tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79718208422703301682024-03-14T02:54:33.382-07:00Wordgazer's WordsKristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.comBlogger187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-49213366233646780342017-01-28T15:23:00.000-08:002017-01-28T15:30:34.478-08:00I have to speak up now....We have to choose at this time between love and fear. "There is no fear in love... and the one who fears is not complete in love."1 John 4:18.<br />
<br />
Are we going to listen to somebody saying, "Everything is bad, the country is falling apart, and it's all the fault of <b><i>those people</i></b>, but I'm here to protect you"? <br />
<br />
Or are we going to listen to the one who said, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you" and "Do to others as you would have them do to you"? <br />
<br />
What if <b><i>this</i></b> is what He meant by "choose the narrow path that leads to life"? Because the way of fear is certainly going to lead to destruction, and it does seem to be the wide, well-traveled road that's easy to choose.<br />
<br />
Today an executive order was signed that bans people from certain Middle-Eastern countries from flying into the US. Even if they live here on legal, permanent Visas and were just on vacation to see their relatives.<br />
<br />
Fellow Americans, did any of us want or envision that the new administration would mean that the nice Middle-Eastern man in our neighborhood, whom we know by name, would find himself unable to come home to his kids? <br />
<br />
<b>I doubt it. I firmly believe we're better than this</b>.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-91968920648304369582016-02-07T13:33:00.000-08:002016-02-07T13:36:44.069-08:00Guest Post on Christians for Biblical Equality!Last week I was honored to be asked to contribute a post to Christians for Biblical Equality. This group is the spearhead of evangelical egalitarianism in America, and I was very excited to be part of what they're doing!<br />
<br />
Here is a link to my post: <a href="http://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/consequences-complementarianism-men">The Consequences of Complementarianism for Men</a>.<br />
<br />
Please visit there and read, and I hope you enjoy!Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-91750555473956013222015-07-19T18:26:00.002-07:002015-07-19T18:26:50.725-07:00Hiatus - Working on a NovelThis is just a note to my readers that I won't be posting very often for a few months, because I've resurrected a children's novel I started writing about six years ago, and I don't seem to have enough hours in the week to do both that and blogging!<br />
<br />
The novel is hopefully going to be one of a series with the name "Terra Incognita," and it's about a family that gets sent into a parallel universe where the creatures of European medieval legend are real. I got stuck years ago when I was halfway through chapter 10-- but I've figured out how to finish it, and I think I only have about five chapters left to complete.<br />
<br />
Wish me luck!Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-33379340392395613142015-06-19T23:59:00.001-07:002015-06-20T12:24:22.681-07:00In Tribute: Suzanne McCarthy, 1955-2015<div class="tr_bq">
In early 2008 I encountered Christian egalitarianism for the first time and embraced it with excitement and relief. Finally, I could let go of my cognitive dissonance! I could believe in a God who hadn't arbitrarily consigned me to subordinate status; I could trust that I hadn't been created for subordination to a man while still somehow being his equal. </div>
<br />
Naively I thought that any Christian who learned of this liberating new way of looking at Scripture would feel the same way I did. Surely it would be a relief to them, too, to stop fighting against their better instincts the way I had had to fight mine. Surely they would be happy to understand that God's ways were higher than the church's ways. Surely they would be happy to see women set free.<br />
<br />
And then, jarringly, upsettingly, I began to come across the counter-arguments. The ones that said egalitarian Christians were in rebellion against God; that they were twisting the Scriptures because they didn't want to fulfill their God-given gender roles; that in their heart of hearts they loved the world and the world's culture too much to stand against it for Christ. The Bible was plain and clear, they said. How could I go against it?<br />
<br />
Once I would have been willing to believe them, but the cage door was open and swinging, and I had found my way outside. How could I go back in? Dismayed, doubting myself, I looked for scholarly support for what I hoped, what I had to believe was somehow true, no matter what the accusations against it. Men of God with credentials and letters after their names-- men like John Piper and Wayne Grudem-- were insisting that egalitarian scholarship regarding Greek words like "kephale" (translated "head" as in "the husband is the head of the wife") was mistaken and wrong-headed. I had no training in ancient languages. Who should I believe?<br />
<br />
It was then that I came across her blog-- or maybe I was directed there; I don't remember. <br />
<br />
Suzanne McCarthy. <a href="http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/">Suzanne's Bookshelf</a>. <br />
<br />
Her bio simply said she was a woman living in Vancouver, Canada, but that she also blogged at <a href="http://abecedaria.blogspot.com/">Abecedaria</a>, a scholarly site about language and letter systems. As I used the blog search engine, it seemed that any topic on the complementarian/egalitarian debate that I typed in, she had addressed. As I read her words, I found myself encountering a singularly wise, compassionate, articulate scholar, who seemed to feel the same way I did about being consigned to female subordination.<br />
<br />
For anything that Grudem or Piper said, Suzanne McCarthy had a strong answer, using facts and evidence from ancient language sources, showing how the words Paul and Peter used had been used by their historical and literary contempories. For instance, here is an excerpt from <a href="http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2008/04/kephale-in-philo.html">one of her articles</a> about how the word "kephale" ("head") was used by Philo of Alexandria:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The "head" is the virtuous person. I see no indication that this person has ruling authority. In another book, Philo gives an example of this kind of person, Philadelphus,</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> "Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, was the third in succession after Alexander, the monarch who subdued Egypt; and he was, in all virtues which can be displayed in government, the most excellent sovereign, not only of all those of his time, but of all that ever lived; so that even now, after the lapse of so many generations, his fame is still celebrated, as having left many instances and monuments of his magnanimity in the cities and districts of his kingdom, so that even now it is come to be a sort of proverbial expression to call excessive magnificence, and zeal, for honour and splendour in preparation, Philadelphian, from his name; (30) and, in a word, the whole family of the Ptolemies was exceedingly eminent and conspicuous above all other royal families, and among the Ptolemies, Philadelphus was the most illustrious; for all the rest put together scarcely did as many glorious and praiseworthy actions as this one king did by himself, being, as it were, the leader of the herd, and in a manner the head of all the kings." <a href="http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book25.html">On Moses II:29</a> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><b><i>Here "head" means "most illustrious" and simply cannot mean "authority over" since Philadelphus is head of the kings in his family who lived before him and followed him. He simply never had authority over the other kings in chronological succession with him. Was Philadelphus really the "ruling authority" over his own father? </i></b></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">. . . Much still needs to be done to release men and women from a ruler - subject relationship, and allow them to enter into a relationship of hesed, which is "covenant love" and is simply called kindness, or lovingkindness in the King James Bible. The scriptures are so clear on the fact that hesed is the core value in relationships.</span> [Emphasis added.]</blockquote>
At the time I first encountered her blog, Suzanne McCarthy's day job was teaching special-needs children. Her gentle graciousness in imparting <a href="http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2008/07/dignity-of-choice.html">the wisdom she gained from these children</a> seemed to shine a light into my soul:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The learning goals for the Down's syndrome child are to have her identify and express her choice or personal preference. The student also learns appropriate group behaviour and how to act as hostess and leader of the group. She plans, buys and prepares the food. She cleans up. She passes the food around and passes the pen for other students to record their choice. It is her event. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">Experiencing and expressing personal autonomy is essential to psychological health. These students are more than just trainable. We do not train even a child of the most limited ability as if she were anything less than fully human. She also has the experience of being the leader of the group. She controls the pace and responses. We each need the experience of functioning as a leader. We ask this for all of us, that we would also be able to experience and express choice in ways that are respectful of other people.</span></blockquote>
In a comment on her own post, Ms. McCarthy adds:<span style="color: #660000;"> "I thought that it was an important statement on authority/permission and the individual. We do not restrict even children to total submission." </span><br />
<br />
To be human, she says, is to be able to make choices for oneself, to have personal agency. Even those we might consider the least capable need the dignity of self-expression, the experience of autonomy, and a chance to try leadership. Here is "do unto others" in a nutshell. And here is the definitive answer to male headship, in a post where she never overtly mentions the topic. If full humanity cannot be realized in a state of constant subordination, how can we Christians consign women to just such a state?<br />
<br />
It seemed to me that I could hear Jesus saying, "I had Downs syndrome, and you helped me learn to make my own choices. I was a special needs child, and you gave me dignity. I had limited abilities, and you let me experience leadership. Inasmuch as you have done this to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me."<br />
<br />
Later, Suzanne began blogging on <a href="http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/">BLT: Bible Literature Translation</a>, and she, with the other members of that group, ended up inviting me to join. To be honest, with my simple Bachelor of Arts, I have always had a bit of an inferiority complex about posting my stuff among the much more erudite offerings of my fellow members-- but Suzanne McCarthy made a special effort to make me feel valued as a contributor, however infrequently I posted.<br />
<br />
In January 2014 Suzanne <a href="http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2014/01/06/coming-out/">announced on BLT</a> that she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It was in the context of this that she shared her post <a href="http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2014/01/06/there-are-worse-things-than-dying/">There are Worse Things than Dying</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">No matter what, the overwhelming trauma of living 30 years in complementarianism will not fade. The further away I get, the more I experience a normal, loving life, the more I realize that I lived those 30 years in severe physical and psychological pain and trauma. I will never be able to describe the absolute terror of living 30 years in a form of bondage that was supposedly willed on me, not by culture, not by my own stupidity, but by God when he created the world. That is what I believed. I tremble as I write this. It brings on nausea and shaking. It was completely terrible. But that is what Carson teaches, but he has never experienced the trauma himself. He wills it on the other sex. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Not all women experience complementarianism the way I did. However, the reality is that not once, while I was in the situation, did I express my true feelings about this belief. How would anyone know what women caught in this web of suppression really think? In the situation, there was a kind of numbness that keeps one going. There is a way to live and not live, at the same time. That is what it was like.</span></blockquote>
I did not experience complementarianism in marriage like that, but I do know and have experienced how God's name is taken in vain when it is used as an instrument of power and control. As I read her words, I was humbled and blessed by the transparency and openness with which Suzanne McCarthy wrote. Her writing was embued with the power of her mind and the beauty of her heart, and I have to say it has spoken to me as few others have in my life.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it's also because she loved the wild places like I do, and could write about them <a href="http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2014/01/09/voice/">like this</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
I am looking out my window<br />
at the mountain now<br />
That we climbed last fall<br />
To train for further climbs we said<br />
But we didn’t really know.</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
From the summit<br />
we gazed down<br />
On straits and islands<br />
To the west<br />
On city to the south</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
And to the north<br />
The serried ranks<br />
Of mauve tinted peaks<br />
Reached to infinity.</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
We lay spreadeagled<br />
on the soft sand table<br />
The very topmost leaf of land<br />
From which everywhere<br />
Is down</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
And the ravens dipped<br />
Out of the wild blue sky<br />
And the thrumming beat<br />
of their broad wings<br />
Echoed through our bones<br />
And their black serrated spans<br />
pinned us to the earth</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
Then we hurried down<br />
Heels digging in the gravel<br />
And promised to each other<br />
That we would return next summer</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
With pencils and paper,<br />
Sketchpad and notebook<br />
And a day’s worth of food and water</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
But we never did.</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
Instead</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
The mountain came to me<br />
And I lay myself down<br />
Face to the moss carpet<br />
That edges the creeks<br />
You cross as you ascend</div>
<div style="color: #141310; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 22.0000019073486px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 0px;">
This is the return<br />
To the earth before Adam and Eve<br />
When we were children playing<br />
In the land before time<br />
I see the children playing</div>
-- that I feel as if we were in some way kindred spirits, even though we never personally met.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I will miss you, Suzanne McCarthy. One day in eternity, I hope to take your hand and tell you how much you have meant to me. </div>
Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-24710136702708086912015-06-05T22:29:00.001-07:002015-06-05T22:30:31.461-07:00Good Stuff - April - May 2015Here are some of the things I have found most interesting online since the beginning of April.*<br />
<br />
<u><b>On racial injustice:</b></u><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/04/30/how-western-media-would-cover-baltimore-if-it-happened-elsewhere/">How Western Media Would Cover Baltimore if it Happened Elsewhere</a> [or rather, if it happened right where it did happen, but the USA were a third-world country]:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">International leaders expressed concern over the rising tide of racism and state violence in America, especially concerning the treatment of ethnic minorities in the country and the corruption in state security forces around the country when handling cases of police brutality. The latest crisis is taking place in Baltimore, Maryland, a once-bustling city on the country’s Eastern Seaboard, where an unarmed man named Freddie Gray died from a severed spine while in police custody. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Black Americans, a minority ethnic group, are killed by state security forces at a rate higher than the white majority population . . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The United Kingdom expressed concern over the troubling turn of events in America in the last several months. The country’s foreign ministry released a statement: “We call on the American regime to rein in the state security agents who have been brutalizing members of America’s ethnic minority groups. The equal application of the rule of law, as well as the respect for human rights of all citizens, black or white, is essential for a healthy democracy.” Britain has always maintained a keen interest in America, a former colony.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.colorlines.com/articles/were-dying-too">We're Dying Too</a> by Andrea J. Ritchie at Colorlines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In the popular imagination a victim of a police shooting is almost always that of a young black man. Media headlines, presidential speeches, and rally chants all paint a picture of police violence as a problem plaguing black communities, but really, we’re only talking about young men. This time, the life of the unarmed black person taken was a young woman’s.<br /> <br />Boyd is one of hundreds of black women killed by police whose name has not grabbed national headlines or galvanized national movements. Chicago alone has witnessed the killings of Frankie Perkins, who police choked to death because they erroneously believed that she had swallowed drugs; LaTanya Haggerty, whose cell phone was mistaken for a gun; and Angelique Styles, who police fatally shot after coming to her home to address a domestic dispute. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Sadly, these stories are not unique—although each black woman killed was. There are literally countless others we’ll never know because there is no official data about the number of police killings being collected and because black women’s stories rarely gain media attention. </span></blockquote>
<a href="http://divinity.duke.edu/community-student-life/divinity-magazine/spring-2015/she-who-sets-son-free">She Who the Son Sets Free: Black Womanist Resistance in Context</a> by Eboni Marshall Turman at Divinity Magazine:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Because black women’s bodies sit at the intersection of racialized subjugation on the one hand and gendered subjugation on the other, their experiences and distinct contributions are not only marginalized and caricatured but often rendered fictitious, as if black women do not know for themselves that their stories are true. Womanist theology recognizes that black women “are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes … in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14, KJV).</span></blockquote>
<b><u>On Christian Fundamentalism (and Recent Related Events)</u>:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/56036">Faith in the System, or Faith in Jesus?</a> by Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[T]he evangelical Christianity that I spent most of my adult life studying and teaching, is not, in the final analysis about Jesus, except insofar as Jesus is a part of the system. It is faith in the Bible that is more fundamental. It is believing in the system that is crucial. They are not just making a claim that reading the Bible aright leads to Jesus, it’s more than that. It is that the Bible is a divinely given systematic presentation of an entire worldview that must be believed in its entirety for one to be a faithful Christian (along with having “accepted” Jesus, of course). Indeed, beyond that, if we allow one crack in the wall of this system, society itself will become subject to moral decay, chaos, and ultimately destruction. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">When your faith is in a system, this system becomes your “platform.” </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Those who hold to it become the “party” of those defined by allegiance to the system. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The party begins to function as a “political” entity. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And the whole thing becomes a “partisan” affair in which faithfulness is defined as defending the system against all who suggest any other way.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2015/05/modesty-is-causing-women-to-stumble.html">Modesty is Causing Women to Stumble</a> by PerfectNumber at Tell Me Why the World is Weird:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">If you say something that causes a woman to stumble- to believe the lie that she's not good enough and she should feel shame because of her body- that's her own responsibility. <b>Of course it's not your fault. Except that it totally is</b>, and you have a responsibility to not contribute to a culture that heaps this kind of shame on your sisters in Christ. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">So the next time you want to make a comment on what women should or shouldn't wear, stop and think first. Will my words cause someone to stumble? (Your opinions on what's sexy are good and God-given, but they are meant to be shared only with your spouse, not the general public.) When in doubt, you can ask your mother or sister for their advice.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-duggars-how-fundamentalisms.html">The Duggars: How Fundamentalist Teachings on Sexuality Create Predatory Behavior</a> at Diary of an Autodidact:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[I]n the cases of all these cases of sexual assault within [Christian Fundamentalist] Patriarchy, we want to be able to dismiss them as outliers. Bad acts by bad people. Josh Duggar is a child molester, so we just keep him away from kids, and everything will be fine. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And then we NEVER have to address the damage that our poisonous teachings on sexuality are causing. It is not an accident that we are attracting (and paying) narcissistic predators like Gothard and Phillips. And it is not an accident that there are problems with assault in Patriarchal families. At some point, one can't just blame bad luck for the lightning strikes. We have to admit we have been standing outside in the storm, holding a metal pole. We attract bad actors, and we make predatory acts by those who would not otherwise have been predators more likely. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">True, let's remove the bad actors, but let's not ignore the other source of poison: bad beliefs and teachings.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://thecommandmentsofmen.blogspot.com/2015/05/weaponized-grace.html">Weaponized Grace</a> by Lewis at Commandments of Men:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In any setting - legal, cultural, religious - <i><b>justice</b></i> must first be established when people have been harmed or wronged. It's the ONLY way a victim can be the priority. The ONLY way. Once you figure out how justice shapes up, then, and only then, can you start talking about grace or mercy for the victimizer. All of these people clamoring for "grace" to be immediately shown to Josh Duggar would feel entirely different were one of their daughters a victim of his crime. No matter what came out of their mouth, their heart would <b><i>demand</i></b> justice. Holding other people to standards by which you won't truly measure yourself is always ugly, and always lacking in genuine integrity.<br /><br />People can hide behind the idea that his victims "forgave" him, but those of us who know the culture know they had a choice between "forgiveness" and being a familial AND religious outcast. They would be told, over and over again, how much of a sinner they are/were until they caved in and "forgave". In other words, "grace" would be weaponized against them.</span></blockquote>
