I detest strawberries. I shudder when I see my sisters eating them by the handful, or chopping them up for their cereal. I pick them out of salad so as not to ruin the flavor of the other ingredients. And I am horrified when people waste perfectly good chocolate by slathering it on strawberries. Since I’m also not fond of raspberries or tomatoes, a friend once accused me of having a phobia of red fruits. This is demonstrably false, as I will cheerfully eat a cherry or a red delicious apple. But keep the strawberries far from me.
When I share this particular dislike, some people react with disbelief. You don’t really dislike strawberries, they assure me. The problem is that you just haven’t encountered a genuine strawberry. The versions you’ve tried were all flawed somehow–perhaps transported from too far away, perhaps bred for appearance rather than taste. But if ever you were to sample a true strawberry, the pure Platonic strawberry, you would change your mind. The strawberry would become delicious to you. You would delight in its goodness.
But alas, I fear my objections to strawberries do not lie with the quirks of individual strawberries. I have no doubt that strawberries picked fresh in the wild are vastly superior to those sold in a supermarket. Even as a non-strawberry-lover, I can appreciate that some strawberries are better than others. But it’s the strawberry itself which I find distasteful, regardless of its quality.
My objections to patriarchy are similar. Your problem, people tell me, is that you haven’t experienced “true” patriarchy. You’ve had too many distasteful experiences with unrighteous dominion, and that’s tainted your view. But if only you could experience real patriarchy, you would realize that it is in fact delectable. And it’s true that given a choice, I’d take benign, soft patriarchy over the tyrannical version. But this doesn’t mean I don’t have the same fundamental objections to the former that I do to the latter. I am not interested in being involved in a system in which men rule over women, even if that rule is softened with terms like “preside” and is carried out in the most benevolent of fashions. I simply have no stomach for it.
But I *know* that patriarchy is delicious! If you’re not enjoying it, I know that *by definition* what you’ve experienced isn’t real patriarchy.
No, seriously, well said, Lynnette!
Of course the real question is whether your perspective and preferences are at all morally relevant? From what you’ve said, I think this certainly applies to those people who you have been speaking to… but I’m guessing it applies to you as well.
In other words, reducing patriarchy to a question of mere preferences (a la emotivism) sidelines all important conversations, debates and (most importantly) revelation on the subject and leaves us with nothing but a divisive power struggle among mere mortals. A patriarchal church may (possibly) not be ideal, but this anarchist, realpolitik church that your post seems to tacitly endorse in its place is sooo much worse.
Lynnette, your analogy nicely illustrates the circular reasoning at play in the cultural judgment of experience. Experience is valid only if it confirms the a priori judgment; experience that fails to confirm is, by definition, not real experience. Et voila!
Jeff G, I realized as I wrote this that that was a weakness in the analogy. I don’t actually mean to reduce one’s view of patriarchy to a personal preference–if that were the case, I’d have no basis on which to say it’s universally problematic. But in your eagerness to critique me, you may have missed the point of the analogy. (Hint: see Eve’s comment above.)
But my wife loves strawberries! And eating strawberries will test and try you and cause you to grow (said the strawberry loving man).
But seriously, loved the clarity of your analogy Lynnette.
Ah, but in the resurrection you will love strawberries.
Ah, but who’s to say there will be strawberries in the resurrection?
Jeff, I’m amazed to hear that Lynnette’s post endorses an anarchist realpolitik church. I thought she was pointing out the preumptiveness in assuming that someone’s rejection of X lies in their lack of [true] experience with [essential Platonic] X, rather than in their experience and evaluation of X.
(“I don’t like strawberries. I wish people wouldn’t try to convince me that maybe I’ll like strawberries once I try some organic Devonshire heirloom strawberries.”
“Oh, so you want all shortcakes to be anarchist realpolitik shortcakes???”)
Yes, and I fully acknowledged that my criticism applies to those people who are telling Lynnette these things as much, if not more than they apply to her. The point I went on to make, a point that Lynnette seems to agree with, is that our preferences are morally irrelevant to the rightness of patriarchy within the church.
And make no mistake, this post is not merely about one particular type of faulty logic that people happen to use in various debates. The post is a move within a larger battle specifically aimed at how the church ought (not) to be run. Now, imagine a church that was morally dictated by members’ preference in fruit – a preference that conversation, debate and revelation could never get any hold upon. This, for all the reasons that Lynnette brings up in her post, would clearly be an anarchist, realpolitik church if ever there was one.
Jeff G, take a deep breath. Get some sunshine. Heck, even eat some strawberries, if you happen to enjoy them. And maybe consider that when you’re a guest on a blog, it’s bad manners to constantly hijack the conversation to your pet issues.
I apologize. I sincerely thought (and still think) that my “pet issues” spoke to the OP. If such is not the case, then I seriously misread the post and will stop responding to people who are specifically addressing my comments.
Thanks, Jeff. This actually was just meant as a light-hearted analogy, not an assertion about the role of emotion and experience in discerning religious truth, or an argument about the merits of patriarchy vs. realpolitik anarchism.
Lynnette, one thing that I think the analogy may not capture is that for some people strawberries cause harm–it’s not just a matter of preference. Strawberries–even ideal platonic strawberries–may cause a life-threatening allergic reaction or a nasty bout of diarrhea.
Similarly, it is not that one just doesn’t enjoy patriarchy the way I might not enjoy knitting or Nascar; rather, patriarchy may cause harm or violate one’s sense of what is right and wrong. And that may be true even with the Platonic ideal of patriarchy.