The central story of our culture is God’s rape and impregnation of a young girl, her glorification of him, and his abandonment of her and his only child, even while his child was being publicly tortured and killed.

Our country’s idea of faith and sense of morality are based on this story. Our individual personal identities. Our relationship with the Earth. Our ideas about family are built atop this story. It’s woven into our language. Even our national economy relies on this story.

Given this, how can we expect anything other than what’s happening in our country today? Men’s violence toward women. White men’s violence toward people of color. These things are built into the story. They’ve been sanctified, made holy – that’s why being “conservative” means protecting the white man’s power over other people. Still, even today.

The language that we use, and the stories we tell, shape the way we think. This story of God’s relationship to Mary and to Jesus bleeds into our lives, seeding violence and oppression, seeding victimhood and self-blame.

It is time for us as individuals, as a nation, as a world, to examine this story, to give it its due, and to move on to claim other stories that will allow room for the sovereignty of all people, that will allow men to understand their worth without the perpetration of violence.

I am 
Elden Yonderland.