Messy Messy Mess

 "When I die, I will not be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves." - Ntozake Shange

 

I grew up in the Black Baptist Church.

It was with all the replete girls are guilty just for being girls. We had the weekly confessionals and the constant pressuring to be sure we were not being wayward, not dancing, not enjoying been teenagers.

As I aged and was still a part of the church I loved with the music, the deep study, the yearly convention, the youth group, I began to be observant.

Observing is what eventually led me to leave the place that formed me and I found, it also led my father to leave a little bit after that and he was re-ordained in a different denomination that while conservative in some of the worship, was more progressive in women.

But, some things remain with you, right.

So it took years of study and eventually, me earned my Master of Divinity, to move away from the constant pressure and guilt placed on women, Black women.

In a lot of churches - I was in a non-denominational church in the early 1990s, not the TD Jakes kind, one of those mixed ones with a white pastor who all the Black associate pastors said would leave as soon as his only daughter reached her teen years - the praise & worship team, the acceptance of people as they walked in the door, the non-judgmental, yet gentle teaching toward holiness, and the deep exegesis that happened weekly.

It was in that place, particularly Love International Ministries with Pastor Billy Egr, in 1991, that I came to have my eyes opened, that I received the Baptist of the Holy Spirit, and that the Word just exploded in my heart. I now own about thirty Bibles that have all been read, annotated, and fed upon.

So it is with a background of discovery and freedom that even when I moved to different states, I had enough eventual Holy boldness to not cotton to nonsense.

Every wind of doctrine is not a sweet smelling aroma.

I waited a long while before commenting about that polyamorous nonsense being paraded around social media with the "profit" and his wives.

Three things came to find

1. What in all the hellfireandbrimstone is happening here

2. How abused this wife must truly be to even entertain this mess

3. How twisted and thirsty is the mistress to even think that some kinda man is better than no man

And in all that I was thinking, all I could know what that truly God is not pleased and how controlled are the people that they didn't get up and walk out.

Judge not lest ye be judged.

I was once in a church, after my life unfolded in ways I didn't expect and found myself fleeing my home with the clothes on my back. I had to move back home and eventually rebuild. Maybe being stubborn or perhaps wounded because of growing up with my stepmother, I wasn't going to join the church where my father was the pastor. So I remained in my then non-denominational stance and through a colleague, found one of the only Black ones in the area. I was still young-ish, barely thirty, and the church was filled with a lot of young-ish folks from the nearby HBCU. It felt energetic and electric.

And for a minute, it was empowering and teaching and growing.

Until the word became profane.

And the pastor turned (or perhaps was already) sexually deviant and started targeting and abusing the marriage bed of one couple, was deep in the virgin bride business of another couple that he put together, and was overall making himself out to be divine.

But I didn't recognize it at first.

But that is the point.

It was large enough, praise & worship was liberating, and the associate ministers were teaching. I was even working in the Sunday school with little ones, stepping into my gifts.

So, partly, I get it.

For a lot of us, church is connection and community, especially for those who have been wounded by the world or have moved far away or even were college students whose parents admonished them to "find a good church home."

People were getting their finances together, their was an accountant who taught about tithing.

If you needed your tired rotated or even a new (used) washer and dryer in your apartment, the church had a resource for that. There were folks who would help you move and child sit your kids, and of course, there was the checking in on you and the fellowship.

But maybe that was also the draw.

Two things can be true at the same time.

Maybe, once-upon-a-time, there was someone who invited someone to that church and told them to "come and get a good word."

Anyone with enough charisma can perform for 40 minutes and folks may feel like they walked away changed.

There may have been something about it and face it, these past ten years have been beyond nightmarish for some folks. Maybe they had community meals, maybe their ministries were encouraging folks to put away sinful ways, maybe, just maybe, folks felt changed.

And then that Sunday morning when "the First Lady" got up there and started exhorting and inviting.

But that is like abusers do, they find a patsy, a mouthpiece, a co-signer.

I couldn't stomach the nonsense and apparently, neither could some of the Womanist theologians I studied because almost all of them have used their platform to speak on this.

This morning, I arose for my usual morning routine that includes my coffee time with God.

And I can't help thinking about the Pauline scriptures. Now, if you know me, you know that me and Paul are not best buddies. In seminary, I made a hard left in that library called The Bible and situated myself in Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, Womanist Studies. I wanted to read what influenced the brown skinned Palestinian jew named Yeshua, and what did he learn. So, me and Paul did not get really deep beyond my New Testament Studies Classes and what I already studied.