<b><u>On gender roles</u>:</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/revangelical/2015/05/31/there-are-no-biblical-men.html">There Are No "Biblical Men"</a> by Brandan Robertson at Revangelical:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">As I have studied the cultural context surrounding the New Testament writings and early Christianity, it has become astoundingly clear to me that Dr. Rainey (and subsequently many other evangelicals) definition of masculinity is derived much more from the Greco-Roman culture than from any clear teachings of Christ. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In the Greco-Roman world, there was an idealized version of manhood that all men were to aspire to become like. It is, for instance, a Platonic ideal that men should separate themselves from emotions and passions. It is from within the Greco-Roman culture men are seen as providers, leaders, and protectors of their families. But what of men who don’t have families? What of men who are deeply emotive and creative? According to the definition and logic of the culture of Ancient Rome and of many evangelicals today, they are seen to be less than masculine. . .<br /> <br />Any attempt to construct a Biblical model for masculinity proves to be an impossible task because even Christ himself, along with many other men in the New Testament, are constantly being called in to conflict with the predominate model of masculinity of their day. . . What we see demonstrated in the New Testament is a call to embrace the fullness of our unique identity in their Creator, whatever that may look like, rather than to conform to our cultures standards of manliness.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/treating-sons-like-daughters/">Here's What It Would Look Like If We Treated Our Sons Like We Treat Our Daughters</a> by Lori Day at Everyday Feminism:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Logan is an active preschooler. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">As he runs through the house, you hear the tap-tap-tapping of his little shiny dress shoes on the hardwood floors. Occasionally, he slides in them and goes down on his bum, but he gets right back up again. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Outside is a new swing set. He loves to try to run up the slide, but it’s tricky in those smooth-soled shoes. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">When he wears them to preschool, <b>the teachers notice that it’s hard for him to run and climb like the girls</b>, but they gush over how handsome he looks in them. . . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">***</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Middle school!</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It’s a whole new world with different classrooms, different teachers, and kids who seem to have changed a lot over the summer.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: #660000;">Sometimes he pretends to be dumb so girls will like him.</span> </b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Logan feels some pressure to conform. He wants to dress like the other boys in clothes that you and his father feel are a bit too clingy and revealing.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>He notices how hot and sexy all of the boys are on television and in the movies, and he wants to be hot and sexy too, so he rolls up the bottoms of his turquoise shorts to make them shorter, hoping not to receive a dress code violation.</b></span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">He has mastered the ability to look around nonchalantly as he walks down the hall, checking to be sure the girls are admiring his body.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">*** </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Logan is now an adult in his final year of college, and beginning to interview for jobs after graduation. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">He always dresses well for his interviews, wearing a slimming outfit that makes him look both professional and attractive. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">As he navigates the city streets that he hopes will connect him to a future full of happiness and success, he passes by billboards and bus ads of men in G-strings with flawless, Photoshopped bodies. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">He barely notices them. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: #660000;">As he mentally rehearses for an upcoming interview, he walks down the sidewalk, lost in thought. “Smile, baby!” a woman calls out to him. “You look more handsome when you smile.”</span></b></blockquote>
<br />
<u><b>And finally, this beautiful mingling of sorrow and mercy that sounds a note of hope through it all:</b></u><br />
<br />
<a href="http://shelovesmagazine.com/2015/reading-bible-red-pen/">Reading the Bible With a Red Pen</a> by Esther Emery at SheLoves Magazine:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Now, I read the Bible and all over the thin and crinkling pages I see the madness. I see the hatred, the nationalism, the patriarchy, the appalling injustices. I see Jael, who invited her enemy into her tent and nailed his head to the ground with a tent pin. I see Saul, who lost God’s favor for failing to annihilate his enemy down to the last child and head of cattle. I see the language of homophobia, misogyny and violence … woven right into the fabric of redemption. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>I see God’s story of love and liberation, woven tighter than I ever dreamed with the reality of suffering</b>. God’s threads, tied into our threads. God’s eyes, on the darkest places of the heart. No life unredeemable. No hatred or oppression invisible. No suffering too unspeakable to be given voice. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I don’t like this, but I think it’s true. <b>We are all threaded into this earthly world, tied right into this history of bloodshed and domination.</b> When are we the ones who are sinned against? And when are we the sinners? We can’t always tell. This fabric is woven tighter than we thought. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Though I might know and love compassion—and I do—yet still I have given my voice to the mob, sometimes by choosing silence. Yet still I have given my arms to stones that kill. I have been wrong as well as right. The Bible cries out to my heart to seek redemption, transformation, and holy hope.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">///<br /><br /><b>The next time I read the Bible I will read it like food instead of words.</b> I will drink it like salty water. I will feed the thirst of my soul with it, even with this brutally rendered portrait of a broken world, confessing itself at every turn in need of redemption.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
------------------<br />
*Where there is emphasis in any quote, it appears in the original.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-30843992700092710932015-05-23T07:00:00.000-07:002015-06-16T09:01:59.142-07:00The Man as "Prophet, Priest and King" of Wife & ChildrenThe teaching that a man is the "prophet, priest and king" of his home isn't new. I've certainly heard it before. In fact, the fundamentalist website <a href="https://ncfic.org/blog/posts/father_as_prophet_king_priest_william_gurnall_1616_1679">National Center for Family-Integrated Churches</a> recently reprinted a piece written in the 1600s by a Puritan named William Gurnall. Here's a sample:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Every father hath the care of souls upon him. He is prophet, king, and priest in his own house, and from these will appear his duty. . . How comes it to pass that many...children, when they come to be themselves heads of families, are so unable to be their relations’ mouth to God in prayer, but because they have in their [childhood] lived in prayerless families and were kept in ignorance of this duty...?</span></blockquote>
In those times, of course, it was simply assumed by society at large that men were to be in authority over their wives and families, so Gurnall quotes a number of Old Testament passages about the Biblical authority roles of prophet, king and priest, and applies them to husbands and fathers. I disagree, of course, with Gurnall's interpretation, but it isn't a particularly surprising one. The ancient authority positions of prophet, priest and king were held in the Bible by numerous human beings. Since male heads of families were also in authority positions, Bible passages about the roles and duties of such authorities would naturally be applied to them. However, I might point out that <a href="http://tudorhistory.org/elizabeth/">Elizabeth I</a> was Queen of England from 1558 to 1603, and Gurnall lived from 1616 to 1679. He would not have been unfamiliar with the concept of women sometimes fulfilling authority positions, and he would probably have admitted that some of the Old Testament prophets were in fact female, and that <a href="http://biblehub.com/topical/h/huldah.htm">at least one, Huldah</a>, was treated as a voice of authority by an Old Testament king.<br />
<br />
In fact, Gurnall's quote above uses the word "children" and not "sons" as those who can come to be heads of families, probably recognizing that in his time (the 17th century), <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-capital/2014/09/mistress-miss-mrs-or-ms-untangling-shifting-history-women-s-titles">some women were indeed heads of their households</a>. Gurnall does, however, focus on fathers as "prophets, priests and kings," and though I think Jesus actually taught something quite different about Christians and cultural authority, Gurnall's words are at least understandable in his social context.<br />
<br />
Recently, though, I learned that a disturbing new trend is placing a very troubling contemporary twist on this notion. <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/christianpatriarchialwatchlist/home-1">A Sampling of Prophet/Priest/King Teaching</a> by the Christian Patriarchal Watch List provides a number of links and quotes exposing this new trend. <br />
<br />
Here's an example from <a href="http://www.charismamag.com/spirit/devotionals/loving-god?view=article&id=18610:exploring-a-husband-s-role-as-a-prophet-priest-and-king&catid=1540">Charisma Magazine</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Some men think Christ is Jesus’ last name. Of course, Christ is not a name but a title for Jesus that means “Messiah” or “anointed one.” Jesus loved the church—His family—as its Christ, or anointed one. Since husbands are to love their wives in the same way as the anointed one loves His family, they need to know exactly what Jesus was anointed to do. In the New Testament, as we shall see, <i>husbands become anointed ones</i>.</span>[Emphasis added.]<span style="color: #660000;"><br /> <br />In theology, Christ occupies the classic threefold office of prophet, priest and king. Let’s explore how this relates to you. </span></blockquote>
Notice what is happening here. The authority positions of prophet, priest and king, as held by various individuals in the Old Testament, are indeed brought together spiritually in the Person of Christ in the New Testament. But before Christ, no two of these positions were held in the Bible by the same human being. Certain men of the Levite tribe were priests, but there is no record of one of them ever becoming a prophet. The line of anointed kings came from David, of the tribe of Judah, so the kings were not priests and the priests were not kings. Prophets came from various tribes but were not priests or kings.<br />
<br />
God apparently thought it best not to concentrate too much authority or power in the hands of one person-- except in the Person of His divine Son. Christ is the "anointed one" or "Messiah" precisely because He is not merely human, but "the Word become flesh" (John 1:14). However, this concept of separation of powers did not carry through into the Christendom of the 17th-century West, where kings ruled by divine right and the monarch of England was also the ruler of England's Church. Gurnall thus sees no reason not to combine all three authoritative roles in the person of a male head of household. However, as I have understood this traditional teaching, it has not gone so far as to equate male headship authority with the divine anointing of Jesus Christ.<br />
<br />
Until now.<br />
<br />
Here's an excerpt from Rob Flood over at <a href="https://www.blogger.com/t%20has%20been%20widely%20accepted%20that%20Christ's%20activity%20on%20behalf%20of%20the%20church%20can%20be%20summarized%20in%20these%20three%20functional%20titles:%20Prophet,%20Priest%20and%20King.%20A%20brief%20look%20at%20each%20will%20give%20us%20keen%20insight%20into%20our%20role%20as%20husbands.%20%20Christ%20as%20Prophet:%20A%20prophet%20is%20someone%20who%20brings%20forth%20the%20Word%20of%20God%20to%20mankind.%20He%20is%20responsible%20for%20accurately%20discerning%20what%20God%20is%20saying%20and%20communicating%20that%20to%20others.%20Christ%20performed%20this%20prophetic%20role%20perfectly%20in%20two%20ways.%20First,%20He%20accurately%20spoke%20and%20taught%20the%20Word%20and%20words%20of%20God%20to%20others.%20Second,%20He%20was%20the%20actual%20expression%20of%20God%20and%20the%20Word%20made%20flesh.%20%20The%20Husband%20as%20Prophet:%20We%20have%20the%20amazing%20privilege%20of%20bringing%20forth%20the%20Word%20of%20God%20to%20our%20wives.%20While%20this%20might%20involve%20some%20actual%20Bible-teaching%20time,%20we%20need%20to%20see%20the%20various%20other%20forms%20this%20should%20take.%20We%20can%20proclaim%20His%20Word%20and%20His%20will%20as%20we%20counsel%20our%20wives,%20as%20we%20make%20family%20decisions%20and%20as%20we%20plan%20for%20our%20family's%20future.%20The%20common%20ingredient%20in%20all%20of%20its%20forms%20is%20God's%20Word.%20Without%20the%20Word%20of%20God,%20a%20prophet%20has%20nothing%20to%20say;%20his%20words%20are%20empty%20and%20meaningless.%20%20In%20addition%20to%20bringing%20forth%20the%20Word%20in%20our%20actions,%20we%20too%20must%20personify%20the%20Word%20made%20flesh%20in%20us.%20We%20must%20model%20the%20truth%20we%20are%20teaching.%20We%20must%20personify%20what%20we%20desire%20our%20wives%20and%20our%20marriages%20to%20become.%20Without%20personally%20living%20the%20truth%20we%20proclaim,%20we%20can%20expect%20no%20higher%20praise%20from%20Christ%20than%20the%20Pharisees%20received.%20(Matthew%2023:2-4)%20%20Christ%20as%20Priest:%20A%20priest%20is%20an%20intercessor:%20someone%20who%20seeks%20God%20on%20behalf%20of%20someone%20else.%20As%20Priest,%20Jesus%20is%20constantly%20seeking%20God%20on%20our%20behalf.%20Through%20Him,%20we%20are%20made%20holy,%20righteous,%20and%20acceptable%20to%20God.%20Yet,%20this%20Priest%20is%20different%20from%20all%20others%20in%20that%20He%20did%20not%20sacrifice%20a%20lamb,%20dove,%20or%20bull.%20This%20Priest%20sacrificed%20Himself%20on%20our%20behalf.%20The%20Husband%20as%20Priest:%20As%20we%20love%20our%20wives,%20we%20must%20serve%20as%20priest.%20Our%20wives%20and%20marriages%20need%20prayer.%20We%20have%20the%20privilege%20and%20duty%20of%20petitioning%20God%20on%20their%20behalf.%20We%20should%20pray%20for%20their%20purity,%20their%20protection,%20their%20joy,%20their%20faith,%20and%20their%20burdens.%20We%20should%20pray%20for%20their%20success%20as%20a%20wife,%20as%20a%20mother,%20and%20as%20a%20woman%20of%20God.%20%20We%20must%20again%20follow%20Christ's%20example%20and%20allow%20our%20priestly%20sacrifice%20to%20be%20our%20very%20selves.%20Hebrews%2012%20tells%20us%20that%20Jesus%20looked%20past%20His%20own%20sacrifice%20to%20the%20joy%20that%20would%20occur%20on%20the%20other%20side.%20With%20that%20in%20mind,%20look%20at%20all%20that%20your%20wife%20could%20become.%20Consider%20what%20God%20might%20want%20to%20do%20with%20her,%20in%20her,%20and%20through%20her.%20And,%20for%20that%20joy%20set%20before%20you,%20willingly%20endure%20when%20you%20are%20called%20to%20sacrifice%20yourself.%20In%20so%20doing,%20you%20will%20love%20your%20wife%20as%20Christ%20loves%20His%20church.%20%20Christ%20as%20King:%20A%20king%20is%20someone%20who%20is%20supreme%20or%20preeminent.%20As%20our%20King,%20Christ%20deserves%20our%20honor,%20our%20praise,%20our%20obedience,%20and%20our%20servitude.%20He%20is%20in%20charge%20%E2%80%A6%20the%20undisputed%20leader%20of%20the%20church.%20Paul%20speaks%20many%20times%20of%20Jesus%20as%20the%20head%20of%20the%20church.%20Yet,%20while%20this%20King%20rules%20and%20reigns,%20He%20also%20serves%20and%20ministers%20to%20His%20people.%20His%20rule%20is%20peculiar%20in%20that%20He%20models%20leadership%20by%20serving.%20He%20says%20that%20the%20greatest%20among%20His%20people%20will%20be%20those%20who%20serve.%20He%20also%20is%20an%20accessible%20King.%20In%20many%20courts%20throughout%20history,%20subjects%20were%20never%20permitted%20to%20be%20in%20the%20presence%20of%20their%20king.%20King%20Jesus%20invites%20us%20in;%20He%20leaves%20open%20the%20door%20to%20His%20throne%20room.%20%20The%20Husband%20as%20King:%20Ephesians%205:23%20makes%20it%20clear;%20the%20husband%20is%20the%20head%20of%20the%20wife.%20In%20essence,%20kingship%20undeniably%20belongs%20to%20the%20husband.%20As%20we%20embrace%20that,%20we%20as%20husbands%20must%20lead.%20We%20must%20lead%20clearly%20and%20boldly.%20We%20must%20be%20out%20there%20on%20the%20edge%20looking%20to%20the%20provision%20and%20the%20protection%20of%20our%20kingdom.%20To%20do%20less%20is%20to%20fall%20short%20of%20our%20calling%20to%20headship.%20The%20privilege%20is%20ours%20to%20rule%20our%20home.%20%20However,%20we%20are%20not%20called%20simply%20to%20take%20our%20crowns%20and%20dominate%20our%20wives.%20We%20must%20rule%20as%20Christ%20rules%20%E2%80%A6%20with%20humility.%20He%20modeled%20precisely%20how%20He%20wants%20us%20to%20love%20our%20wives.%20As%20our%20King,%20Christ%20knelt%20and%20washed%20the%20feet%20of%20His%20disciples.%20We%20must%20follow%20His%20example%20and%20serve.%20Lead%20boldly,%20yet%20serve.%20Never%20let%20the%20brawn%20of%20your%20leadership%20outweigh%20the%20sacrifice%20of%20your%20leadership.%20Christ%20kept%20them%20in%20perfect%20balance;%20that%20is%20our%20calling%20as%20well.">Family Life</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It has been widely accepted that Christ's activity on behalf of the church can be summarized in these three functional titles: Prophet, Priest and King. A brief look at each will give us keen insight into our role as husbands.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Christ as Prophet: A prophet is someone who brings forth the Word of God to mankind. He is responsible for accurately discerning what God is saying and communicating that to others. Christ performed this prophetic role perfectly in two ways. First, He accurately spoke and taught the Word and words of God to others. Second, He was the actual expression of God and the Word made flesh.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The Husband as Prophet: We have the amazing privilege of bringing forth the Word of God to our wives. While this might involve some actual Bible-teaching time, we need to see the various other forms this should take. We can proclaim His Word and His will as we counsel our wives, as we make family decisions and as we plan for our family's future. The common ingredient in all of its forms is God's Word. Without the Word of God, a prophet has nothing to say; his words are empty and meaningless.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In addition to bringing forth the Word in our actions, we too must personify the Word made flesh in us. We must model the truth we are teaching. We must personify what we desire our wives and our marriages to become. Without personally living the truth we proclaim, we can expect no higher praise from Christ than the Pharisees received. (Matthew 23:2-4)</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Christ as Priest: A priest is an intercessor: someone who seeks God on behalf of someone else. As Priest, Jesus is constantly seeking God on our behalf. Through Him, we are made holy, righteous, and acceptable to God. Yet, this Priest is different from all others in that He did not sacrifice a lamb, dove, or bull. This Priest sacrificed Himself on our behalf.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The Husband as Priest: As we love our wives, we must serve as priest. Our wives and marriages need prayer. We have the privilege and duty of petitioning God on their behalf. We should pray for their purity, their protection, their joy, their faith, and their burdens. We should pray for their success as a wife, as a mother, and as a woman of God.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">We must again follow Christ's example and allow our priestly sacrifice to be our very selves. Hebrews 12 tells us that Jesus looked past His own sacrifice to the joy that would occur on the other side. With that in mind, look at all that your wife could become. Consider what God might want to do with her, in her, and through her. And, for that joy set before you, willingly endure when you are called to sacrifice yourself. In so doing, you will love your wife as Christ loves His church.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Christ as King: A king is someone who is supreme or preeminent. As our King, Christ deserves our honor, our praise, our obedience, and our servitude. He is in charge … the undisputed leader of the church. Paul speaks many times of Jesus as the head of the church. Yet, while this King rules and reigns, He also serves and ministers to His people. His rule is peculiar in that He models leadership by serving. He says that the greatest among His people will be those who serve. He also is an accessible King. In many courts throughout history, subjects were never permitted to be in the presence of their king. King Jesus invites us in; He leaves open the door to His throne room.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The Husband as King: Ephesians 5:23 makes it clear; the husband is the head of the wife. In essence, kingship undeniably belongs to the husband. As we embrace that, we as husbands must lead. We must lead clearly and boldly. We must be out there on the edge looking to the provision and the protection of our kingdom. To do less is to fall short of our calling to headship. The privilege is ours to rule our home.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">However, we are not called simply to take our crowns and dominate our wives. We must rule as Christ rules … with humility. He modeled precisely how He wants us to love our wives. As our King, Christ knelt and washed the feet of His disciples. We must follow His example and serve. Lead boldly, yet serve. Never let the brawn of your leadership outweigh the sacrifice of your leadership. Christ kept them in perfect balance; that is our calling as well.</span></blockquote>
