Christian Men, You Are Not Entitled To Respect!

Recently, I wrote to the head of a christian organisation raising my concerns over an incident that had taken place within that institution. One week later, my email had not even been acknowledged, let alone answered.

My husband then sent an email through to the same person, addressing the same concerns. A little over two hours later, a response had been sent which, while it mentioned my email, was addressed solely to my husband.

I consider that behaviour to be extremely ill-mannered... and not a little cowardly. And, to be completely frank, I am utterly sick of coming up against christian men who think they can behave like complete jerks, and then demand respect based on nothing but their anatomy!

Because this is not the first time I have experienced that sort of behaviour from christian men. A number of males involved with my ex-church acted like this, as did my previous employer, who loudly (and proudly) asserted he ran a 'christian business'.

All these men made it abundantly clear that they expected to be treated with respect by me. In fact, some of them have been quite outspoken about my apparent lack of respect! (And yet it seems that not one of them have felt any need to respect me.)

So I thought perhaps it might be helpful if I explained a few things:

If you bully me, patronise me, or wilfully ignore me, I will not respect you.

If you try to control me, manipulate me or dictate to me, there'll be no respect here.

If you refuse to engage with me, attempt triangulation, or otherwise treat me as some sort of inferior being... zero respect.

And just to avoid any further confusion, let me add: I do not need your permission in order to disagree with you. I do not need your approval to have my own opinion. I am an adult. I am your equal. If you want my respect, you need to earn it!

I am not an Animal! I am a Human Being!

I remember watching the film, Elephant Man when I was younger and being deeply disturbed by John Hurt’s portrayal of a severely disfigured man living in Victorian London. The treatment of John Merrick by his fellow man moved me to tears. But what haunted me most was hearing the cry from the depths of this man’s soul to be engaged with, not as a freak, but as a human being!

Deep down, I believe that this is the cry of each one of us – that there is something within every human being that yearns for recognition of our humanity from others.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently after another interesting encounter with someone from my ex-church. This person had taken offence at something I had done and had contacted my husband about it. Now I happen to have a very low view of triangulation so I made this person a friendly offer to meet with them so they could discuss their issues with me… with me!

I explained that their approach de-humanised me – treating me as if I was a problem to be dealt with, not a fellow human being to be engaged with, but that I was quite willing to engage relationally with them regarding their problem.

However, this person was not willing to sit down over a coffee (like two mature Christ-followers) and share their concerns with me about my perceived behaviour. And yet they continued (several times) to try to engage my husband over the issue!

Anyway, this incident re-ignited my ponderings over how are we called we treat those we call brothers and sisters and how it works out in reality. Do our words and actions make others feel validated as human beings or do they end up feeling as if they are an issue to be addressed or a problem to be solved?