minoanmiss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
minoanmiss) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
agonyaunt2020-02-27 12:33 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2020-02-27 12:33 pm
Entry tags:
Dear Prudence: Help! I Want to Support My Friend—but She’s a Witch Who Tears Down My Christian Faith
Q. Can’t support a pagan friend: I’m a thirtysomething who lives in a midsize West Coast city with very liberal sensibilities that I share. There’s a reason I moved here! I am also a Christian who goes to a mainstream Protestant church. I’ve never seen much disconnect between the two and I have many friends of other faiths, primarily Muslim and Jewish, whose religious functions I sometimes attend, like a wedding or a child’s entry into life or their religion. I value getting to experience these things with my friends and learning more about them, their religions, and the world. I grew up poor in the South but was lucky that we were always clean, well-fed, and warm. A good friend who lived in my neighborhood could not say the same and her unfortunate start in life has affected her ability to thrive as an adult. She is divorced from an abusive husband, in recovery for alcoholism, and trying to support two children with little help from her ex and often active hindrance from her dysfunctional family. Health issues make it hard for her to work, and poverty gets in the way of her work as well, as she sometimes can’t afford a uniform she needs or fix her car to get to work, and has been fired from one position because of her bad teeth that are a result of years of not having money to care for them. I have a lot of sympathy for her and her children.
She has written a few children’s books about her faith and has set up a small independent internet business to offer services connected with her belief system. I would love to support her, but she is pagan/Wiccan. This isn’t exactly a problem, as I don’t think it’s immoral. I just don’t want a children’s book on spells or to spend money on a tarot reading. My old friend spends a lot of time online talking about things like her “marriage” to a Norse deity that just make me roll my eyes in a way I know I should be ashamed about. I could probably get over my aversion to this and at least donate to her nonreligious crowdsourcing page that is just asking for money for utilities and food for her kids, but she also spends a lot of time online talking about how awful Christians are. Just Christians. While I know I’m not fully supportive of her faith, at least I know it’s bad of me to judge her on hers. I would never publicly demean her or her religion, much less do it several times a week. I feel so bad for her and would like to help, but every time I get close to donating, I just think about how much she hates people of my faith. Should I donate anyway?
A: I imagine at least part of the reason you’d never speak angrily or demeaningly about Wiccans or pagans in public is because Wiccans and pagans, as a group, do not wield a disproportionate amount of social or political power in the United States, whereas non-Christians in this country (particularly people who were raised Christian) don’t always get to choose how or when or on what grounds they experience Christianity. That doesn’t mean you’re obligated to listen to her vent or that you should apologize for your own faith, but it might prove a helpful corrective when you’re tempted to compare your respective situations. It doesn’t sound like she’s trying to strong-arm you into debating when you get together in person, so if your main problem is how she conducts herself online, I’d encourage you to mute her posts on social media so you don’t have to read them. And you certainly don’t have to buy books you won’t read or tarot readings that don’t interest you! She sounds like a person who’s speaking from a great deal of pain. That doesn’t mean she’s perfect or justified in everything she says or does; if she speaks rudely to you or you’d like to register an objection to something she says, you are absolutely within your rights to do so as a friend. But it is a useful and important context, I think. Look for opportunities to be gracious and patient with her.
As to whether you should donate, you are of course free to spend money and choose friends as you like. But if you’re looking for guidance in keeping with your own religious tradition, I’d encourage you to meditate on Matthew 5:44 (“I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you and persecute you”), Proverbs 3:27 (“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so”), Proverbs 11:25 (“The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will be watered himself”), Luke 6:32–38 (“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. … If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? … Give and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you”), Matthew 6:3–4 (“When you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly”), and Matthew 19:21 (“Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me’ ”). There’s also the option of occasionally offering to babysit or take the kids to the dentist, shop at the grocery store, or help run errands if you don’t have the funds but want to give her a hand. Build up for yourself a treasure in heaven where thieves cannot get in and steal, where moths and rust cannot destroy; give gratuitously and without expectation of reciprocation or praise, and you will be acting in accordance with your religion.