I applaud the article's insistence that husbands should serve and not dominate their wives-- but what this article is doing is turning husbands into little Christs in their homes. Men are essentially being told to stand in the place of Jesus to their wives and children, setting themselves between them and God as an intermediary, exercising Christ's spiritual authority over them, and "personifying the Word made flesh" to them.<br />
<br />
I believe the New Testament does teach that followers of Jesus are a "kingdom of priests" (1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 5:10), but that applies to women and men alike, and there is no New Testament passage that says one group of Christ's followers has the right to claim Christ's own anointing to take authority over others of Christ's followers. There is a real problem with taking one verse out of Ephesians 5, "The husband is head of the wife as Christ is head of the church," and reading that as if it meant, "the husband is everything to the wife that Christ is to the church." As K. Bonikowsky's blog <a href="https://kbonikowsky.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/women-in-the-text-do-women-need-another-priest/">The Happy Surprise</a> points out:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I think we all agree that husbands do not literally become Christ. Husbands do not literally atone for their wives’ sin. Husbands are not the voice of God to their wives. Husbands do not have absolute authority over their wives’ lives. How do we know this? Because of clear passages elsewhere. </span></blockquote>
Since Acts 4:12 shows Peter and John proclaiming, <span style="color: #660000;">"Salvation is found in no one else [but Jesus Christ], for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved," </span>orthodox Christianity does not allow that husbands can be the saviors of their wives, even though Ephesians 5:23 actually <i>says</i> "<span style="color: #660000;">For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, </span><i style="color: #660000;">of which he is the Savior </i>[emphasis added]<span style="color: #660000;">." </span>So the very wording of the passage itself shows that we <i>cannot</i> read it as meaning "the husband is everything to the wife that Christ is to the church." <br />
<br />
As I have shown in detail <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-bible-teach-male-headship-part-2.html">elsewhere</a>, I believe that Christ's role as "head" of the church would have been understood by the original biblical audience as a limited and very specific relationship, not a generalized statement of power and authority (for though Christ does have power and authority over the church, Christ's role as "head" is not about that):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“Head” of the church, therefore, would simply not have been seen by the original Ephesians readers as synonymous with “Lord” of the church. Neither would “head” of the wife have meant “lord” of the wife. Though Christ certainly is Lord of the church, He is also Savior, redeemer, sanctifier, recipient of worship, and Master of the church. But Paul deliberately limits husband’s role towards the wife, to being the “head.” <b><i>Husbands are not to appropriate to themselves any of Christ’s other roles, or seek to become as Christ to their wives. This would be idolatry, and to the extent churches today encourage married couples in such a practice, they are teaching idolatry. . .</i></b></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A <i>pater familias</i>, accustomed to a high and prominent position, and keeping Chapter 1 in mind as he read on through Chapter 5, would have understood that as “head” in Chapter 5, he was expected to “give himself” for his wife as Christ did for the church, with the result that the church was raised up to be glorious (Eph 5:25-27). Laying down his prominence of place in regards to his wife, and raising his wife up to be beside him in oneness, and exercising his social position on her behalf and for her good, is part of what it meant for a husband to be “head” to his wife as ‘body” in Ephesians 5. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The other place where the head-body metaphor is used for Christ and the church is in Chapter 4. Here Paul says, “But speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together. . . maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” Here the “head” is clearly seen as the source of growth and energy for the “body.” A <i>pater familias, </i>keeping this in mind as he read Chapter 5, would understand that as “head” in this sense, he was to “nourish and cherish” his wife as his own body (Eph 5:29).<br /><br />But nothing about “leading” or “having authority over” the church or the wife is mentioned as part of the “head to body” relationship anywhere in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Nowhere is Christ as “head“ spoken of in terms of “leading” or “ruling” the church. Nowhere is the husband told to “lead” his wife or “rule” his household. And to the original audience, which was expecting to hear such words, the absence of any such words would have shouted. </span></blockquote>
The fact is that even though Christ is in a position of divine authority over the church, and even though husbands in ancient Ephesus were also in a position of earthly authority over their wives, the Ephesians 5 passage is primarily about husbands imitating Christ in <i>laying down</i> power and authority, not in stepping into Christ's own anointing and using that to exercise even greater power. Jesus told His followers in Luke 22:25-27 and Matthew 20:25-27 that following Him simply wasn't about who got to be in charge. Though Jesus did in fact have the right to claim ultimate authority, He instead laid it down and took the place of a servant, and <i>that </i>is what we are to imitate. <br />
<br />
And yet looking at the "husband as prophet, priest and king" teachings being promulgated today, very little attention is paid to Christ's teachings, in the scramble to grab Christ's power:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Jesus was a prophet who spoke the Word of God to the people and was, in fact, the Word incarnate. A prophet speaks for God.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A husband is to be the family prophet. He represents God to his wife (and, by extension, his family, the fruit of their union). When his wife reacts emotionally, he calms her with God's wisdom. He proclaims the gospel of faith to his family. He provides biblical instruction and training to his wife and children without becoming legalistic. He prepares family devotions and encourages private devotions. He is the arbiter of family values. He insists on regular church attendance. He is a messenger from God to his family.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Husbands are to be the anointed spiritual leaders of their wives. God has anointed you to lead your wife as her prophet, priest and king. Because of the fall, your wife, according to Genesis 3:16, has a desire for you that is best rendered "a desire that borders on disease." </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><a href="http://www.charismamag.com/spirit/devotionals/loving-god?view=article&id=18610:exploring-a-husband-s-role-as-a-prophet-priest-and-king&catid=1540">Charisma Magazine: Exploring a Husband's Role as Prophet, Priest and King</a> by Patrick Morley</span></blockquote>
And:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> A husband can stand on the shoulders of others as he fulfills his prophetic responsibility to declare the truth of the Scriptures to his wife. He confronts sin and calls his wife to repentance . . . First, confronting sin and calling a wife to repentance may rock the domestic boat. A husband may decide he doesn't want to incur his wife's wrath. But he needs to obey God's call regardless of how his wife will respond. He may also fail to confront his wife ' s sin because he has a soft view of what it means to love her. Pointing out sin seems harsh and judgmental, not loving. But our example here is Christ, who loves us too much to overlook our sin. The same Prophet who wept over Jerusalem, pronouncing judgment on Israel, comes to us today by His Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin and to lead us to righteousness. If we begin to understand the consequences of sin for ourselves and for future generations, we will not think it loving to ignore or overlook our wives ' ongoing patterns of sinful behavior.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/christianpatriarchialwatchlist/home-1">Dennis Rainey, "Building Strong Families,"</a> quoted on the Patriarchal Watch List</span></blockquote>
Notice the complete lack of reciprocity here. The husband is the sole arbiter of family values, and he alone is treated as capable of teaching, training or proclaiming the gospel, while his wife (who, we would hope, is an adult with some understanding of her own faith) is mentioned only in terms of receiving his teaching and being "calmed" when she gets "emotional." She needs her husband to represent her before God, raising the question of whether she is allowed her own access to God through Christ, despite 2 Timothy 2:5. Her "desire for her husband" according to Genesis 3:16 is interpreted <a href="http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/2010/05/desire-bordering-on-disease.html">in the most demeaning way possible, from a 19th-century male-written commentary</a>.<br />
<br />
And even though Matthew 18:15 shows that any Christian can take a Christian brother aside and point out sin to them, husbands are here given a special dispensation to point out sin in their wives in the same way Christ pronounced judgment on Jerusalem, while themselves appearing to need no such admonition. <br />
<br />
The Patriarchal Watch List also has on the same page a screen shot of this illuminating list:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A Man as Intercessor in Prayer<br />A Man as Director of Religious Worship<br />A Man as Mediator of Divine Blessing<br />A Man as Instructor in Sacred Scripture<br />A Man as Judge in Holy Things</span></blockquote>
Hmm. Apparently a scrotum is a miraculous organ which renders its bearer nearly divine, while lacking it turns his fellow human being into a creature nearly incapable of grasping spiritual things or approaching God.<br />
<br />
Look. I don't like to have to say something as harsh as this, but sometimes the truth has to be presented unvarnished. While degrading the image of God in female humanity, this pernicious teaching essentially removes Jesus from the lives of a woman and her children and replaces Him with the husband-father as Christ to them. Put bluntly, it is nothing short of blasphemy, and needs to be addressed as such.<br />
<br />
On its <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/christianpatriarchialwatchlist/home">home page</a> the Christian PatriarchalWatch List asks these highly pertinent questions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Many of the ideas espoused by these groups are in fact "Biblical", i.e. verses can be strung together without regard to cultural context or the larger trajectory of Scripture to advocate a return to the highly patriarchal, highly stratified, master/subject social norms of the ancient world that Jesus transcended and began to transform. Is this really the timeless, universal ideal, the highest and the best way to read our Bibles? In a world where religious extremism is using women's bodies and souls as its battleground, is this really what we want to be the face of Christ in our world? Is this hierarchical vision of how we are to relate across the gender line what we want for our daughters and our sons? WWJD? <i>What would Jesus Do?</i> That is a good spell test. Would he re-create a hierarchical social structure from the Old Testament? Would he advocate raising boys to grow up to have such an exalted status as kings/priests with such unilateral authority and power and girls to serve them? Or would he chide us, as he did his disciples who jockeyed for a place of preeminence at his right and left hand? </span>[Emphasis in original]</blockquote>
Husbands and fathers are not divinely anointed with Christ's threefold authority as Prophet, Priest and King! Husbands and fathers are our fellow human beings, made in the image of God but finite and fallen. In Matthew 23:9-11, Jesus said this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. But the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.</span></blockquote>
Brothers, please-- stop exalting yourselves. Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think (Romans 12:3). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.”</span></blockquote>
In the long run this human appropriation of what belongs only to Christ cannot stand, but is destined to fail. I suggest we all get back on shore before the ship sinks.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-30823649830465795362015-04-25T12:16:00.000-07:002015-04-27T09:13:37.483-07:00A Close Look at a Complementarian Argument<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://9marks.org/journal/complementarianism-the-local-church/editors-note/">Complementarianism and the Local Church</a> is an article by Jonathan Leeman on the <a href="http://9marks.org/about/what-does-9marks-do/">9 Marks</a> website, which is a conservative evangelical site dedicated to <span style="color: #660000;">"help[ing] pastors, future pastors, and church members see what a biblical church looks like, and to take practical steps for becoming one." </span>The site has published a series of articles on male headship, and the arguments are pretty much the same ones my various blog posts have rebutted though the last several years. But this one, which seems to be an introduction to its male headship series, was brought to my attention on another blog, and I'd like to take a closer look at what it's actually saying and the implications of its reasoning. The basic subject is what's wrong with egalitarianism-- so this is my egalitarian rebuttal. </div>
<br />
I'll present it section by section, followed by my thoughts.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The issue of gender roles in the church and home is not one of the nine marks. Nonetheless, we thought it would be useful to spend an issue of the 9Marks Journal exploring the pastoral significance of complementarianism. Complementarianism teaches that God created men and women equal in worth and dignity and yet he assigned them different roles in the church and home. Its counterpoint, egalitarianism, argues that you can only say men and women are equal in worth if you let both assume equal leadership in church or home.</span></blockquote>
It's nice that he identifies complementarianism (male headship in the church and home) as not being one of the essentials that 9 Marks focuses on in church life. There are some groups that consider complementarianism part of the gospel itself, and question the Christianity of those who don't agree-- but Leeman doesn't go that far. Also, the basic definition of egalitarianism above, at least doesn't set it up as a flimsy strawman position. I would add the caveat, however, that there<i> is </i>one way you can say men and women are equal in worth but still restrict women from equal leadership-- if you fall back on God's plan to do this to women as something mysterious that cannot be questioned. As I said <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-have-written-extensively-on-this-blog.html">in another blog post</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> Either women are not equal to men, because God created them with a certain lack of authority over themselves, or ability to lead others, that men do not lack. And this lack is <i>intrinsic to womanhood</i>, while any lack a particular man may have in the area of leadership, is simply an individual characteristic, not intrinsic to his manhood. This makes women, in their essence as women, inferior to men.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Or women are equal to men, but God simply decided that women, because they are women, despite lacking nothing that He gave men for authority over themselves or leadership of others, may not use that authority or leadership. In other words, they are to be under male authority even though God did not design them or create them to be suited for being under male authority. This makes God, in His essence, arbitrary and unjust. He makes rules without good reasons.</span></blockquote>
The gist of Leeman's argument, however, takes a third path. He argues that having authority is not actually any different than being under authority, and he does this by seemingly redefining authority. But before he gets there, he offers the basic argument that egalitarians are capitulating to worldly thinking rather than being submissive to the plain teaching of the Bible:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Egalitarianism possesses an obvious appeal in an individualistic age. Like the immigrant parent who abandoned the Old World with its castes or its aristocracies, egalitarianism looks affirmingly into the eyes of the little boy and the little girl and offers that quintessential American promise: “You can be anything you want to be.” Boundaries are gone. Ceilings have collapsed. God has given everyone certain talents. The game now is self-discovery and self-realization. Faithfulness requires us to discover and employ all our God-given potentialities. Like Madeline who says “Pooh pooh” to the tigers at the zoo, egalitarianism’s brave maxim is to one’s own self be true. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Egalitarianism depends upon the worldview of individualism. That doesn’t mean egalitarians are all self-centered. It means that individual desires and talents trump any class or category considerations. So the rule-makers should never keep anyone belonging to the class of “female” from being whatever she wants to be. And complementarians, admittedly, limit what members of this class can be in the home and church. Based on the egalitarian’s sense of justice, this is irrational. It is 2+2=5. Complementarianism is not just a different perspective, it defies an egalitarian’s basic assumptions about what it means to be human and is therefore dangerous. How many of history’s grand exploitations and terrors have rooted in the systemic prejudice of one group over another! </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">As such, the emotions and the rhetoric run hot, as they always do in political contests where the two sides appear irrational to one another. Why? Because our rationalities always derive from our gods. Or rather, what you take to be “most reasonable” or “most rational” is your god. A god cannot be questioned. A god is the unmoved mover. A god is the word or logic who cannot be overruled. Emotions boil hot because one’s gods hold one’s universe together and gives it meaning, so we go to battle for them.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Precisely here, then, is where the complementarian, in all of his or her worldly folly, leans in toward the egalitarian and warns, “Be careful you are not serving an idol, at least in this one area of your doctrine. You’ll have a pretty good idea that you are if, in spite of the plain teaching of the text, you’ll find some justification for re-interpreting it because your sense of justice can imagine it no other way.”</span></blockquote>
Let's examine this more closely. Egalitarians are wrong because of "individualism." And Leeman defines individualism in terms of individual desires and talents taking precedence over classes and categories of humans. The Bible, apparently, is not plagued by this problem of individualism. This would mean that New Testament doctrines are primarily meant to focus on our identity as members of categories and classes. This raises several questions, however. <br />
<br />
Why do Jesus and the Apostles put such emphasis on the necessity of following Christ, trusting Christ, obeying Christ <i>as an individual person</i>? Why didn't they simply preach to the leaders of the groups they were seeking to convert? Jesus could have talked to the heads of the synagogues in each town, gotten them to agree with His teachings, and then left them to instruct their congregations. Paul could have sought out the governors or the priests operating in Athens, in Corinth, in Rome. The leaders, once converted, could then have ordered their people to report for mass baptism.<br />
<br />
But it didn't work that way. In fact, many (if not most) analyses of individualism agree that Christianity has historically been a major contributor to that philosophy. As <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Individualism.aspx">Encyclopedia.com</a> says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Christianity contributed doctrines of the freedom of the will and personal salvation that added a further dimension to human individuality. Created as equal persons in God's image, human beings enjoy inherent dignity by virtue of the divine flame that burns within their souls. <i>Christian moral teaching replaced status, race, gender, occupation, and all other markers of social difference with one's individual orientation toward God as the determinant of the ultimate disposition of one's soul</i>. While Judaism had conveyed some overtones of personal salvation, the dominant relation with God was conditioned by the divine covenant with the Jewish people as a whole. In contrast, Jesus' message was directed to all people who were open to his words and treated them as individuals capable of receiving divine grace and blessing. Every person, as one of God's created, could, through individual effort and renunciation of worldly concerns, render him-or herself worthy for salvation. [Emphasis added.]</span></blockquote>
In fact, the idea of personal, individual salvation is one of the distinguishing marks of evangelicalism, and particularly of conservative evangelicalism-- to the point where it has been <a href="http://www.directionjournal.org/3/1/great-reversal-evangelism-versus-social.html">indicted</a> for its emphasis on personal, individual sin and atonement while tending to ignore many systemic, social evils. So the real issue seems to be not individualism, but a certain <i>aspect</i> of individualism. Should the focus on the individual apply only to personal salvation? Or should the value of the human individual mean that systemic injustices against individuals <i>because they are part of a restricted group</i> should be abolished? In other words, does the gospel apply only to our spiritual state before God-- or is it meant to "set the captives free" (Luke 4:18) in our earthly lives too?<br />
<br />
A while back I wrote <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-galatians-328-cannot-mean.html">What Galatians 3:28 Cannot Mean</a>, which rebuts the idea that when Paul said that in Christ the category and class distinctions of Jew and Greek, slave and free, and male and female no longer applied, he meant to separate our spiritual state from our earthly lives so that Gal. 3:28 only applies to spiritual salvation. Yet that is the main idea, really, that Leeman's argument is espousing. Any application of Galatians 3:28 to earthly, human classes and categories, so that women are set free of restrictions that apply to them as a class in their churches and homes, is "individualistic" and thus worldly and wrong. However, individualism in spiritual salvation is wholly embraced by evangelicals, and is in fact central to the "Marks" of Gospel and Evangelism in Leeman's own <a href="http://9marks.org/about/">9 Marks of a Healthy Church</a>.<br />
