What a day, what a day...

... for an auto-da-fé. 

If you are familiar with Leonard Bernstein's music for Candide, then you now have an ear worm in your head. You can join me. As I have mentioned before, our teatime chapter book deals with the Spanish Inquisition and the horrific practice of auto-da-fé. [Am I the only one who cannot read the words 'Spanish Inquisition' without suddenly having Monty Python pop into my head?] Then in the literature class I'm teaching, we are doing Candide by Voltaire this week. So that explains a bit about the soundtrack in my head.

But there is another piece to the puzzle that was highlighted tonight. The Spanish Inquisition was so convinced that they had the one right way of having faith, were so afraid of those who were different, and given such large amounts of power that it lead to unspeakable atrocities. No one learns from history, do they? Whenever a group has decided that they have all the right answers that must be imposed upon others, bad things happen. Plus, it turns out that they didn't actually have all the right answers at all. 

So G. and L. had a little adventure tonight at a friend's youth group. I won't mention the church to protect the guilty. Evidently the lesson was about there only being men and women and that was it. (I'm paraphrasing a paraphrase at this point.) [And please, keep your prejudiced comments to yourselves if you have them. I am pretty well researched on this subject as well as having a conservative seminary degree. Don't assume I have just jumped on what you see is a popular bandwagon without any knowledge. I will use my deleting powers if I need to because this deals with my children's worth and well-being.] Regardless, it didn't sit well with my children for understandable reasons, so they walked out of the auditorium and sat down in the lobby. When a leader came out to ask what they were doing, my verbally precocious child stated, "We are boycotting the rampant transphobia in this church." It seems a power struggle then ensued, with the result that G. and L.  texted J. to come and get them. 

J. did go to get them and proceeded to have a little discussion with one of the leaders. The stated issue was that our children were deemed disrespectful. I've coached parents long enough to know that disrespect is 99.9% of the time code for "this child won't do what I say." Actually, true respect is earned. 

There is oh so much more I could write about this, but I'll err on being circumspect at the moment. But the authoritarian nature of so many people claiming to be Christian is kind of soul crushing. J. and I both know youth ministry. We did it for years and I have a degree in it. Power struggles will not get you anywhere you want to go. 

This post is all over the place. But I'm proud of my children for not being afraid to stand up for what they believed in and not be cowed by men standing over them and insisting on obedience.