She has written a few children’s books about her faith and has set up a small independent internet business to offer services connected with her belief system. I would love to support her, but she is pagan/Wiccan. This isn’t exactly a problem, as I don’t think it’s immoral. I just don’t want a children’s book on spells or to spend money on a tarot reading. My old friend spends a lot of time online talking about things like her “marriage” to a Norse deity that just make me roll my eyes in a way I know I should be ashamed about. I could probably get over my aversion to this and at least donate to her nonreligious crowdsourcing page that is just asking for money for utilities and food for her kids, but she also spends a lot of time online talking about how awful Christians are. Just Christians. While I know I’m not fully supportive of her faith, at least I know it’s bad of me to judge her on hers. I would never publicly demean her or her religion, much less do it several times a week. I feel so bad for her and would like to help, but every time I get close to donating, I just think about how much she hates people of my faith. Should I donate anyway?
A: I imagine at least part of the reason you’d never speak angrily or demeaningly about Wiccans or pagans in public is because Wiccans and pagans, as a group, do not wield a disproportionate amount of social or political power in the United States, whereas non-Christians in this country (particularly people who were raised Christian) don’t always get to choose how or when or on what grounds they experience Christianity. That doesn’t mean you’re obligated to listen to her vent or that you should apologize for your own faith, but it might prove a helpful corrective when you’re tempted to compare your respective situations. It doesn’t sound like she’s trying to strong-arm you into debating when you get together in person, so if your main problem is how she conducts herself online, I’d encourage you to mute her posts on social media so you don’t have to read them. And you certainly don’t have to buy books you won’t read or tarot readings that don’t interest you! She sounds like a person who’s speaking from a great deal of pain. That doesn’t mean she’s perfect or justified in everything she says or does; if she speaks rudely to you or you’d like to register an objection to something she says, you are absolutely within your rights to do so as a friend. But it is a useful and important context, I think. Look for opportunities to be gracious and patient with her.
As to whether you should donate, you are of course free to spend money and choose friends as you like. But if you’re looking for guidance in keeping with your own religious tradition, I’d encourage you to meditate on Matthew 5:44 (“I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you and persecute you”), Proverbs 3:27 (“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so”), Proverbs 11:25 (“The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will be watered himself”), Luke 6:32–38 (“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. … If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? … Give and it shall be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you”), Matthew 6:3–4 (“When you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly”), and Matthew 19:21 (“Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me’ ”). There’s also the option of occasionally offering to babysit or take the kids to the dentist, shop at the grocery store, or help run errands if you don’t have the funds but want to give her a hand. Build up for yourself a treasure in heaven where thieves cannot get in and steal, where moths and rust cannot destroy; give gratuitously and without expectation of reciprocation or praise, and you will be acting in accordance with your religion.
no subject
Also, I love that Prudie quoted scripture.
no subject
no subject
After growing up in Alabama where biting one's tongue through the worst actions of the worst strains of Fundamentalist Christianity was a matter of survival, I have negative patience for Not All Christians arguments, even though (of course) it's obviously true that not all Christians.
no subject
That was very good and honest of you to acknowledge you couldn't fulfil such an [unreasonable, IMO] request. (I was raised in a fundamentalist church, I so hear you. At least I was in NYC and could see over the walls and through the gaps.)
no subject
(You and I, who both come from very religious homes but in your case from the dominant paradigm and in mine from the non-dominant, and who have very different attitudes now about our parents' religions which we don't share, could probably talk about this for hours.)
no subject
no subject
I absolutely love that Prudence reference and directed her to Scripture, because sometimes (speaking as a Christian), we need to have that reminder that our actions are not as Christian as we may be pretending they are. I also like that Prudence recommended non-monetary ways to help out. I only disagree with one small part "look for opportunities to be gracious and patient with her". LW doesn't need to look, she needs to start being gracious and patient. The opportunity is there.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Ugh, I hear you. I kind of wish I could apologize on behalf of the denomination I ended up abandoning anyway.
no subject
But it does kind of bump up against a dilemma I've had (and I think is part of LW's worry that they haven't quite managed to articulate in the letter; some of the things people are reading as "making fun" I think address this instead.) Which is that there's a tendency for people who are a certain kind of vulnerable in their lives to fall into beliefs that seem to be actively making things worse for them.