<br />
I would contend that the problem American Christians face is not individualism <i>per se</i>, but the sacred/secular split that spiritualizes the value of the individual and sees life almost exclusively in terms of personal sin and righteousness while ignoring or even condoning the unjust treatment of people as members of categories and classes. <br />
<br />
The final paragraph in Leeman's argument above includes this warning: <span style="color: #660000;">“Be careful you are not serving an idol, at least in this one area of your doctrine. You’ll have a pretty good idea that you are if, in spite of the plain teaching of the text, you’ll find some justification for re-interpreting it because your sense of justice can imagine it no other way.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
Taking a stand on the "plain teaching of the text" and accusing of idolatry those who disagree about how "plain" it is, seems to me to be a kind of spiritual bullying. It invokes the authority of God as a weapon to make sure the writer gets his way on what a particular proof-text means. As Zach Hunt puts it in his blog post <a href="http://zackhunt.net/2015/04/23/proof-texting-not-like-sins/">Why Proof-Texting is Not Like Other Sins</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">This sort of proof-texting – ripping a Bible verse out of context to prove a point – is the traditional weapon of choice in fundamentalism because it allows the soldier who wields it to destroy his or her enemy with a single verse while claiming the impenetrable high ground of clear Biblical authority.</span></blockquote>
There is, in fact, a principle of interpretation that evangelicals (including, I'm sure, Leeman himself) use all the time: If a particular verse, read at face value, appears to contradict a number of other verses, and especially if it appears to contradict the big-picture meanings of the texts considered together, <i>the particular verse must be re-examined. </i><br />
<br />
Consider, for instance, this individual text:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">She will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Timothy%202.15">1 Timothy 2:15</a>)</span></blockquote>
The plain sense of this verse is that women are saved through having babies, if they combine it with faith, love and holiness. But complementarians such as <a href="http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/when-women-face-their-curse-ravaged-homes">Kim Ransleben on the Desiring God Blog</a> re-interpret the text to be about the <i>sanctification</i> of women, not their salvation-- presumably because their sense of justice can imagine it no other way than that women, just like men, are saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Applying Leeman's own litmus test to this, re-reading the text in this way is idolatry, plain and simple. And yet an "idolatry" that clings to the overarching message of the gospel over the supposedly plain text of an individual verse, hardly seems unfaithful to God.<br />
<br />
So I would say that the problem is not in re-examining a verse that places women as a class, under the authority of men as a class, in light of the gospel message that we are all one in Christ Jesus. The problem is in bullying other Christians with threats of God's displeasure if they dare to re-examine what you, a fellow human being, have decided is "plain."<br />
<br />
The next section of Leeman's article goes like this:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">Complementarians imagine a different kind of home and church than egalitarians. They are just as acquainted with authority fallen, but they can better imagine authority redeemed. They know that being <i>in</i> authority is no better than being <i>under</i> authority, because both are assignments given by God for the sake of serving him and his praise. They know that redeemed authority creates, enlivens, and empowers, and it’s a shade short of silly to argue over who gets to empower and who gets to be empowered in God’s kingdom. In fact, if there is an advantage to be had, it doesn't belong to the person called to lay down his life, it belongs to the person who receives life because the first person lays his down. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The calculations of justice change just a bit in a kingdom where the king gives his life as a ransom for many; where he calls all of his citizens to surrender their lives so that they might gain them; and where he calls out a class of his citizens to specially demonstrate this self-sacrifice. Is there any “advantage” to climbing upon a cross? Not by any of this world’s tape measures. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The trouble with egalitarianism is that it continues to measure “advantage” and “authority” and “over/under” with the tape measures of this fallen world. It’s stuck believing that, even if there are occasional advantages to being <i>under </i>authority for training purposes, in the final analysis it is always better to be <i>over</i>. Like the mother of the sons of Zebedee, egalitarianism asks Jesus,<br /><br />Can my son sit at your right hand, while my daughter sits at your left, when you enter your kingdom?<br /> <br />And Jesus replies,<br /><br />Ah, my child, you still do not understand how authority works in my kingdom, but are thinking about it like the Gentiles do, where authority is always used to lord it over others, not to give your life as a ransom (see Matt. 20:20-28). </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The true danger is that of believing it’s always better to be <i>over</i>. If that were true, its logic would apply to God. Happiness will finally elude us until we are over God, as someone intimated a very long time ago. And so we return to the caution against idolatry, which rests behind all the debates over gender and sexuality hermeneutics. What do the horrors of history really root in? They root in that one moment when all the authority in the universe was turned upside down because a man and a woman believed they could be “like God.” [Emphases in original.]</span></blockquote>
Here is where Leeman appears to redefine authority (but without actually succeeding in doing so). He says, truly enough, that the New Testament calls those in authority, and particularly husbands in Ephesians 5 (remember that in first-century Ephesus men culturally <i>already had </i>this authority), to lay down their lives, to self-sacrifice, and to raise up those under them. But what he seems to lose track of is that what this actually involves, <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2011/10/is-marriage-really-ilustration-of.html">as described in Ephesians 5</a>, is <i>a surrender of the authority itself.</i> When Jesus allowed Himself to be captured by the Roman authorities and nailed to a cross as a criminal, He was in that act letting go ("emptying Himself") of all His power and authority (see Philippians 2:5-8). It's true that God restored Christ's authority to Him afterwards-- but the text of Ephesians 5 does <i>not</i> tell husbands to imitate Christ in the re-assumption of authority, but only in laying it down. <br />
<br />
Also, in Matthew 23:11 Jesus did not say, "the greatest among you shall become your servant-leader." He said, "The greatest among you shall be your <i>servant.</i>" If Leeman believes that those in authority are to empower those under them, the best way to empower someone is to <i>raise them out </i>of subordination to be your equal, not to keep them in subordination to you. Leeman glosses over the subordination of the one under authority, as if it no longer existed in a Christian concept of authority. But if the subordination no longer exists, then in what sense does the authority even exist? Authority cannot simply be redefined so it no longer means authority-- and indeed, his emphasis on the danger of wanting to be "over God" makes it clear that this is not what Leeman really means. To Leeman, a wife desiring to be equal in authority to her husband is the same sort of thing as wanting to usurp and depose God. Christians who believe Jesus taught that the family of God consists of equal brothers and sisters, all under one Father and one Elder Brother who are the sole authorities,* are idolators in Leeman's book.<br />
<br />
But if "redeemed authority" is still hierarchical human authority, and those under it are still under it, then there <i>is</i> a real difference, and the one in authority is superior in power and agency to the subordinate. That is simply what the words mean, and glossing over those meanings doesn't make them go away.<br />
<br />
Leeman's article concludes like this:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">I understand that I’m making strong charges. And I hardly mean to indict Christians who hold to egalitarianism with wholesale idolatry. I do mean to indict aspects of egalitarianism as rooted in the gods of this world and the gods of the West in particular. It should not be surprising, therefore, to hear conservative voices characterize egalitarianism as the hermeneutical gateway drug to affirming same-sex marriage, or, ironically, to hear homosexuality-affirming liberal voices agree. Nor is it surprising that the egalitarian PCUSA should decide to affirm gay marriage, or that many of the evangelicals churches coming out now for gay marriage were egalitarian years ago. The same god who prioritizes the self-defining individual over and above 2000-years of Bible reading stands behind both positions. The same god whispers to both kinds of readers, “Surely the text couldn’t mean that. That would be unjust!” But who is defining justice here? Thomas Jefferson? Betty Friedan? Lady Gaga?</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">Gender roles do not belong to the nine marks, as I said, but we believe they are critical to a church’s submission to Scripture and therefore its health. Fuller defenses of the position can be found at CBMW.org, which is run by Owen Strachan, who helped to compile the articles in this Journal. What you’ll find here are a number of pieces that examine the topic from different angles in the life of the church and church member. We pray they are beneficial.</span></blockquote>
Egalitarianism, he says, is rooted in idolatry, and embracing complementarian gender roles is crucial to fully obeying the Bible. He throws in a version of the slippery slope argument (that if a Christian ceases to believe the doctrine of complementarianism, he or she will soon slip into worse errors like *gasp!* affirming same-sex marriage). He tosses in the "this is what we've believed for 2000 years" argument, and implies that non-Christians couldn't possibly have any real idea of what justice means.<br />
<br />
There is a problem with each of these arguments. First, as to the slippery slope argument: there was an article in the Atlantic last week on <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/how-christians-turned-against-gay-conversion-therapy/390570/">How Christians Turned Against Gay Conversion Therapy</a>. The fact is that whether we like it or not, we Christians are having to face the evidence that being attracted to the same sex is not something that can be cured or repented of. This being true, we <i>must</i> rethink our approach towards people who, through no fault or choice of their own, want to marry someone of the same sex-- and <a href="https://www.gaychristian.net/aboutgcn.php">many of these people trust in the same Christ we do</a>. In light of these facts, it makes sense to re-examine the proof-texts we've relied on in this matter. After all, once the medieval church faced the fact that the earth did indeed revolve around the sun and not the other way around, it found that the proof-texts it had used against Galileo really could be read differently.<br />
<br />
Perhaps what's going on is not that in rethinking these things, we're falling down a slippery slope. Perhaps what's really going on is that we're climbing a gradual ascent towards more compassion, acceptance and love towards people who aren't like ourselves.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Edited to add</i></b>: That said, the scriptures that have been used to restrict gender roles are of a different nature than those used to condemn gay marriage, and there is no reason to believe that changing one's mind about the restriction of women, necessarily implies changing one's mind about this other issue. Many egalitarians remain strongly against gay marriage.<br />
<br />
Second, with regards to "2000 years of church tradition" -- for one thing, the complementarian position does <i>not</i> actually reflect 2000 years of church tradition. Complementarianism teaches that men and women are equal, but different in roles, while church tradition until recent times held <a href="http://newlife.id.au/misogynist-quotes-from-church-fathers/">that women were simply inferior</a><i>.</i> In any event, evangelicalism is usually quite ready to admit that church tradition can be, and often is, mistaken. Evangelicals long ago rejected the longstanding church traditions of the authority of the pope, of infant baptism, and of transubstantiation (that the communion elements become the actual body and blood of Christ). Evangelicals only bring out the argument from tradition when tradition happens to support what they believe.<br />
<br />
Finally, I disagree that giving women the freedom to lead** in their churches and homes is a "worldly" idea of justice. As I detailed above, if women are not subordinated because they are inferior by nature, then their subordination is arbitrary and without reason-- and it is in clear violation of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," which is the ethic taught by our Lord Himself. Who would want to be consigned to a permanent subordinate status based on a purely arbitrary exclusion of one or more of his or her categories or classes of personhood? <i>And if we would not want it done to ourselves, we should not do it to others. </i><br />
<br />
Also, non-believers are just as capable as believers of understanding "do unto others." Jesus didn't mean it to be rocket science! In fact, the fundamental knowledge that subordinating women is against "do unto others" is one of the big things that is keeping many non-believers from even considering Christianity. They too are made in the image of God: they have a basic knowledge of what love is and what justice is, and they can see that some of the rules we Christians claim are from God, are neither loving nor just.<br />
<br />
So I think I'll pass on accepting Leeman's indictment of worldliness and idolatry. And if what I consider most reasonable and most rational is my god, then I will proudly agree that my God is indeed reasonable and rational, not arbitrary, but loving and just.<br />
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<br />
-----------------------<br />
<br />
*My extensive study of the issue of authority in the Bible can be viewed <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-1-old.html">here</a>, <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-2-new.html">here</a> and <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-3-great.html">here</a>.<br />
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** I continue to draw a distinction between "authority," the <i>power or right</i> <i>to be the leader,</i> and simply <i>leading</i>, which can be done by any person or group of persons at any time if they have the skills and inclination for a particular season or role of leadership. Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-54236359886216826022015-04-05T04:00:00.000-07:002015-04-05T04:00:02.908-07:00Repost: Happy Easter!It was in church on Easter Sunday in 1979 that the 15-year-old me, in the middle of the singing of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," lifted my eyes to heaven and whispered, "Ok, God, I'll trust You." Today I'm going to let Peter Marshall, 1950's Chaplain of the US Senate, be my "guest blogger" to help me express what Easter became for me on that day: the day I first let my own life's story become caught up in the Great Story of the gospel, which Dr. Marshall retold so often and so well. So here is a section I have abridged from perhaps his most famous sermon.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">THE GRAVE IN THE GARDEN</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Three years before, the Master had called them to become fishers of men. Now that His fame had died away, they would once more become fishers of fish.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Their King crucified like a criminal. Their Messiah ending up-- not on a throne, but on a cross, hailed as King on Sunday, and dead like a common thief on Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">They remained the despairing survivors of a broken cause, as they stumbled blindly down the hill, their eyes filled with tears they could not stop.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">They were the very picture of men without any hope.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Utterly crushed. . . beaten. . .</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">disappointed. . .</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">In their faces there was the stark, dreadful look of hopeless despair.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Jesus was a dead man now, very much like any other dead man. The Roman authorities were satisfied that they had seen the last of this strange, troublesome Dreamer.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Thus they left Him on Friday evening-- just before the Sabbath began, His dead body hastily embalmed,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">wrapped in bandages on which a hundred pounds of myrrh had been hastily spread. . .</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">the tomb closed with a huge stone and soldiers standing guard around it.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Then came Sunday morning.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">The first rays of the early morning sun cast a great light that caused the dew drops on the flowers to sparkle like diamonds.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">The atmosphere of the garden was changed. . .</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">It was the same garden. . . yet strangely different.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">The heaviness of despair was gone,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and there was a new note in the singing of the birds.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Suddenly, at a certain hour between sunset and dawn, in that new tomb which had belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, there was a strange stirring, a fluttering of unseen forces. . .</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">a whirring of angel wings</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">the rustle as of the breath of God moving through the garden.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Strong, immeasurable forces poured life back into the dead body</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">they had laid upon the cold stone slab;</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and the dead man rose up</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">came out of the grave clothes</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">walked to the threshold of the tomb,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">stood swaying for a moment on His wounded feet,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and walked out into the moonlit garden.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">We can almost hear in our hearts the faint sigh, as the life spirit fluttered back into the tortured body, and smell in our own nostrils the medley of strange scents that floated back to Him</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">of linen and bandages. . .</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and spices</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and close air and blood.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Then came a group of women as soon as they could, bringing spices and materials with which to complete the hasty anointing of their Lord. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">They came with all the materials with which to anoint a dead body,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and when they came to the grave in the garden, they found that the stone had been rolled away from the door of it, and the grave was empty.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Here is John's account of what followed:</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">"But Mary stood without the sepulchre weeping. . . and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master."</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">There were two names spoken, "Mary," and "Rabboni."</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">She heard her own name spoken as only one Voice could speak it-- gently echoing in the garden.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">And there was her "Rabboni" -- the breathless "Master!" as she saw His face.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">Christ had spoken her name, and all of heaven was in it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">She uttered only one word, and all of earth was in it.</span><br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Then, what happened?</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">Suddenly Peter is facing the foes of Jesus with a reckless courage. Why, this does not sound like the same man. The truth is, it is not the same man. He is different--</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">very, very different.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">The disciples of Jesus were scattered</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">downcast</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">hopeless</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">with a sense of tragic loss</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and then, in a few days, they were thrilling with victory, completely changed. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #20124d;">The were all thrilled beyond fear in the stupendous knowledge that Christ was <em>alive</em>,</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;">and they went about rejoicing in a joy beyond pain.</span><br />
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Happy Easter to my readers, wherever you are. Thank you so much for coming and reading.<br />
<br />
Kristen<br />
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----------------<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Peter Marshall, <em>Mr. Jones,</em> <em>Meet the Master,</em> Fleming H. Revell Co<em>.</em> (1950), pp. 101-114.</span>Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-53396181096861719462015-03-29T14:55:00.001-07:002015-03-30T13:50:52.722-07:00Good Stuff - March 2015<div class="tr_bq">
So here's what I thought was eye-opening, mind-opening and/or heart-opening on the Internet this month. Interestingly, as I look at these posts as a group, I see a thread running through all of them of false dichotomies: the idea that a thing or person must be either A or B, that there is no such thing as C-- and D? Well, that's just silly.</div>
