not for what we wear.

Church:
1. Not addressed. Please, by all means, wear as expensive clothes as you can, especially at general conference, to show off.

Hair,
What I believed:
1. Long hair was, again, a feminine attribute, that was something that reminded women that we are special for who we are.
2. Long hair was a sign of who I was in the order of God, something I was not ashamed of.

Church:
1. If you trim your hair a teeny bit, you are going to hell.
2. Your uncut hair mans you are second to your husband and he's over you. If you cut your hair, the angels will wreak havoc and your husband could have an affair and that would be your fault. (Have you read some of Ruth Reider's stuff??)

Again, when I entered the church, I only saw the good of these things and did so for 16 years. My internal beliefs and relationship with God held onto these things and lifted me up. But the beliefs of the church, the negativity, the toxicity was a constant wearing and I was also a Pharisee in the things I said because I parroted the party lines but did not know how to express what was in my heart and what I truly believed.

Now, I am free to believe what I believe without toxicity. I don't attend church. I have great fear of my beautiful beliefs being sullied by some church's dogma. My dreams have been shattered. However, slowly, rising up out of the dust, these broken pieces are being put back together. I don't know how it will end. I don't know what I will do or where I will go. But, going on 9 years after leaving, I am finally starting to feel myself again sometimes. I get wistful as I have off and on over these past years. Spiritually, I don't know who I am or where I am going. That is so different from what I used to know. But, I know WHO I am kept by. That's really all that matters to me.

Comments welcome.