It's at least as likely to happen with Christianity as with paganism! And MLMs and Q-Anon are worse than either. But what do you do when someone you care about really needs the help, but you are fairly sure that if you give them money, they will then spend it on the $1500 amulet that Thor told them, personally, would fix all the ills of the world? Or send it to Pat Robertson? Or on their new business that will definitely make them a millionaire if they just pour another few thousand dollars down the drain?
It feels yucky to say that I'm not giving you money because I don't trust you to spend it well. And for people whose lives are deeply screwed up, having some kind of firm faith can help them psychologically more than it hurts them materially, and you don't know what it looks like from the inside. But on the other hand, at some point it feels like you are enabling the bad choices and just dragging out the pain, and it feels like you are letting them funnel your money into causes you oppose.
If I had a friend who believed that Christ Jesus had personally given her a wedding ring and thought that the best way to feed her family was to sell exorcism services and self-pub picture books about Jesus riding dinosaurs to fight Satan, and was constantly talking about how organized Christianity was the cause of all her problems, I probably would hesitate to give her money, too. Not because her beliefs offended me, but because I wouldn't be sure that giving her money would really be a net good for her. (And with paganism, people, both believers and non believers, can find it harder to see the line between "this is worrying" and "this is a bit unusual", or at least err in the other direction.)
Maybe I'm just not a great friend that way.
Giving material things other than money can help, but then I think of my one Holy Roller aunt who the family finally stopped even buying groceries for because she would respond by smugly saying "See? I told you God would provide if I had faith" while malnourished and continuing to funnel her entire pension check, and most of the groceries, to her abusive church.
Giving friendship and emotional support even if nothing else is good, but somehow it feels different to say "you can cry on my shoulder but I'm not giving you "food" money to buy drugs with" than to say "you can cry on my shoulder but I'm not giving you "food" money to spend on Q-Anon." Even though the second one is probably more maladaptive for them and worse for society as a whole.
no subject
This has been incredibly liberating for me. It turns out that all that worth-judging was tiring and I could never be sure whether I was giving too much to unworthy people or too little to worthy people. Now I just give a dollar to anyone who asks and go about my day.
Besides, I've sure spent money on things that were bad for me, and the privilege to do so is one of the things that I'm trying to share through charitable giving.
no subject
But in some ways I think it's easier to give to strangers - I can hand a few dollars to a busker and smile and move on, or throw a few hundred impersonally at a charity. It's harder when I really care about someone and I want to do everything I can to help but I can see them using everything they're given to slowly dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in, you know? But help to dig themselves in deeper is the only kind of help they'll accept. And maybe helping them hold the shovel for a bit really is the only thing you can do. But I struggle with it, because that kind of situation sucks all around.
(And the mention of "married to Thor" is what really called this to mind. Maybe it's an established ritual or shamanic thing in the LW's friend's particular tradition and it's really great and meaningful and LW is being undeservedly derisive. But my experience with people saying God(s) gave them personal romantic attention has too often translated into things going really bad places with them.)
no subject
[*I have to drop the not-racist thing in there, because a bunch of neo-Nazi/alt-white assholes have adopted the trappings of Norse Paganism, and it’s fucking gross.]
But, yeah, I get the worry about money given to help out a friend getting funneled into ongoing-disaster financial issues or given to actually shady endeavors.
I have been there, and tried to make good choices that balanced “actually helping a friend in need” and “flushing my limited funds directly down the toilet,” because the friend kept getting themselves in deeper.