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<a href="http://wordofawoman.com/2015/02/28/of-boys-and-girls-good-and-rotten-and-climbing-trees/">Of Boys and Girls (Good and Rotten) and Climbing Trees</a> at Word of a Woman explores the thinking behind the parable that says girls are like apples on a tree waiting for a boy to come and pick them:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Funny, he says the “good” girls just need to be patient and wait for a brave boy who is willing to climb the tree to the top for them. Forget about whether or not the girls they have judged as being “rotten” and “easy” are actually awesome too. Or whether or not the ones they have judged as “good” and worthy are actually either. “Good” girls he says should wait for a boy to give them validation and approval. Thanks, but no thanks. Instead, perhaps we should teach ALL the girls that they are not some boy’s prize for being brave and not slumming it with a “rotten” girl. They are not an object to be possessed. Their value is not determined by whether boys think they are “good” or “rotten” but rather on the fact that they bear the image of God him/herself. Perhaps we should teach the girls not to compare themselves to each other and judge one another. Perhaps we should teach the girls to love themselves and each other.</span></blockquote>
The post shows that parables like this one, rooted in and growing out of patriarchy, use a false dichotomy: either you're a good girl, or a bad girl. But this post, <a href="https://thisbrother.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/the-impetus-of-patriarchy/">The Impetus of Patriarchy</a> by Greg Hahn at This Brother, shows that patriarchy also uses a false dichotomy for guys: either you're a real man, or you're not, and "real" manliness means having power over women:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">You have to be “considered fully creditable as a man”. And the unspoken understanding of many is that you don’t just get that from having X and Y chromosomes and reaching adulthood. You have to <b>earn your manhood</b>, so as to be seen manly by those around you. If you can feel it, all the better, but in the very least <i>you need to be seen that way</i>. . .<br /> <br />And if that’s true, that is ultimately what drives patriarchy: Men living in the pain of not “being the man”, which is believed to be “displaying power to exert control over one’s self and one’s world.” . . .<br /><br />Apparently the only difference that Piper can see and articulate is that men lead, women follow. <i>So John Piper’s masculinity is inseparably linked to his authority and leadership of women</i>. . . .</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><i><b>I believe that fueling the reluctance to change or to even look deeply into the issue of male/female equality is, in the heart of many men, fear.</b></i><br /><br />Often people think it’s about selfishness or control, and sometimes it is. But I don’t think most guys in the church are like that. It’s usually not a case that they’re bad men. Quite the contrary, most Christian guys just want to live their life, raise their kids and grandkids, serve the Lord and hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant” at the end. But many men, even the strongest ones, have a deep and abiding fear of not measuring up. </span>(Emphases in original)</blockquote>
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I think a similar fear motivates people often times towards "America can do no wrong" patriotism. It's another false dichotomy: this time about what it means to love America. I think President Obama really got to the heart of the problem in his speech <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/07/remarks-president-50th-anniversary-selma-montgomery-marches">Remarks by the President at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches</a> on the White House website.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge, that’s the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot, workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon. (Applause.)<br /> <br />It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo. That’s America.</span></blockquote>
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Roger E. Olsen at his blog of the same name, addresses the human weakness at the heart of the attitude behind the kind of patriotism the President was pushing back against. Olsen's post <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/03/the-sin-of-tribalism/">The Sin of Tribalism</a> defines the us-vs-them, we're-in-and-you're-out mentality as fundamentally un-Christian:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“Tribalism,” however appears when a community closes its ranks around an illusion of superiority and excludes others for the purpose of increasing feelings of superiority. A tribe invents “badges” or emblems of superiority that to outsiders are totally illusory. Tribes rarely recognize themselves as tribal in this sense; members really do think they are superior to outsiders. Outsiders, however, recognize that the badges of superiority are false—unless they want in. . . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Tribalism is sin—from a Christian point of view.<br /><br />Jesus confronted tribalism among the Jewish leaders of his day. Some of them claimed that they were especially favored by God only because they were children of Abraham. The Apostle Paul also confronted that attitude. But the point for Christians is not to point a finger at any group guilty of tribalism but to examine ourselves. . . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A wise and mature person is one who is aware of tribalism and resists it. That’s true whether the person is Christian or not. A wise and mature person, Christian or not, holds himself or herself aloof from the rituals of tribalism even when forced by necessity to be present.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
And in <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/03/you-can-count-me-out-of-atheist-tribalism.html">You Can Count Me Out of Atheist Tribalism</a>, Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism fights the same human tendency in non-Christians:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">To put it simply, atheists who are quick to blame terrorism committed by Muslim individuals on Islam and just as quick to excuse atheism from any role in atrocities committed by atheists are using a glaring double standard. . . .<br /><br />On some level I think I understand what’s going on here. A number of prominent atheists frequently point to religious atrocities and human rights abuses in order to argue that religion is dangerous and that we should work toward its elimination. When Christians or other religious believers respond by pointing to atrocities committed by atheists like Stalin, these atheists can’t respond with “Yes, and we think that’s bad too,” because their argument is that lack of religion is superior to religion, and examples like Stalin make it clear that a belief in a deity is not a required condition for mass murder or oppression. And so they have to find a way to explain away Stalin’s atrocities as not truly a result of his atheism.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I didn’t leave one tribe, with its demonization of other groups and tribes, ample use of the No True Scotsman fallacy, and insistence on valuing in-group loyalty above all else, to join another tribe doing the exact same thing.</span></blockquote>
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Another false dichotomy shows up in these two posts about racism and why it's so hard for us as white people to see it or even be willing to look for it in ourselves. <a href="http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-when-theyre-called-out-about-race">Why White People Freak Out When They're Called Out About Race</a> by Sam Adler-Bell at Alternet explains:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we’re good, moral people we can’t be racist – we don’t engage in those acts. This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time—that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not "doing."</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In large part, white fragility—the defensiveness, the fear of conflict—is rooted in this good/bad binary. If you call someone out, they think to themselves, “What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.” It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The good/bad binary is also what leads to the very unhelpful phenomenon of un-friending on Facebook.</span></blockquote>
If we see racists as only those bad people over there, and never ourselves, we can feel superior (tribalism again). But seeing racists as those bad people over there also renders it impossible for us to to humble ourselves and admit that we just might be participating in racism unaware. It's just too shameful and horrible for us to face. So says <a href="http://lifereconsidered.com/2015/03/17/understanding-the-racial-empathy-gap-the-power-of-narratives-part-2/">Understanding the Racial Empathy Gap: the Power of Narratives</a> by Judy Wu Dominick at her blog of the same name.<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">One of the things the Civil Rights Movement managed to do was inject a keen sense of shame into white America’s collective conscience over its institutionalized abuse of African Americans. It marked a significant turning point in the nation’s history. In the beginning, when shame produced an appropriate acknowledgement of injustice and a desire to make things right, it led to cultural shifts and new legislation that effectively released African Americans from the stranglehold of the Jim Crow era. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The tricky thing about shame, though, is that it’s a toxic, identity- and value-threatening emotion. and when it’s not processed in a thoroughly redemptive way, it can actually lead to a recycling of our sins instead of a healthy and restorative repentance. . . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">So a new shame-based, reactive narrative set in: Forget the past. We are not racists. We are anti-racists. And we are colorblind. This new narrative unwittingly undermined progress even as progress was being made. First, it imposed a willful forgetfulness on one of the nation’s most traumatic and formative experiences, which desperately required thoughtful, collective, and public debriefing, not consignment to cold storage. Second, it introduced taboo-like sensibilities into the very act of dialoguing about race and ethnicity, which, instead of being helpful, has proven to be very damaging for blacks and other non-whites who wish to have their distinctives recognized, validated, and celebrated alongside those of whites, rather than denied and left unacknowledged.</span></blockquote>
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Folks, this kind of either-or thinking isn't helping any of us. I'd like to suggest that we start seeing not just A or B as possibilities, but also A <i>and</i> B, and C, and even D. Who knows, maybe we'll get all the way to accepting and acknowledging Z someday! <br />
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And if we do, it will be partly because of the kind of brave people who said these things online this month.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-16478305149173622442015-03-13T23:41:00.002-07:002015-03-14T00:09:30.539-07:00In Memorium: Sir Terry Pratchett<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2015/mar/12/fantasy-author-terry-pratchett-dies-66/292942/">Sir Terry Pratchett</a> has died. Somehow it falls kind of flat to simply say he was one of my favorite authors. In fact, Terry Pratchett was one of the wisest, funniest, most insightful and compassionate writers I ever read. I loved losing myself in his worlds, absorbing his perceptive intelligence and pithy common sense. </div>
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His most famous series was set on the Discworld, a flat planet with waters perpetually pouring over its edge. It rested on the backs of four elephants who stood on the shell of a great turtle swimming through space. It was a world of magic, wizardry and witchcraft, trolls and dwarfs and humans and pixies, into which intruded from time to time some of the phenomena of our own world: telegraphs and trains, the movie industry, the banking world and the postal service. With a cutting, satirical edge that never became cruel or bleak, that never lost sight of the beauty of the universe or the value of the human individual, Pratchett gave us some of the most enjoyable plots and best characters I've ever encountered in literature: crotchety Granny Weatherwax, honest Commander Vimes, rascally-but-responsible Moist Von Lipwig, and the ever-polite Death with his hood and scythe, endlessly curious about what it was like to be alive.</div>
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But Pratchett also wrote a number of other really wonderful, non-Discworld books. <i>Nation </i>is set on an alternate earth where a young islander and a shipwrecked princess cope with the aftermath of a deadly tsunami. <i>Dodger</i> is about a young entrepreneur in a Dickensian London. <i>Good Omens </i>(written in tandem with the great fantasy author <a href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About_Neil">Neil Gaiman</a>) is about the Apocalypse, the Anti-Christ and the end of the world. In fact, this author was so prolific that I know there are still some of his books out there I haven't read yet-- and that I will read them someday with the bittersweet enjoyment of knowing there will never be anything quite like this written ever again. </div>
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There are several web posts (like <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11469176/Terry-Pratchett-50-best-quotes.html">this one</a>) celebrating Sir Terry by quoting some of his funniest stuff. But I'd like to give tribute to him here by quoting some of his<i> smartest</i> stuff: some of the things he or his characters said that has really made me think, that has opened my eyes and widened my horizons.<br />
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Sir Terry used humor and fantasy to explore almost every area of human thought, from religion and philosophy to science and invention. He was not a Christian, but he had a deep sense of morality and a reverence for the beauty of the universe and the preciousness of life. (The <a href="http://www.damaris.org/film-and-bible-blog/595">Demaris Film & Bible Blog</a> has a good synopsis/analysis of Pratchett's beliefs if you'd like to read more about them-- but as I have <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2013/11/reading-dark-is-rising-as-adult.html">explained elsewhere</a>, I believe that God's grace is over all the world, and that there is nothing to fear from a manifestation of that grace in any person, whether they agree with my theology or not.)</div>
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Pratchett understood <i>people</i> as few of us ever do-- and yet despite all our self-induced blindnesses and stupidities, all the things that make us laughable or even pathetic, Pratchett really loved human beings, just for being human. His character Death never encountered a human that he didn't treat with dignity and consideration-- even the worst of the worst. Other authors have made Death terrible; Terry Pratchett made him lovable. </div>
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I think that, paradoxically, this is because Sir Terry's books are filled most of all with a zest for living. When he wrote about trains, he wrote with sheer admiration of the power of the engine and the ingenuity of the engineer. When he wrote about the postal service, that mundane institution suddenly revealed itself as a showcase of the human capacity for interconnection and mutual service. Nothing, it seemed, was mundane to Terry Pratchett. Everything was fascinating and worth looking at with the fresh eyes of exploration. Perhaps even death was a thing that, when it came, he was curious to explore. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So here are some of the things he has said that most capture that sense of exploration and insight. Emphases are in the original texts. The title of the source appears after each quote in italics.<br />
<br />
On humans and storytelling:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[A]ll men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear. </span>- <i>Dodger</i></blockquote>
On death:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[N]o-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. </span>- <i>Reaper Man</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
On law and order:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[Y]ou were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong. </span>- <i>Snuff</i></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
On tribalism and its antidote:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.</span> - <i>Jingo</i></blockquote>
On evil, and how evil happens when the ideology is more important than the person:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things. And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family. </span>- <i>I Shall Wear Midnight</i></blockquote>
and<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[I]t's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved. </span>- <i>Snuff</i></blockquote>
On fundamentalist, cultic terrorism:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">. . . [E]very deviation from the norm was treated as an attack on all that was truly dwarfish. Others had already fled and died, and who could say they knew how many more were left. . . And the trouble with madness was that the mad didn't know they were mad. The grags [leaders] came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing.</span> - <i>Raising Steam</i></blockquote>
On cognitive dissonance:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Sometimes people fools themselves into believing things that aren't true. Sometimes that can be quite dangerous for the person. They see the world in a wrong way. They won't let themselves see that what they believe is wrong. But often there is a part of the mind that does know, and the right words can let it out.</span> - <i>Unseen Academicals</i></blockquote>
On parenthood and commitment:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><i>He'd be home in time.</i> Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even two minutes would be ok. Three minutes, even. You could go to five, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go to five minutes, then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours. . . and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to Young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. <i>No excuses at all. </i>Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.</span> - <i>Thud!</i></blockquote>
On cultural assimilation:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">"What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?" </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human – human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls... the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress.</span> - <i>Unseen Academicals</i></blockquote>
On prejudice:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">She thought that being foreign was a crime, or at least some sort of illness that you could catch by being out out in the sun too much, or eating olives. </span>- <i>Nation</i></blockquote>
and<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Everybody knows trolls eat people and spit them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut off your legs. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong.</span> - <i>Unseen Academicals</i></blockquote>
On religion:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">[The old man said,] "Everything I know makes me believe that [God] is in the order that is inherent, amazingly, in all things, and in the way the universe opens to our questioning. When I see the shining path over the lagoon, on an evening like this, at the end of a good day, I believe."] </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">"In [God]?" asked the girl. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">This got a smile. "Perhaps I just believe. You know, in things generally. That works, too. Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science."</span> - <i>Nation</i></blockquote>
Finally, these two that I can't locate and don't remember what book they came from, but I have always remembered them, at least in paraphrase:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A good ruler doesn't drive; he steers.</span></blockquote>
and<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Stories are how we humans tell ourselves who we are.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Anyway, if you've never read anything by Terry Pratchett, I hope you will. And I hope you'll be as amused, as intrigued-- and as deeply touched and moved-- as I have been.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-73547120770855294982015-02-28T08:00:00.000-08:002015-02-28T08:00:01.129-08:00Good Stuff - February 2015<div class="tr_bq">