But, this nonsense happening sent me to I Timothy 2:12. His pastoral missive to his "son in the ministry" who was preparing to embark on a new calling. This was a pastoral letter to a young minister with instructions from an older minister on how he conducted things. It was not "God said, God commanded" it was "I desire then, that ....and this section (versus 8-15) become the basis of a lot of teaching that has had women behind, backward, and broken.

There was a thought, though, that in context, maybe his missive made a little sense.

Maybe it was that due to culture and custom, the women hadn't studied. Much like some of these so-called folks who haven't gone to seminary, haven't cracked open a commentary, and beyond their small circle, haven't considered the text they espouse.

The thought I'm sitting with his maybe it was a protective measure for the rest of the women and the community at large.

Church, places of worship, are influential and are communal.

One small spark of wrong thinking could permeate the entire congregation and we have a bunch of men running around saying they are now in a polyamorous (and yes, I know that lady couldn't even pronounce the word) relationship as if it was God-ordained.

It was definitely patriarchal, Paul's teaching and his thinking.

But maybe there was a bit of caution in what he was trying to say and as the letter indicated in his greeting and naming the purpose of the letter. 

"I urge you, as I did when on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than divine training that is shown by faith. But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a since faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying the things about which they make assertions."

Vs. 3-7

The social fabric of the time was threatened and their was a poison thought spreading like wildfire, that is the context.

The other part of the thinking that has been marinating with me is how entangled we become when we don't think, pray, reason, and meditate for ourselves.

My people perish for the lack of knowledge.

We, humans, sometimes want the easy answer, want to only feel joy and wonder, relief from pain and suffering, and not have to grapple with the harder things of life.

I have certainly seen that since 2016 with certain kinds of people who would rather follow a carnival barker who told them what their itching ears wanted to year instead of looking at the man-or-woman in the mirror and considering the deeper things of the soul.

They wanted what felt good.

What made them feel part of the in-crowd.

What made them feel special and that their own misery was warranted for the excitement of just being in the same room as someone so magical.

I think that is what the build up was of this comical situationship displayed from across the sacred desk.

it is beyond messy messy messy.

It reeks of sexual abuse, mental abuse, spiritual abuse, verbal abuse, and psychological abuse.

So, thinking about this and what turned me to the passage in I Timothy is that perhaps what Paul was admonishing Timothy was not that women are supposed to be silent, but that they not speak in ignorance because of the influence women have in the community.

Then, like now, women are the laborers, the keepers of story, and the ones who are predominately in places of worship.

Back then, women were not able to get to the same places of learning where questions among scholars would have been worked out and they wouldn't be in public spaces spewing nonsense. 

Again, it was not a command from God that women be quiet.

A pastoral letter was being issued to address issues and false teachings that were creeping into the still-new-still-forming-community.

That brings me to this messy messy mess - again.

I refuse to say the names of these charlatans, but it has been platformed enough that folks know who I'm talking about.

Hosea 4:6 comes to mind.

But before I get there, let's back up.

Take this in context. Hosea 4:1-10 is an indictment against the people who claimed to be people of God. It was judgment, the people were unfaithful, they broke the covenant with God and the entire community was wrong. 

It begins with the admonishment to Hear. In Hebrew, that is a word more akin to admonishing them to stop, listen for understanding, pay attention because this is important:

"Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel; for the LorD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty and no knowledge of God in the land." 

The next verses go on to further indict them and comes to one of the core reasons why.

"my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

Then, later in this passage section, it reminds what is the result of this.

"And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and replay them for their deeds. They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply; because they have forsaken the LORD  to devote themselves to whoredom."

In other words, that messy messy mess that they paraded not only in the gathering of people who wanted to believe they were "in church" but paraded across the airways with this airing of smelly nasty ridiculousness is totally and completely unholy and uncalled for.

We have so much we have to contend with in America, that this crazy messy messy mess is just beyond anger provoking, it is causing a lot of righteous indignation.

Those of us who love God and God's people couldn't just be silent.

Some of us, like me, had to take our time and regulate our feelings, our decision to weigh in or not, and simply, check ourselves so we wouldn't curse.

I don't know these people from a man-on-the-moon.

But I know nonsense.

I pray that people wake up and get out.

None of this is holy.

Too disgusted.

©2026.  From morning lavender latte to evening iced latte just studying and marinating.