I really love the way Danny busted out the Scripture here for the LW, because I think that the real question is “DO you consider this person a friend,” and cloaking it in Christian disapproval of someone else’s religion/spirituality is really missing the point of charitable giving and trying to help someone in genuine need.
no subject
On the other hand, one of the good things about organized religions is they usually have something built in where at some point, someone will pull you aside and say "I know you feel very strongly that God is talking to you, but that doesn't sound like something our God would say, can we explore this together?" Whereas a lot of online spaces for solitary neopagans (among other online communities) have a value of always validating personal revelation, no matter what, and that can turn into spiraling reinforcement of bad patterns really fast for some people. (Mind you, the organized religion version has its own failure modes.)
But it's a tough question and I think really does have to go case-by-case. More interesting than the one Pru answered I think, but I like her answer for that one!
no subject
On the other hand, I don't think being generous, if it's something you're up for and really want to do, is actually empirically proven to make the recipient's behaviour worse. The whole "rock bottom" theory, where people will hit a point where things are So Awful They Decide They Want To Change, doesn't tend to work out in practice. Most people, at rock bottom, are so frenzied and miserable that they can't form any kind of coherent plan for how to get better. The research says that people tend to change when they receive encouragement and material assistance that makes their daily lives more manageable. (Especially in ways they can't self-sabotage, eg. paid housing where they never touch the rent money; methadone they must consume before they leave the pharmacy so they can't sell it on the street; children's lessons or experiences that the child must be demonstrably present for; driving them to the food bank instead of giving them money)
The other thing that I've found, but don't have the research to completely back me up in, is: People who invest in really terrible plans like MLMs and cults tend to do it because they lack the ability or confidence to make their own decisions, so it's quite nice to have some external power structure telling you the secret to success, especially when the people around you who are connected to reality are saying, "I think you're making bad decisions and can't be trusted to run your own life." So I've had a moderate amount of success in preserving the relationship and encouraging good behaviour by focusing on my belief that they can make good decisions.
Although with someone deeply self-deluded with a very proven track record of determinedly driving their own life into the ground... mm yeah, even when they need the help, I 100% understand being just Done Forever with them.
no subject
And I come to this from having been in the place where I had no rent money, no plan to make rent money, and no mental resources to make a plan. But I knew I had people who would give me unlimited food and shelter as long as I needed it, and who knows how differently my life would have turned out without them. Maybe I would have gotten my own feet under me faster, but hard to say if I would have ended up in a better place at the end.
But I am pretty sure that begging for rent money from my internet acquaintances would not have really helped me figure it out - when what people really need is enough stability to start thinking ahead beyond tomorrow, I am deeply doubtful that kind of monthly gofundme for an ongoing rolling crisis does anything at all to improve stability. Do you know if anybody's really looked at internet fundraising that way, research-wise? I know I've seen things about both housing and government benefits that imply that the sort of "help" where you never know if you'll still have it tomorrow and you have to spend all your energy making sure you can still get it is not very productive even in the short term because it just keeps you desperate and miserable and mentally exhausted.
My experience with "rock bottom" is less that it makes you want to change - most people want to change, on some level, long before that - and more that sometimes in our fallen world, it's the only place from which you can get the kind of help that does start to make your life long-term manageable. But of course there are a lot of people for whom that kind of help isn't coming no matter what - there are certainly many fewer people to whom I'd be willing to pay a year's lease on than to throw a little PayPal money to.
But yeah, there's definitely a difference between not giving money and cutting off a friendship (and the point at which the money is a prerequisite for friendship is usually one at which I am going to consider giving money and then cutting off the friendship). I think for some people it can actually be more helpful to have a friend who you know will listen and feed you a good dinner but never give you money, because that can make the friendship a lot harder really fast. (I would probably give to more online fundraisers if it was easier to do anon, tbh.) But there are certainly cultures in which giving money to friends is just considered standard part of friendship.)
no subject