Here are the best things I've read on the Internet in the month of February:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/leonard-nimoy-the-man-who-gave-star-trek-its-heart/ar-BBi2UrG?ocid=HPDHP">Leonard Nimoy, the Man Who Gave Star Trek Its Heart</a> by Graeme McMillan on MSN, speaks to me in my sadness that this man who enriched my world so much has passed on:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And even when he, along with the rest of the original crew of the Starship Enterprise, retired with 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, it turned out that Nimoy’s Spock lived on, and prospered, making appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation and J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek as the character. It was unsurprising, in many ways; a Star Trek without Nimoy felt incomplete, somehow. There was both a gravity and levity in his performance, a humor behind the stone-faced, eyebrow-raised stare of disbelief he so often employed. Star Trek, as a series, is a mixture of tones and genres, as much comedy as drama, and Nimoy managed to embody that in a way unlike any other.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/02/young-restless-no-longer-reformed-a-year-later-calvinism-still-isnt-beautiful-a-guest-post-by-austine-fischer/">"Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed" a Year Later: Why Calvinism (Still) Isn't Beautiful</a> by Austine Fisher on Roger Olson's blog, gives voice to something I have long felt, that the poet Keats' words "beauty is truth, truth beauty" tell us something <i>real</i>, and that Calvinist doctrine (particularly the doctrine of limited atonement, that Christ didn't die for all humans, but only for some) just doesn't fit into that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Because God is infinitely good and beautiful, theology must be good and beautiful or else it’s not true. When properly understood, the truth invites not only the mind’s assent but the heart’s affection. The truth should make your heart sing. This notion of the truth’s beauty is not an invention of secular humanism or some other boogey-man, but belongs to the deepest intuition of biblical Christian sensibilities. . .<br /><br />The New Calvinists attempt to paint a ravishing picture of the manifold excellencies of the self-glorifying, all-determining God of Calvinism, expressed primarily through the doctrines of grace. I say that picture is a false veneer that only works when you ignore the reprobate. I say that picture cannot contain, as its central image, a crucified God who would rather die for sinners than give them what they deserve. </span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://austinchanning.com/blog/2014/5/why-i-love-being-a-black-girl">Why I Love Being a Black Girl</a> by Austin Channing, is a horizon-enlarging viewpoint from a perspective I need to listen to:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Though there are many great soul food restaurants, none compare to the smell of my grandmothers dinner rolls wafting through the air, the sweet smell of history filling the small kitchen. We sat on the edge of our seats the night Michael moonwalked across the stage, then we hopped up and did it with him. We couldn't afford to see Whitney in concert, but you better believe we knew every note to every song... even if we couldn't reach it ourselves. The NBA possesses some great players, many of whom were good guys from around the way- taking girls to prom, participating in the school talent show, being cheered on by the brown faces around them. Yes, we do shape culture, but first we live it ourselves.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/16/3175831/myth-absent-black-father/">The Myth of the Absent Black Father</a> at ThinkProgress, shows that things aren't always the way they have been made to look:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Considering the fact that “black fatherhood” is a phrase that is almost always <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/what-black-america-really-needs-committed-and-faithful-fathers/">accompanied</a> by the word “<a href="http://blackfatherhoodproject.com/">crisis</a>” in U.S. society, it’s understandable that the CDC’s results seem innovative. But in reality, the new data builds upon years of research that’s concluded that hands-on parenting is similar among dads of all races. There’s plenty of scientific evidence to bust this racially-biased myth.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The Pew Research Center, which has <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/06/14/the-new-american-father/">tracked this data for years</a>, consistently finds no big differences between white and black fathers.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2015/01/holiness-among-depraved-christians.html">Holiness Among Depraved Christians: Paul's New Form of Moral Flourishing</a> by Richard Beck at Experimental Theology, shows a way to read and understand some of the main themes in Paul's epistles that really explains a lot:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> Paul was setting up these Jesus-communities whose members consisted of, in the eyes of skeptical Jewish onlookers, morally depraved and wicked people. To Jewish onlookers it looked like Paul was handing the keys to the liquor cabinet to a bunch of alcoholics. Morally speaking, this was a recipe for disaster. Paul was hopping around, going from city to city, setting up these communities. And then leaving them! Without the Torah, and the habits of spiritual formation embedded in the culture of faith communities who had been shaped by Torah obedience generation after generation, how were these new Gentile Christians going to lead holy lives?</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">This was the great moral experiment of Paul's gospel. Could a new form of moral flourishing emerge among the Gentiles separate from the Torah?'' . . .<br /><br />In a nutshell this was the heart of Paul's vision for morally forming Gentiles: The Holy Spirit, the Golden Rule, and the Imitation of Christ. This, Paul felt, would be enough to transform depraved pagans into a "holy people." . . .<br /><br />Specifically, Paul's Gentile churches were moral demonstrations to Jewish skeptics. And I think this explains a lot of why when Paul gets outside the core of his moral vision--the Golden Rule, the example of Jesus--he falls back upon Jewish (and Greco-Roman) visions of moral flourishing. I think this is why, for example, Paul's household codes are patriarchal. That's what Jewish moral flourishing at that time looked like. And given the skepticism Paul faced he was keen to make Gentile households look like Jewish households, seasoned albeit by the love ethic of Jesus (e.g., mutual submission).</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/02/20/the-framework-of-fundamentalist-propaganda-distorts-how-we-view-every-religion/">The framework of fundamentalist propaganda distorts how we view every religion</a> by Fred Clark at Slactivist, addresses the flaws in the reasoning that insists terrorists like ISIS embody what Islam is really all about, and counters the dangerous idea that all Muslims are evil, and that any Muslim who isn't evil isn't a "real" Muslim:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">This framework is pervasive, shaping our perception of every religion, not just Islam. We’ve been tricked into seeing inquisitors and crusaders as a more genuine expression of any religion than that religion’s saints or mystics. We’ve swallowed the idea that the inquisitors must be correct in their interpretation of religious texts, while any who disagree with those interpretations must be willfully ignorant, or sweetly deluded by some irreligious “political correctness.”</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
And in <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/02/20/when-some-faction-says-they-and-they-alone-are-the-real-true-christians-you-shouldnt-take-their-word-for-it/">this related post at Slacktivist</a>, Clark makes this profound observation:<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">This kind of separatist/exclusivist, prideful fundamentalism will always be schismatic. That’s its <i>nature.</i> That’s true whether we’re talking about Real True Christians or Real True Muslims. Their entire self-concept is driven by the need to confirm their own authenticity by condemning the inauthenticity of others — or, rather, by accusing others of inauthenticity and seeking or inventing new ways to support that accusation. And they can <i>never</i> stop doing that. . .<br /> <br />Real True Christians do not base their identity on their devotion to the Bible or to the Creeds, but on finding ways to elevate themselves above other Christians they can denounce as false, apostate, liberal and inauthentic. Real True Muslims do not base their identity on their devotion to the Koran or to the pillars of their faith, but on finding ways to elevate themselves above other Muslims they can denounce as <i>kuffar.</i><br /><br />What this means for the rest of us is that we cannot hope to learn anything about the substance, character or meaning of any religion, belief system, or fandom, by looking to those who proclaim themselves the Real True believers. They may be the ones talking the loudest about “authentic” Christianity/Islam/fandom, but they are bound to be the <i>least</i> reliable examples of what such “authentic” belief might entail.</span> </blockquote>
The idea that those whose religious practices are gentler, more loving, kinder and more accepting are somehow less sincere, less authentic in their faith than those who are harsher, more judgmental and intolerant, is something this blog continually strives to counter-- and not least by sharing these various links today. As I've said many times, to follow Jesus's teaching and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" includes <i>listening </i>to others with an open heart and mind. And when we do that, it can't help but make us gentler, kinder and more accepting. <br />
<br />
And I think <i>that's</i> what following Christ will lead us to in the end.<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-73163787418319989082015-02-14T00:09:00.000-08:002015-02-14T09:28:02.877-08:00If We Say We Have No Sin...<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #660000;">If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.… 1 John 1:8-9</span></i></blockquote>
This is a basic principle of Christianity: that we as human beings are prone to sin and error and should admit as much. "Confession is good for the soul," the old saying goes, though our natural inclination is to deny error and not admit to wrongdoing. This inclination seems especially prominent in politics, as <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/14/why-politicians-wont-admit-their-mistakes/">this Washington Post article</a> details:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">No one likes to admit that they made a mistake. We have an ingrained reticence to do so, a near-primal response that little kids learn probably before they can speak. Admit your mistake, get punished. Don't, and maybe you can wiggle your way out of it. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">If your job involves being judged and evaluated by people, that instinct is almost certainly worse. And if your job involves being evaluated and you have a group of people committed to defending you on an ideological basis no matter what you say, admitting error becomes all but unthinkable.</span></blockquote>
Christian grace, on the other hand, is all about the freedom to admit wrong in ourselves and accept others in spite of their faults, knowing that God loves and forgives and wants us to do the same. And I think this goes not just for our individual sins and errors, but for group ones too. Humans don't just sin individually. We sin as groups-- as nations, as communities, and yes, even as churches and religious communities.<br />
<br />
So why are so many of us Christians involved in vigorous denial of any such thing? Why are we more interested in defending ourselves than examining ourselves? And why, when someone does point out how our group sins or how we might have participated in sin in the past or present, do we attack that person as if the only real wrong was the perceived insult to <i>us</i>?<br />
<br />
The main thing that's bothering me is the reaction of prominent Christians against <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast">President Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast</a>, when he said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities -- the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?<br /> <br />Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India -- an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity -- but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs -- acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.<br /> <br />So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. </span></blockquote>
The response to this has been really troubling, as detailed in <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/republican_reaction_to_obama_s_prayer_breakfast_many_conservatives_don_t.html">this Slate article</a>, as prominent Republicans and conservative commentators (largely professing Christians) <span style="color: #660000;"> "reject the suggestion that Christianity has anything to apologize for." </span>They claim that <a href="http://www.catholicleague.org/obama-insults-christians/">the Crusades were justified and were the fault of the Muslims</a> (the same article claims the Church had "almost nothing to do with the Inquisition"). They claim that <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/02/05/why_our_president_chose_to_insult_christianity_and_excuse_militant_islam_at_the_national_prayer_breakfast">Jim Crow laws were over thousands of years ago</a> instead of being part of reality for the Baby-boomer generation. They claim that Obama was wrong to <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/huckabees-false-witnessing/">claim Christians have any responsibility for racism</a>. And they accuse <a href="http://www.redstate.com/2015/02/06/barack-obama-is-not-a-christian-in-any-meaningful-way/">the President of not being a real Christian</a> because he would dare admit that yes, Christians and Christian communities have sinned.<br />
<br />
And yet it's the person they're claiming isn't a real Christian who is following the Christian principles of humility and confession which they seem to have lost sight of. I can't help thinking that politics are partly to blame. I'm not saying Christians shouldn't get involved in politics or shouldn't vote their consciences-- but that's different from <a href="http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/americans-are-fleeing-religion-and-republicans-are-to-blame">practically turning Christianity into a political movement</a>. And when we do that, it's not surprising that we end up acting according to political "admit no wrong" wisdom. However, President Obama is a politician and a Christian, and this time (possibly because he's not part of that movement) he got it right. It's too bad that his Republican Christian opponents can't see wisdom when it comes from someone on the other team.<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
I think, actually, that defensiveness against any admission of racism is actually one of our biggest problems even today.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/07/15/guest-post-who-would-you-shoot/">Racism is still very much a part of our reality today in America</a>, and most, if not all, of us white people <a href="http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/2010/04/tatum.html">have imbibed racist attitudes to some extent</a> just by being born, growing up and living here. And yet we have also been taught to believe racism is some archaic evil from the past-- so what upsets us most is the idea that someone might think we're racist in some way, or call us a "racist" because of something we said or did. <a href="https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/the-r-word/">The Agabond blog calls it "the R-Word"</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The r-word is the word“racist”. It is in effect the n-word for white people:they get upset when you call them that and lose all sense of reason. Even on the Internet it pretty much ends any fruitful talk about race. . . Two things are going on here:</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">1. Many whites seem to think “racist” means joining the Ku Klux Klan, flying the Confederate flag, using the n-word, stuff like that.The old Jim Crow sort of racism that was common in America before 1970. Most white Americans born since then are colour-blind racists. It is this subtler racism that most people of colour have in mind when they use the word “racist”.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">2. White Americans have a self-image of themselves as fair and just, of not being racist. So when you say they are racist it threatens their self-image. That is why they get so upset.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">But that self-image stands in the way of any further progress.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It is like the kind of patriotism where people feel threatened when you say anything bad about their country. It is a false patriotism that stands in the way of making their country better.</span></blockquote>
It's interesting to me that Agabond equates the same two things I've been talking about-- denial of racism with do-no-wrong Christian patriotism-- because I think they're both rooted in the same thing. We're being "conformed to this world," as Romans 12:2 says. We're following our natural, human desire to exalt ourselves and our causes, and our natural unwillingness to admit to wrongdoing. But Christ would have us humble ourselves, be assured of grace, and let go of our fear of being found in the wrong.<br />
<br />
Anyway, it seems to me that I, as a white person, can't really understand what black people go through as well as they do themselves, and certainly not without listening to their side of things. But when I first started reading <a href="https://abagond.wordpress.co/">Agabond's blogsite</a>, I had to quell my defensiveness and my sense of injury at this word "racist," and learn to say, "God's grace is with me, even if I'm racist in some way and don't know it-- so am I? Because God can help me change, but only if I admit the problem!"<br />
<br />
The fact is that being so defensive against the word "racist" and "racism" is keeping us from seeing where we might need to confess and repent. <i>And this isn't the Christian way to live.</i> <br />
<br />
<a href="http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/2010/04/tatum.html">Dr. Beverly Tatum on the By Their Strange Fruit Website</a> puts it so well:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I consider myself a racist in the same way that I consider myself a sinner in need of forgiveness (see post <a href="http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/2011/08/basically-good.html">Basically Good</a>). People bristle at both characterizations (“I’m a generally good person, I don’t need Jesus”; “I’m not a racist, I’m color blind”). But to me, these terms simply identify the latent issues that I know I still have to work on, which is better than pretending the issues aren't there at all.</span></blockquote>
As Christians, we ought to be the <i>first</i> to admit that Christians have done (and still do) wrong. We ought to be the first to examine ourselves, the first to confess our errors and faults, and the errors and faults of our group, our nation, our community. The fact is that many times our faults are visible to the observing world anyway-- and when we act blind to them, we only come across as hypocrites.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/gregg-easterbrook/2011/06/07/why-cant-politicians-admit-theyre-wrong/">Gregg Easterbrook in a 2011 Reuter's editorial</a> encapsulates what most people probably really think when we do that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Just as lying about what you did may be worse than what you did, refusing to admit an error may be worse than the error itself. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">All human beings occasionally are wrong — trust me, I’ve had plenty of experience! Honest admission of error makes a person upright and sympathetic. Refusing to admit error, by contrast, suggests deviousness or even megalomania. </span></blockquote>
We aren't enhancing either our own reputations, or God's, when we refuse to even open our eyes to our wrongs, much less confess and apologize. And we're not doing Christianity any good by pressing it into the service of a political agenda. <br />
<br />
It's just making our Christianity look less and less Christian. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-86158476865516447912015-01-31T11:00:00.001-08:002015-02-27T21:15:11.909-08:00Good Stuff - January 2015<div class="tr_bq">
Here are some of the best things I've seen online this month. I've given a little taste of each post below the link.<br />
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<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/01/06/epiphany-jesus-wept-2/">Epiphany: Jesus Wept</a> by Fred Clark at Slacktivist:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“Life seems pretty unfair and bewildering to us humans,” Job says.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">“Well,” God replies, “you’re just going to have to trust me.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“But you don’t understand what it’s like to be us,” Job says. “You don’t understand how all this looks from our point of view.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">“Yeah, well, you don’t understand how it looks from my point of view, either,” God says. “One of us loosed the cords of Orion and laid the foundation of the earth and the last time I checked, it wasn’t you. So just trust me, OK? I’ve got this.”</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And that’s the end of the conversation. . . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">When Job learned that his children had died, he wept. But God did not weep.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Jesus wept.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">That’s famously the shortest verse in the Bible, but there’s an awful lot packed into those two words. . . </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And when Jesus saw Lazarus’ sisters weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” And then God Almighty — God who laid the foundation of the earth, who determined its measurements when the morning stars sang together, God who commands the morning and causes the dawn to know its place, God who bound the chains of the Pleiades and loosed the cords of Orion — wept.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">That’s an epiphany. That’s the Epiphany we celebrate today.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><a href="http://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-came-to-your-bible-study.html">I Came to Your Bible Study</a> </span>by PerfectNumber at Tell Me Why the World is Weird:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I came to your bible study, and you talked about Jesus, and I felt so lonely. Do I just nod along in agreement, or do I mention that I disagree with some parts? It's okay with me that we disagree; the important thing is we are both Christians and we love God. But I need to know if it's okay with you.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I mentioned that I view it differently, and you flipped forward to Acts, to give an explanation supporting your point of view. <b>But really, I don't need you to teach me. I already understand what you said. I just need to know if you can accept that I believe differently. . .</b><br /><br />I want to know if you can believe that I am a Christian, even if I disagree with you on some topics. But more than that, I want to know if you can believe that the reason I hold those beliefs- the reason I don't believe in hell, the reason I said love is more important than reading the bible- is <i>because</i> I am a Christian, is <i>because</i> I love God, is <i>because</i> I have studied the bible.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>Can you believe I am a Christian, but not a Christian who is innocently confused about these topics and needs someone to teach her the correct Christian view? </b>Can you believe that at the points where we disagree, my opinions are rooted in my own study of the bible and my own deep love for God? I believe that about you, would you believe it about me?</span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/post-evangelicals-and-why-we-cant-just-get-over-it">Post-Evangelicals and Why We Can't Just Get Over It</a> by Rachel Held Evans at her blog of the same name:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Like it or not, our religious traditions help forge our identities. The great challenge, the one that </span>took me <span style="color: #660000;">a book to articulate and which I suspect will take me a lifetime to work out, is to hold every piece of my faith experience in love, even the broken bits, even the parts that still cut my hands and make them bleed.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000; font-weight: bold;">We are all post-something.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000; font-weight: bold;">We are all caught between who we once were and who we will be, the ghosts of past certainties gripping at our ankles.</span>*<br />
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<span style="color: #660000; font-weight: bold;">There’s no just getting over it. There’s no easy moving on.</span><b> </b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">So I ask for grace—from the communities that now receive me and from the one that first taught me what that word means.</span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-a-womanist-biblical-scholar-wil-gafney-response">Ask a Womanist Biblical Scholar (Response)</a> by Reverend Wil Gafney, also on Rachel Held Evans' blog:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Womanism is black women’s interpretation but it is not only for black women. Womanist biblical interpretation enriches every person and every community’s understanding of the biblical text. There are things you will never see in the text without reading in the company of black women. In the post-colonial, post-Atlantic slave trade world, it is crucial that peoples who have historically benefited from the sale and plunder of black women’s bodies, justifying those practices with their readings of scripture learn to hear and the scriptures in our voices and through our eyes.</span></blockquote>
