Not everyone understands the culture behind the Southern, Conservative Christian culture that lies deep in the roots of our ancestors and our congregations. It has a long history of mass conversions, revivals, political parties that deeply identify with fulfilling those Christian ideals and fighting against Satan's overtake of America; converting our homeland from what my parents' generation once knew to this "new fangled" idea of diversity and peace and homosexuality.
The people of the Southern Culture are proud of these roots. They dig deep into the lives of the families they support and the friends they choose. They affect the schools their kids grow up in, the churches where they all attend Youth Group and the boys their girls date. I know from personal experience- this was my childhood and these were my adolescent years. Over time, however, there began a slow, creeping fear that would rear its head into reality: this is highly, widely spread and imminently dangerous.
I will begin by saying that not all Christians are bad people and not all Southerners are Christians. I am specifically pointing out a culture; a type of people that have found something in common and believe it so strongly that their children and their children's children's souls are at stake. I was one of these children. I grew up in that Southern Christian culture. I was told to believe in God and Jesus and that if I didn't, my soul was in danger of Hell. I was told that anyone who didn't believe this either was also going to Hell. Everything in our lives revolved around this belief. Church every Sunday, Youth Group, school. No sex before marriage. Homosexuality is a grave sin. George Bush is our Christian president who will get this country back to its Reagan-like, God-fearing track it belongs on. Fox News was my source for current events. My pastor was my source for advice. My parents were my source for direction. The question was, "Where was my source for freedom"?
The idea of isolation is how this culture runs its business and its marketing tactics so well. The churches in America run a brilliant marketing scheme: that everyone who is saved will go to Heaven. Give us your money, support us, or your soul is in danger of Hell. Tell us your deepest, darkest secrets, then repent as we use you to gain leverage to gain a large body of members. Conduct your behavior in such a way that keeps you from questioning anyone. Just believe everything we tell you under the guise of "faith". Have "faith" that even though you don't understand it, don't question it, because you don't understand the mind of God. Are you beginning to see the danger yet?
Children are isolated into groups where nothing is questioned by anyone because everyone believes the same things. Your church leaders are your source for that guidance and anyone who questions it is on a "bad path". The danger is the brainwashing and ideology that sinks its roots so deeply, they are made to believe that these "natural born sinners'" souls are at stake. The people they become friends with at school who don't think or believe like they do may go to Hell and you must convert them if you want to see your friends for the rest of eternity in Heaven!
It is also a matter of control. If you can control a large population of people into thinking what you want them to think; doing what you want them to do; you have gained the ultimate power over them by making them believe it's God's will. That was what happened to me. I was controlled. I was manipulated. My parents always told me they "just wanted the best for me" and "had my best intentions at heart". It took me getting kicked out of their house while I was in college to realize that they didn't want my best interests, they wanted theirs. They wanted to pull support and their already conditional love from me because I wasn't behaving as the person they raised me to be. I was not identifying with this Culture. I did not want to marry a man I didn't love and who parroted the ideologies of my parents. I questioned my pastors and my leaders at church to be met with reprimand. I used to be afraid, but not anymore. Their justification for their lack of love for this daughter they did not understand was that they could not abide by someone who's behavior did not reflect their views. See the condition here? They couldn't love their own daughter for who she was because they believed so strongly in the Southern Culture. We see this happen all of the time in the political sphere: a member of the Republican party in Congress has a son who comes out as gay to his family. He is isolated and shunned or loved and accepted. The ones who love and accept him love their sons. The ones who isolate and shun them are protecting their own souls.
So how do we convince these people that they are the victims of a time-honored marketing scheme? We don't. I realized at 24 that I don't have to be afraid anymore. That I can love my parents at arms' length. That I can be true to myself and not be worried about being reprimanded at a country club party for saying the "F-word" because "it's not what nice, Southern women do". My dad's response was, "Why can't you just be more feminine?" I responded, "So, it's O.K. for you to say it around your friends, but when me or another woman says it, it's improper?" His response was, "Yes".
The danger is being sucked in. It doesn't happen obviously or quickly, but slow and creeping. People begin to criticize you for speaking out against your family. They tell you that you should just love them and that it isn't worth it. What they fail to ask is do you love yourself enough to stand against what will ultimately bring you down and cause you to lose your inner voice, or do you love them from a distance and accept that they may not change, but they way you change is how you become true to yourself? I choose to do both, but I have found my true freedom from the Southern Culture and will fight it every step of the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment