Why Do You Use Those Hash Tags With Your Tweets?
I actually had someone Tweet this question at me.
I posted a link to some news story about a man who was arrested for raping a kid or something of that nature. The man in the story I tweeted, if I recall right, was married and a father.
Someone asked me on social media,
‘What do your tags, which include “FamilyValues, Complementarianism, Christianity, Fatherhood, etc, have to do with this news story you tweeted?”
For all I know, the guy in the story I tweeted was NOT a Christian.
It’s quite possible the guy in the story was an atheist, for instance. (I usually read or at least skim the links I tweet, but sometimes, I just go by the headline.)
Here’s why I include certain tags:
If I see a news story about a mother or father who raped their own kid or beat their kid to death or what have you, I am using such news stories as examples that belie many conservative Christian myths, assumptions, and stereotypes.
If you read my blog on a regular basis, you would ALREADY make this connection. I should not have to explain this to people on Twitter. I find it annoying that some people cannot put two and two together and figure this out.
Many conservative, evangelical, reformed, Southern Baptist, and fundamentalist Christians hold to many false, un-biblical, teachings and assumptions, such as (but not limited to):
- Marriage is necessary to make a person a “true” adult. Marriage is necessary to make a person godly, loving, ethical, and non-self absorbed.
- God prefers that most adults be married to being single. God’s preference or design is that most people marry and those who don’t are “gifted” with singleness, and the “gifted ones” are going to be rare, and they are going to LOVE being single over a lifetime.
- Adult singles are immature, lazy, losers, flawed and/or are all sexual horn-dogs who are highly promiscuous, singles sleep with dozens of different people per day. But all married couples are sexually pure; married couples never use porn, visit prostitutes, fondle children, sexually abuse their own spouse, or have affairs
- Parenthood is necessary to make a person a “true” adult. Parenthood is necessary to make a person godly, loving, ethical, and non-self absorbed. God prefers adults to be parents, not childless or child-free.
- Christians who adhere to gender complementarianism not only assume the above points are true, but they feel that complementarianism is the nation’s answer to restoring idyllic family life or clean-cut values to the United States:
If only all women would stop demanding being treated fairly in work, home, and school, and be subservient little doormats to all men, crime and divorce rates in America would magically be reduced;
God prefers 1950s, American secular ideals (as shown in sit coms of the era) of marriage, family, and culture to any other standard - Christians have turned “Family Values” into an idol.
They assume that if the nation returns to “Family Values” (a concept that is not in the Bible, but they assume it is), that the United States would turn into a Wholesome, smut free, “Kum-Bah-Yah” Paradise.
Many Christians assume that “The Family” is the one, or only, “bedrock” of a culture (even though the Bible does not teach this), so if only everyone would marry by the time they are 25 years old, have three kids apiece, with the wife being a Stay At Home Mother, all problems in society would be resolved (an idea which is foreign to the Bible, which says Jesus is the cure for people, not marriage and natalism).
If you’re going to insist that it takes Family Values, Nuclear Families, Parenthood, Marriage, etc, to clean up culture, to make people godly, law-abiding, caring, altruistic, etc, (and you swear up and down that God supports that view and that it’s “in the Bible”)….
…then I am going to Tweet about every example I can find of “Nuclear Families” or wives, husbands, fathers, and mothers, who are arrested for beating their own kids to death, committing adultery on each other, or I will Tweet about “Greedy Marriage” studies, which show that married couples are MORE SELFISH than single adults.
I am going to use real- life examples taken from the news showing how being in a Nuclear Family, or creating one, does not make a family or a person necessarily any better, law abiding, mature, loved, or godly than not being in one or not having one.
I am going to use real- life examples taken from the news showing how being a mother or father does not make a person necessarily any better, law abiding, mature, or godly than a person who is infertile, childless, or who is child-free (chooses not to have children).
Do not sit there as a Christian and tell me that Nuclear Families are a God-designed way of keeping society together when every other day I see news stories of Nuclear Families neglecting or beating each other.
Do not sit there as a Christian and tell me that motherhood is necessary to make women more godly and loving, or that it’s God’s only or primary purpose for all to most of the female sex….
…Do not sit there as a Christian and tell me that women who do NOT have children, whether via due choice or circumstance, are monsters for not being maternal, when I have Tweeted and blogged about countless news items of mothers who sell their own biological daughters to adult men for sex to pay for their drug habits (view such examples in (Link): this post).
Do not sit there and tell me as a Christian that God or the Bible insists that all to most men marry and pro-create, because “obviously,” married fathers are more loving, sweet, responsible, and godly than their male counterparts who never marry or never have a kid, whether by choice or by circumstance – and then tell me that men who are single are all “losers” (see this post, and this post).
So, the next time you see me tweet a disturbing headline such as:
“Married Father of Four Arrested For Selling His Own Sons As Sex Toys For Profit or Kicks”
Followed by the hash tags: “Christianity, Family Values, Focus on the Family, Childfree, Childless, Parenthood, Bible, Natalism, Fatherhood” etc, get a clue.
I think it’s obvious:
Your Christian propaganda which assumes or maintains that being married, having children, having nuclear families, etc, is biblical, true, and necessary for adults to be decent people, or are cures for societal problems, is demonstrated to be FALSE just by pointing to real-life news stories.
The Bible itself does not teach that families are a building block of culture, that marriage or parenthood heal society. It says nothing of the kind. Those are assumptions that Christians read into the text.
Jesus actually said who ever loves their biological family more than him is not worthy to be his follower.
Jesus said a man’s problem is sin from his heart and that he, Jesus, is the solution to that- Jesus did not say a man’s problem is that a man is single and childless and the cure for a man or a nation is marriage and natalism or “Family Values” or forming “Nuclear Families” or having G-rated movies.
Related Posts:
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): Do Married Couples Slight Their Family Members as Well as Their Friends? / “Greedy Marriages”
(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t, by John B. Carpenter, CP Guest Contributor
(Link): Please Stop Shaming Me for Being Single by J. Vadnal
(Link): Myths About Never Married Adults Over Age 40
(Link): ‘Why Are You Single’ Lists That Do Not Pathologize Singles by Bella DePaulo
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