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And another from Rev. Gafney's own blog: <a href="http://www.wilgafney.com/2014/12/04/a-gospel-of-policing-serve-with-integrity/">A Gospel of Policing: Serve with Integrity</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> Integrity is a difficult path. It means acknowledging and dealing with your own individual racism and that of the system in which you live and work. It means taking a hard look at your own arrest statistics and those of your department. It means coming to terms with the way your own biases shape the way you see, respond and police. It means operating against your biases against black bodies – seeing black boys as men, black girls as promiscuous, black women as prostitutes and black men as thugs. Serving with integrity means holding yourself, your sister and brother officers and your department to a higher standard.<br /> </span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://juniaproject.com/say-church-feminine/">They Say the Church is Too Feminine</a> by Kate Wallace at The Junia Project:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><a href="https://www.barna.org/">The Barna Group </a>has been studying Church trends over the last 20 years and they have found that <a href="https://www.barna.org/barna-update/faith-spirituality/508-20-years-of-surveys-show-key-differences-in-the-faith-of-americas-men-and-women#.VLifrGTF-6Y">women actually represent the biggest shift away from the Church</a>. They also found that the gap between unchurched men and women is no longer a significant one. <a href="https://www.barna.org/barna-update/culture/698-10-facts-about-america-s-churchless#.VLiTa2TF-6Y">“It remains true that churchless people are somewhat more likely to be men than women, but the gap is not huge and has been steadily closing…the gap between men and women has plummeted from 20 points in 2003 to just 8 points currently.”</a> And this is not just in protestant churches. . . .</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Women may indeed make up the majority of people in the pews (for now), but they do not make up even half of the people who make decisions about church services or experience. <b>If men really aren’t going to church, it doesn’t seem to be the fault of women. </b>Perhaps the Church leaders who are making these claims should stop shaming the faithful, and start asking them for help.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Do I care that men aren’t going to church? Of course I do! I also care that women are leaving the Church! We should be concerned about everyone in the Church and how we can better minister to and disciple them. Instead of playing the gender blame game, let’s use our critical thinking skills to better analyze the situation.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Yes we need men in our pews. We also need women in our pulpits, on our elder boards, at the communion tables, on the worship teams, and in our denominational leadership.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>The Church is “too feminine”? No. I’d say the Church isn’t feminine enough.</b></span></blockquote>
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<div class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">An</span>d Fred Clark at Slacktivist again with <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/01/30/slavery-and-the-creation-of-a-counterfeit-biblical-civilization-in-america-1619-1865/">Slavery and the Creation of a Counterfeit "Biblical" Civilization in America</a>:</div>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">The King James Version of the Bible was completed in 1611. The first African slaves were imported into Jamestown in 1619. “Biblical” Christianity and the idea of “biblical civilization” grew up alongside slavery. The latter shaped the former, and the two things have been inextricably intertwined ever since.<br /><br />The invention of “biblical” Christianity and of the idea of “biblical civilization” was for the purpose of accommodating slavery. That may not have been its exclusive purpose, but it was an essential function of the thing. It was a concept shaped and designed and tailored so that it could and would defend and perpetuate slavery.</span></blockquote>
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______________________________________<br />
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*Best-written sentence prize goes to Ms. Evans!<br />
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Note: all emphases are in the originals.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-74482718368959338882015-01-17T11:56:00.000-08:002015-01-17T12:17:34.125-08:00Christian Cliches: "Do Not Deny One Another"<div class="tr_bq">
"Do not deny one another" is a misquoted fragment of a passage in 1 Corinthians 7. Here is the whole passage, from the New American Standard Version, with the words in question in italics:</div>
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<span style="color: #660000;">Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. <i>Stop depriving one another</i>, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. 1 Corinthians 7:1-8.</span></blockquote>
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This passage is often used to shame marital partners (and particularly women) for refusing sex to their spouse. He has authority over her body, and though concessions are usually given for her ill health, she is expected to not only consent, but to joyfully desire sex with her husband at all times. Although under this verse the same would apply to the husband, it is usually the wife who is made the primary subject of this teaching.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://lavistachurchofchrist.org/LVanswers/2004/2004-09-11">This Christian website</a> illustrates what I'm talking about.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Paul advocated marriage as a way to avoid sinful sex.<br />Because this is one motivator for marriage, it becomes ridiculous to enter into marriage and then deny your spouse the very thing that helped drive him or her to marriage. . . Sex is to be exclusively available between a husband and wife to quench their desire for sex. But what sense is it to have a well and then refuse any to drink from it? Hence, Paul stated in I Corinthians 7 that neither the husband or wife have authority over their own bodies. When they married they gave themselves over to each other.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://lavistachurchofchrist.org/LVarticles/SpousalRape.htm">The result</a> is to argue that there can be no such thing as spousal rape. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">With the arrival of feminism came the idea that a woman has full control over her body. . . If she doesn't want to have sex, then a husband does not have the right to request sex from her. However, these ideas are in direct contradiction to the plain teachings in I Corinthians 7. It views the husband and wife relationship as independant and perhaps advesarial [sic] instead of a union work toward the benefit of both. . . At the root of feminism is drive to separate husband and wives. . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The act of marriage includes consent to sex. A husband can abuse his relationship by forcing sex on his wife, and such abuse is sinful, but it should not be labeled "rape." By labeling such abuse "rape," a fundamental view of marriage is changed to state that consent to sex is a moment-by-moment decision that can be granted or denied at the whim of the spouse. Yet the biblical view (and the view held by civil law until recently) is that consent is a part of the marriage relationship. It doesn't come and go at either spouse's whim. "Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does" (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/I%20Corinthians%207.3-4">I Corinthians 7:3-4</a>). A husband or wife claiming to withdraw consent to sex during marriage is violating a term of the marriage covenant and, therefore, in sin.</span></blockquote>
Julie Anne over at <a href="http://spiritualsoundingboard.com/2015/01/08/marital-rape-is-it-even-a-possibility-in-christian-marriage/">Spiritual Sounding Board</a> quotes a similar website:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">We believe the teaching on marital rape is a poison in the well of women’s hearts and minds towards their husbands and marriage & does much damage. However, we also do not condone a husband taking his wife against her will and strongly state that a man should not do so. In situations of repeated and enduring refusal, professional help and Matthew 18 need to be worked through & not force to be used.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;"><b style="font-style: italic;">We also believe that denying a spouse sex is just as much abuse as forcing sex upon a spouse. </b>[Emphasis added.]</span></blockquote>
The sad thing about this is how (in a society where power was concentrated in the hands of the man) Paul's careful wording throughout this chapter makes the husband and the wife passages parallel, of equal weight and balance. Paul said (in a society where marriage was generally required) that followers of Christ were under no obligation to marry. However, if they did marry, each should fulfill their marital duties to one another . It's interesting to note how, in contrast to our current age where the emphasis would have to be placed on not <i>demanding</i> sex, Paul writes in terms of not <i>withholding</i> sex. But the whole emphasis of this passage is mutuality and equal consideration. To use it as a way to bend one spouse to the other's will flies in the face of the teaching as a whole; it is simply opposite to the way it was intended. And to use it to claim that saying "no" is "just as much abuse" as marital rape is harmful in the extreme.<br />
<br />
The fact is that this passage<i> cannot </i>be construed as commanding marital sex, because it explicitly says marital sex is granted as "a concession, not a command." Jesus had taught that marriage was not a requirement of God's kingdom, and thus, neither was sex: <span style="color: #660000;"> "[T]here are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it [Matthew 19-12, NIV]."</span> In the 1 Cor. 7 passage, Paul declares himself as one of these when he says <span style="color: #660000;">"I wish that all men were even as I myself am." </span>According to Robin Lane Fox (Oxford New College, Ancient History) in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/PAGANS-CHRISTIANS-Robin-Lane-Fox/dp/0394554957/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421477316&sr=1-1&keywords=pagans+and+christians">Pagans and Christians</a>, celibacy became a definitive Christian virtue very early in Christianity's history:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">From its very beginnings, Christianity . . . considered an orderly sex life to be a clear second best to no sex life at all. It has been the protector of an endangered Western species: people who remain virgins from birth to death. [p. 355]</span></blockquote>
This trend continued until Martin Luther and Protestantism reversed it, extolling the virtues of married life, hearth and home and advocating the destruction of monasteries and convents. But the reason Paul emphasized "do not deprive" rather than "do not force" was probably because the tendency in the early church was to resist having marital sex, rather than trying to get it more often! Fox tells us that by the second century after Christ, this concept had grown to the point where sexless marriages, far from the tragedy they are viewed as today, were held up as the virtuous ideal:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[T]he idea of sexless cohabitation was urged, and practiced, by married Christian couples. p. 356. </span></blockquote>
Though orthodoxy opposed this extreme and eventually defeated it,[<i>Pagans and Christians</i>, p. 358], the celibacy of Christ Himself must have provided a strong incentive for imitation, and this is probably why Paul (himself celibate) had to write in terms of sex as a marital obligation which should not be shirked, rather than as a marital pleasure which should not be demanded or forced.<br />
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Today, however, 1 Corinthians 7:5 often becomes a weapon to shame a married partner (and especially a wife) for saying "no," and 1 Corinthians 7:4 is used to disclaim the existence of marital rape-- as if having "authority" over one another's bodies didn't include the authority to tell your spouse's body, "Stop!"<br />
<br />
It's also interesting the way the word translated "deprive" above often gets changed to "deny" when quoted as a cliche. The Greek word there is "apostereo," which is translated "defraud" in the King James version. <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/Dictionary/viewTopic.cfm?topic=VT0000695">Vines Expository Dictionary</a> defines it as "to rob, despoil, defraud" -- which implies <i>permanently</i> taking something away from someone. The <a href="http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/1co7.pdf">Scripture4All</a> online Interlinear translates it as "depriving," as many translations also do. The word certainly does appear to mean something much stronger than "Not tonight, honey." <br />
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Sheila at <a href="http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2012/10/what-does-1-corinthians-7-do-not-deprive-each-other-really-mean/">To Love, Honor and Vacuum</a> puts it this way:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;"><b><i>Deprive</i></b> is not the same as <b><i>refuse</i></b>. I believe many people interpret this verse to mean refuse. Are women obligated to have sex every time a man wants it? Are we ever allowed to refuse?</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">Well, let’s look more closely at deprive. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">If I were to say to you, “do not deprive your child of good food,” what am I implying? I’m saying that your child should get the food that is commonly recognized for good health: three healthy meals a day, with some snacks. I am not saying that every time your child pulls at your leg and says, “Mommy, can I have a bag of cheetos?” that you have to say yes. You are not depriving your child of good food by refusing a request for Cheetos.<br />Deprive implies that there is a level of sexual activity that is necessary for a healthy marriage. . .<br /> <br />But it does not mean that it is every single time a person wants sex. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;"><b>The fact that the preceding verses in 1 Corinthians 7 say that the husband’s body is the wife’s, and the wife’s body is the husband’s, implies that one person cannot and must not force himself or herself onto the other person. </b>And by force I’m not talking about just physical force. There’s emotional blackmail, there’s shutting down, there’s telling someone, “you’re just not good enough”. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">Let’s assume that it’s the wife with the lower libido for a minute (though it certainly isn’t always) and look at it this way: </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">If her husband’s body belongs to her, then she has the ability to also say, “I do not want you using your body sexually right now with me.” </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">If she feels sick, or is really sad, or is exhausted, then her having ownership of his body also means that she can say, “I just can’t right now” without needing to feel guilty–if she is at the same time not depriving him. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">I believe that the admonition “do not deprive each other” refers to the relationship as a whole, not to each individual moment.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">So if, in the relationship as a whole, you are having regular and frequent sex, then if one of you says, “not tonight”, that is not depriving. That is simply refusing <b style="font-style: italic;">for right now. </b>[Emphases in original.]</span></blockquote>
I would not go so far as this author does, to equate "authority" (Greek word "exousia," meaning, "having rights/power of choice over") with "ownership," but I think the rest of what she says is spot on. It seems to me that to require your spouse to have sex with you any time you want it, regardless of your spouse's feelings on the matter, is the attitude of--let's face it-- a jerk. Only six chapters later, in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul sets forth how love is patient, not self-seeking, and how it doesn't dishonor others. Having sex with someone who really doesn't want to have sex with you, but just gives in because she's not supposed to say no, is not only unloving, it's unhealthy. The Love, Honor and Vacuum blog linked above posted a comment by "Kelly" that says it so well, I'd like to close with it here too:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #134f5c;">Yep, some of the comments you read by men on these marriage websites are precisely why Christian women are beginning to advise each other not to risk marrying a Christian man! (I’m not kidding). Look, guys, here’s a quick lesson in the blindingly obvious: there’s no quicker way to make sex unappealing to your wife than by demanding it, regardless of how she feels. No better way of making yourself unattractive and frankly repellent than by sexual coercion. No no effective way of losing your wife’s respect – she wants a real man, not some oaf (because if you can enjoy sex knowing the other person isn’t enjoying it, there’s something very wrong with you). And really, no one past the age of 14 should need telling that. Of COURSE, a sexless marriage has problems that need addressing. Of COURSE you should ask if you want more/different sex to be happy. Of COURSE you can explain to her why sexual rejection hurts. But here’s a little clue (again from the ‘stating the obvious’ files): why do I enjoy nothing more than making love with my husband? Why can I not keep my hands off him? Why am I keen to give him pleasure even if I’m occasionally not in the mood or unable to participate myself? Because, while making it obvious he finds me desirable, he also wouldn’t WANT to have sex with me unless I was an enthusiastic participant. Because he can’t stand the idea of it being a one-way experience.</span></blockquote>
So if you're one of those who has been on the receiving end of biblical coercion like this-- I hope you'll find a way to let go of the shame and manipulation, and be free. God never intended the Bible to be used as a set of regulations that turns fun into duty and intimacy into a burden. If you need sexual counseling in your marriage, I hope you go get some. If you're a victim of marital rape or abuse, I hope you'll begin to take steps so you don't have to subject yourself to that.<br />
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But if you and/or your spouse are just laboring under a heavy burden of "Don't deny one another," placed on you by religious people who don't know you, your marriage or your spouse-- Christ said His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Lay down that burden and enjoy one another, and the good gifts of God. Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-52319853722950985032014-12-26T12:41:00.000-08:002014-12-26T12:41:17.617-08:00Favorite Blog Posts of 2014I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and I wish you all a wonderful New Year!<br />
<br />
In the future I'm going to be posting links to other blogs I enjoy more often than once a year. But for 2014, these are the blog posts I've saved as my favorites throughout the year. I hope other readers will find them as profound and compelling as I did.<br />
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<a href="http://kenschenck.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/trump-verse-hermeneutics.html">Trump Verse Hermeneutics </a> by Ken Schenck at Common Denominator<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">History has taken away from the American Bible reader the key to success when reading the individual verses of the Bible without contextual training. We have not given them an overall theological compass into which they might fit those individual verses. We have not taught them to see in the individual verses of the Bible the great truths of Scripture. We have not given them the "clear" by which to approach the "unclear" individual verse.<br />Instead, we have programmed them to come up with a thousand individual truths from a thousand individual verses, ripped from their contexts. We have not given them a dictionary by which to read the individual verses but have programmed them to see each individual verse as an individual truth. Their theologies are a loose collection of direct mandates and atoms to believe.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://brianzahnd.com/2014/02/problem-bible/?utm_content=buffer19684&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">My Problem with the Bible</a> by Brian Zahnd on his self-named blog.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Every story is told from a vantage point; it has a bias. The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will. This is Roman Christianity after Constantine. This is Christendom on crusade. This is colonists seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://austinchanning.com/blog/2014/2/dilemma2">Metaphysical Dilemma Part II</a> by Austin Channing Brown on her self-named blog.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">While I appreciate the small steps women conferences are taking to make sure that the line-up isn't all white, it is not uncommon to feel like I need to leave my blackness in the hotel room. It is indeed a metaphysical dilemma. I am both black and woman- both- all the time. Hard as I try, I cannot separate the two. I am sure I will not be able to adequately explain this, but if I cannot be fully black in white spaces, somehow my womanhood is also not fully represented in that same space.<br /> <br />It is not just women conferences where I feel like a metaphysical dilemma. I often feel it at justice themed conferences, too. You may not have noticed, but these conferences have a tendency to be dominated by men. I have found that it is not at all uncommon to find justice conferences perfectly willing to proclaim the equality of potential, value, and role of every human soul before God when talking about color but use an asterisk as a provision to exempt women from that statement.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.therustylife.com/2014/03/the-complete-white-privilege-series/">The Five Stages of White Privilege Awareness</a> by Nance at the Rusty Life blog.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">This, here, is the critical juncture. This is the point at which we either keep shouting “not me! not me! not me!” or we admit that even though we may not fully understand it, <i>we are a part of this.</i> We are the dominant race in a country whose kids are choosing white dolls over black ones; whose preschoolers make the black kids play the part of the “bad guys” on the playground; whose black citizens are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/racial-disparity-drug-use_n_3941346.html">imprisoned for drug possession</a> at a wildly disproportionate rate compared to their white counterparts; whose white students routinely outnumber Latino and Black students in the <a href="http://www.mamiverse.com/is-your-child-gifted-latino-kids-less-likely-to-be-properly-diagnosed-3526/">gifted programs</a> in our schools despite the fact that science shows giftedness to occur at exactly the same rate across all racial groups. The belief that some races of people are better than others evidently exists at least on <i>some</i> level, although it might be simmering so far beneath the surface for some of us that we are unaware of it</span>.</blockquote>
