Peeking inside someone else’s life is something we all
want to do, especially if it’s someone we admire and look up to.
Melanie Springer Mock gives us this opportunity in her
memoir, Worthy: Finding Yourself in a
World Expecting Someone Else (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018).
She has written, co-written, or edited four earlier
books:
- Writing Peace: The Unheard Voices of Great War Mennonite Objectors (Cascadia, 2003);
- Just Moms: Conveying Justice in an Unjust World (Barclay, 2011);
- The Spirit of Adoption: Writers on Religion, Adoption, Faith, and More (Cascade Books,
- If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from
Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be with Kendra Weddle (Chalice, 2015).
She’s medium tall, pretty, runs marathons, and even takes
on a triathlon event or two. She teaches
English at George Fox University, 26 miles southwest of Portland. She’s married and has two adopted sons. (How do you write a book when you have a full-time job and two teenagers?)
In short, she’s done everything I ever aspired to—and
done it well. I know her from EEWC-Christian Feminism Today, a group of which we
are both members.
Imagine how surprised I was to learn that she’s been
plagued by a life-long sense of not being good enough—not being “worthy.”
It began because she was a preacher’s kid and didn’t
think or act in ways that her church community felt she should.
In her teen years it got worse. Because her super-curly hair was hard to
tame, she kept it short. She had an older brother and money was scarce, so she often didn’t wear the kinds of clothes or make-up
that would announce her as a girl. She
was often mistaken for a boy and even ordered out of girls’ restrooms a few
times.
By her mid-20s all her friends were marrying, but she
hadn’t even really dated. She felt
unloved and unlovable.
All this was a great surprise to me because I respect
her so much. My own experience is so
different: eagerly complying with teenage female stereotypes, being suspicious
of marriage, feeling ambivalent about whether to have children, and too often imagining myself superior to others.
Her honest admission of feeling unworthy and lonely is
touching, and she makes a passionate case for Christians to stop inflicting expectations
on others.
Another plus: Melanie links her personal experiences to social
analysis of gender roles and expectations, especially in the church.
- · Why did her brother get to ride the lawn
mower with her grandfather, while she had to help her mother with cooking?
- · Why was she laughed at for saying she
wanted to play on the middle school football team?
- · Why couldn’t a woman witness from the
pulpit at her church?
At many points she launches into biblical analysis too. There should not be a set of standards to determining
who can be part of a church and who can’t: “…all are inherently worthy,”
welcomed at God’s table.
Some churches reject another group of Christians as “not
biblical enough” or “too gay” or not correct on some political position. We need to know that all are worthy of God’s
love and get better at tolerating difference.
Melanie gives a great example of the need to stop
thinking that the Bible’s positions on social issues are obvious. In 1960, Bob Jones Sr. preached that “All Orthodox,
Bible-believing Christians agree on one thing; and that is, whatever the Bible
says is so.”
But his sermon was about the Bible as supporting
racial segregation.
With each other in ‘interpretive communities,’ we need
to explore the Bible as “a rich text that demands our attention and invites our
interactions.”
We must have “only one objective: ensuring that our
expectation for others allows them to be exactly who God created them to be.”
Congratulations, Melanie, on a great contribution through this book. Because you're twenty years younger than I am, I have hope for women in the future as well as for our churches.
Thanks also for the shout out to Christian Feminism Today for curing your loneliness and to our gatherings for being a redemptive community (pp. 237-39).
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