<a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/259639/does-christianity-really-prefer-charity-to-government-welfare">Does Christianity Really Prefer Charity to Government Welfare?</a> by Elizabeth Stoker at <i>The Week</i>:<br />
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<li><span style="color: #660000;">[T]he notion that the state can play an important role in the best possible exercise of charity has profound roots in the Christian tradition as well. Though the conservatives who mount the case that social needs currently addressed by state programs should be relegated to private charity are often themselves Christian, the Christian ethical case for welfare <i>and</i> private charity co-existing is not often cited. So what is the Christian argument, then, for supporting a compound structure of state welfare programs and private charity when it comes to addressing the stresses of life, which range from poverty to illness and old age? Foremost is the idea that human dignity entitles people to an "existence minimum" which guarantees their basic needs will be reliably met without discrimination based on caprice, race, gender, creed, orientation, or any other marker. . . Another practical Christian consideration ruling in favor of a state-provided existence minimum arises from the troubling power situations created by leaving the necessities of life up to the auspices of private charities — even churches. . . When the wealthy have the power to determine who receives the necessities of life, they tend to <i>reinforc</i>e the power structures that led to the entrenchment of their wealth in the first place, rather than to challenge them.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><a href="http://redemptionpictures.com/2014/04/08/10-things-real-people-do-every-day/#disqus_thread">10 Things Real People Do Every Day</a> </span>by Micah J. Murry at Redemption Pictures:</div>
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<span style="color: #660000;">I’m not sure where these mythical “rich successful satisfied extraordinary people” are, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met one. (Perhaps they’re hanging out with Bigfoot and the unicorns?)</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">Meanwhile, I’ve been conducting extensive research (and by “conducting research” I mean “scrolling through Twitter”) and have created a definitive list of what actual non-unicorn people do every day: </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>1. Make coffee, then forget to drink it.</b><br /> <br />Because how can we be expected to remember to drink my first cup of coffee if my caffeine-starved brain can’t function without coffee? But it’s totally ok, twice-microwaved coffee tastes great too, right? (SPOILER: It doesn’t.)</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.estheremery.com/2014/04/24/why-i-will-not-leave-the-evangelical-church-today/">Why I Will Not Leave the Evangelical Church Today</a> by Esther Emery:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">I am remembering my instructions.<br /> <br />‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ And ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">I will not draw a line around the evangelical Christian church. Not as the solely holy saved, but also not as the untouchables. Certainly not as the dead zone in which the failing power of redemptive grace makes change impossible.<br /><br />This Idaho back country is where I live. And these are my neighbors. This is the religious language of my heritage. And these are the songs I like to sing. I will not leave.<br /> <br />But neither will I be frozen and stuck and let myself feel that I am out of options.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/from-the-lectionary-an-open-letter-to-jesus-on-this-whole-ascension-business">From the Lectionary: An Open Letter to Jesus on this Whole Ascension Business</a> by Rachel Held Evans:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">I don’t know, Jesus. I guess I just can’t get over how miraculous and infuriating and profound and ridiculous it is that you trust us, that the God of the universe allows sinners to do His work. It’s quite an unconventional plan. There are days when I’m convinced it’s going to fail.<br /> <br />But we won’t know until we try, right?</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">So I suppose that on Ascension Day, I best quit standing here staring at the bottoms of your feet, Jesus, and instead get to work—feeding, fellowshipping, healing, teaching, loving, hosting, sharing, breaking bread and pouring wine.<br /> <br />One day at a time.<br /> <br /><b><i>Ready or not</i></b>.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/07/10/a-whiskey-priest-is-not-the-same-as-a-nazi/">A Whisky Priest is Not the Same as a Nazi</a> by Slacktivist:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">This is not a matter . . . of fretting over the foibles and peccadilloes of great thinkers. It is, rather, a vitally important matter of identifying the way these men fell into the holes in their own thought so that we can avoid falling into those holes ourselves. We can’t shrug off Yoder’s sexual abuse or Jefferson’s slave-owning as, in Olson’s compartmentalizing phrase, “sides to their personal lives that we cannot be proud of.”</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.christenacleveland.com/2014/08/farewell-strongblackwoman/">Farewell, Strong Black Woman</a> by Christina Cleveland:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Black women embraced the hard-working, stoic, sacrificial ethic of the StrongBlackWoman and covered up any signs of weakness or vulnerability in order to show the world that black women aren’t immoral, lazy, and selfish. Ultimately, this goal wasn’t achieved as the Mammy, Jezebel and Sapphire stereotypes remain alive and well in the American consciousness today. Meanwhile, the StrongBlackWoman identity, which at first glance seems like a positive identity, has wreaked havoc on black women’s emotional, physical, spiritual and relational health. In an attempt to escape one set of racist/sexist stereotypes, black women have run smack dab into another stereotype, one that is also maintained by societal racism and sexism. The StrongBlackWoman identity continues to ensnare black women like myself, as we work to disprove the racist stereotypes that society simply refuses to relinquish.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keesha-beckford/dear-white-moms_b_5698431.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000037">Dear White Moms</a> by Keesha Beckford at Huff Post Parents:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Right now my son is a little boy, like yours maybe, or maybe like the one you remember. He's goofy and silly. He loves to do all those stereotypical "boy" things (please don't bring up any gender issues -- you know exactly what I'm talking about). Sometimes he likes to tussle, straddling the line between play and real. Sometimes he can't control his temper. But right now he's like a puppy to most people. He's cute and non-threatening. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">What happens when he's grown up and not so cute and non-threatening? When he's walking through the world alone? No more the floppy-eared, playful youngster -- he's now the feral stray dog, worthy of extermination. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">Can you imagine that? Do you see it?</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.registeredrunaway.com/2014/09/12/insomniac-christians/">Insomniac Christians</a> by Benjamin Moberg at Registered Runaway:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Every path we’ve tried to take to get to God has been nothing more than a momentary thrill and then a steep unexpected fall. The prayer doesn’t feel the same when we feel anxious or sad. The books feel foreign when we need the answer now. The isolation sets in and we end up just collapsing in it, waiting and waiting and waiting for some formula of our youth to be complete and for us to feel <i>held</i> again. When we don’t, we think we’ve lost Him. We think we have to win him back. We think we’ll spend all our days hustling after him, trying to get him to look our way, to give us the precious good of his Love. And maybe it’s because somewhere along the line, we understood that love of God is a fragile kind, a fickle easily frustrated kind.<br /><br />This is the lie of religion. This is what keeps us up, groggy and grumpy, this is what extinguishes the light of our lives. We can’t let go of the control on our belovedness.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://fairlyspiritual.org/2014/05/19/my-enlightened-christian-friends/">My "Enlightened" Christian Friends</a> by Doug Bursch at Fairly Spiritual:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">I agree with you up until the point you abandon me; the point where your theology becomes more pristine and mine more antiquated. I’m inspired by your words until they turn against me and accuse me of close-mindedness. I close my heart to you when your enlightenment labels my sacred convictions as ignorance, darkness and immaturity. I don’t want to close my heart, but I can’t help it…I can’t help but feel as if I’ve been betrayed by a friend. Once again, I’m not relevant enough to sit at the cool kids’ table.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">You promote the absence of certainty as a virtue. Often I agree; I agree with your rebuke of angry fundamentalism and the rigid systematizing of faith and God. I often agree with you; I sit at the table and interject my affirmations. You let me talk when I agree, you smile when I agree, you agree with me when I agree. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">But you are so certain of the absence of certainty....My attempt to defend my contrasting truth will simply codify your conviction of my immaturity and closed-mindedness.</span></blockquote>
<a href="http://johnson-mccormick.com/2014/11/cute-little-black-boys-do-grow-up-to-be-black-men-part-ii-and-now-they-are-ten/">Cute Little Black Boys Do Grow Up to Be Black Men - And Now They Are 10</a> by Heather Johnson-McCormick on the Never a Dull Moment blog:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">But the world doesn’t see them as I do. No matter how perfectly they present themselves, no matter how spectacular they are, they will be disproportionately extremely LESS SAFE than if they were white. Kyle and Owen’s stellar reputations and hard-earned achievements and family-privilege will not necessarily get them as far as they choose or could go. Because the world might just choose for them and against them — in ways that would simply not occur if they were white. That is what it means to be entangled in structural, entrenched, historic, and systemic racism. No amount of privilege — or charm, or charisma, or pure raw talent — can protect them from the fact that they are black boys.</span></blockquote>
And finally this holiday piece: <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2014/12/16/bethlehem-not-rome/">Jesus was Born in Bethlehem, NOT Rome: Choosing to Lose the War on Christmas</a> by Kurt Willems on the Pangea Blog:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">If we sell a Jesus who demands to be the center of popular culture, then we fail to remember that Christ came to us from Bethlehem, not Rome. Had Christ wanted to fight the culture wars he would have positioned himself in the center of the “pagan” world, the capital of the Roman Empire.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">Instead, he didn’t demand the central place in culture, but humbly “emptied himself” (Phil. 2). Or as the Message puts it: “When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!”<br /><br />Jesus reminds us that donating our lives from the margins of culture is where we will most effectively make and impact for the upside-down kingdom of God. The moment we try to “sell Christmas” to culture, or rather, coerce Christmas (our holy version of Christ-Mass) back into the center of public discourse, we’ve failed to model our witness after Christ.</span></blockquote>
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<br />Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-35135495222294889602014-12-06T08:00:00.000-08:002014-12-06T08:00:01.929-08:00"Raised by Strangers"It's a mantra that I've heard repeated many times, especially in Christian circles. "A good mother stays home full-time. Don't let your children be raised by strangers!"<br />
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"Raised by strangers." What mom would want that for her kids? So I believed, as a young Christian married woman, that of course God would provide a way for me to not work outside the home. After all, staying home with my kids full-time was what I wanted as a young mother, right? I mean, if I were really following God's will for my life, this was what I <i>should</i> want. And this was obviously what was best both for me and for my children, right? I mean, if God designed it that way, then that's how it should work best!<br />
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The problem was that the only way we could have given up my income while simultaneously incurring the costs of infant care was by going on welfare, which (we were taught) was also totally a no-no for good Christians. We had to choose, it seemed, between being out of God's will one way, or being out of God's will another way. What was being demanded of us was actually impossible.<br />
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So I went back to work after maternity leave-- as part-time as we could afford, but I did go back to work. And I thought God had let me down, because He was supposed to provide so that I wouldn't have to work outside the home. I also felt guilty because I really <i>liked</i> my job as a legal assistant, which meant, apparently, that I didn't love my kids enough to really want to stay home with them full time.<br />
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But working part-time seemed like the best thing to do in our situation. So that's what we did.<br />
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I increased my hours gradually as the children grew up. And I'm very grateful to my boss for being so family-friendly. A lot of women don't have the options he gave me.<br />
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It ended up working out just fine for our kids-- <i>and</i> for us, their parents.<br />
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I'm not going to cite a bunch of statistics here, or sociological studies or expert opinions on children being in daycare. Frankly, when I researched this on the Internet, I found that the whole thing is very complicated. For every study or expert supporting one position, there's another expert or study supporting the opposite. Practically speaking, the outcomes for children depend not so much on whether or not they're in non-parental child care, but on the quality of the care, the income and education of the family, and the quality of the parenting the kids receive when they're not in day care.<br />
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There is one thing I am certain of, though. There's such a thing as <a href="http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/144-prejudicial-language">prejudicial language</a>, which is defined as "loaded or emotive terms used to attach value or moral goodness [or badness] to believing the proposition." And if ever a phrase constituted prejudicial language, "raised by strangers" is such a phrase.<br />
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My children weren't "raised by strangers." I mean, let's look at this practically. Even with both parents working full time (which wasn't true in our house anyway until the kids reached school age), a child still is at home <i>a lot.</i> There was breakfast time, dinner time, chore time, playtime, bath time, bedtime. And weekends. And holidays. And sick days, when the day cares said, "Not in here. You have to keep your kid home." Some parents risk losing paid hours, or even their jobs, in that situation! I could only be grateful my boss was supportive and that I had plenty of paid sick leave and vacation time.<br />
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Also, guess what-- once you meet a person who is going to take care of your children, you begin to develop a relationship based around the commonality of that child, and she isn't a stranger anymore! I found it was important to me that the children be in home-based day care rather than classroom-type day care, so that's what I picked (and I was privileged to have this option-- a lot of women don't, so we need to cut them some slack!) What I <i>didn't</i> have was any relative, any grandmother or aunt, who lived in the area and could watch the kids. But the children grew to love their caregivers as they would a grandmother or aunt. Did the lack of blood ties really matter? Both children were happy and secure in their daycare settings, looked forward to going, and enjoyed coming home to be with me as well.<br />
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So why are we as Christians putting such burdens and laying such guilt trips on parents who are doing the best they can? <br />
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The Bible, in fact, never addresses how much time a mother is supposed to be home with her children. The <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+31">Proverbs 31</a> woman, who is held up so often as the example Christian women should strive to follow, apparently spent quite a bit of time away from home and family, doing things like buying fields, planting vineyards, and selling linen garments to merchants.<br />
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It's also important to remember that today's nuclear family was simply not what Paul had in mind when he talked about parenting in the New Testament, because such a thing didn't exist. I mean, of course there was such a thing as a mother, father and children, but they generally were just part of a larger household, and the majority of people were actually slaves. Almost everyone lived in <a href="http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/2007/06/household_the_g.html#.VIKdLDHF98E">household units</a> that also functioned as economic units, with one older patriarch as ruler of the family, his slaves, wife and children (adult sons, with their wives, and minor children) who were all expected to obey him. Most mothers didn't and couldn't take care of their children full time. The <a href="http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/family.html">patriarch's wife</a> would spend most of her time managing the household and the servants. <a href="http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/people/slaves.htm">Slave women</a> worked in the fields or took care of their mistress's children, presumably leaving their own young children to be cared for by older family members who were past the age of harder work.<br />
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This idea that a child can only grow up healthy if her mom is there 24-7 is really a fairly modern invention-- and even now is an option only available to fairly well-off families. Most women throughout history have not been able to be full-time mothers. Most women today are not able to be full-time mothers. In fact, many women (like myself, I discovered, when I was honest with myself) end up discovering they're not suited for or happy staying home full time.<br />
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What if God didn't design all women alike? What if "raised by strangers" is really just rhetoric being used to shame women into staying in a traditional role?<br />
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What I say is, no two families are alike, and we all need to just do the best we can given who we are and our situations, and not place burdens on ourselves or each other that are too difficult to bear.<br />
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Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-85095138839581126162014-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:002014-11-15T08:00:04.076-08:00Taxation is Theft? The first time I came across this idea, I was reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Left-Right-Christ-Harper-Innes/dp/0982930089/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341030682&sr=1-1&keywords=left+right+christ">Left, Right & Christ</a> (Russell Media, 2011), in which a Christian Republican and a Christian Democrat each took chapters to address the pressing political issues of our time. The Christian Republican, D. C. Innes, stated on pages 75-76: <span style="color: #660000;">“The Christian moral objection to the welfare state is . . . that it violates the eighth commandment [thou shalt not steal]. . . Thieves come in different forms. . . [T]he government’s power to secure property is also the power to take it away. When a mob uses government to pillage its more propertied neighbors, we call it progressive taxation, or redistribution of wealth. Sometimes we call it fairness. But it is theft all the same.” </span><br />
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Taxation as theft. The government as robber, as thief-- as a criminal. Strong language, to be sure. And apparently there are more and more Christians who think this way, who identify themselves as <a href="https://www.theihs.org/what-libertarian">libertarian</a> and claim that Christianity essentially teaches <a href="http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/jesus-want-pay-taxes-scripture-scholarship-say/#axzz3J6q070VC">the same</a>. Notice how Innes' quote above identifies this mindset as "<i>the</i> Christian moral objection" to taxes. Innes appears to limit his objection to taxes that support social programs and "the welfare state," but many proponents of this position appear to believe that any taxation whatsoever is a moral, even a criminal, wrong.<br />
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Here's the standard argument, quoted from <a href="http://godfatherpolitics.com/8798/reclaim-the-language-taxation-is-theft/">Godfather Politics</a>:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Taxation involves force. If you don’t pay up, you will be fined, have your assets levied, or imprisoned. If taxation means taking someone’s property and giving it to other people, how is this not a moral issue? The Eighth Commandment is quite clear: “You shall not steal” (Ex. 20:15). There is no “except by majority vote.”</span></blockquote>
According to this viewpoint, then, "theft" is to be defined in an all-inclusive sense: that there are virtually <i>never </i>any instances in which it is legitimate for a person to be required to give up some of his or her money.<br />
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I do wonder how far those who promote this idea are willing to take it. Is it "stealing" if the government forces a parent to pay child support for his or her child? Is a traffic fine "stealing"? What about charging a fee to reimburse a government agency for its costs in giving driving tests?<br />
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Perhaps it's ok with these Christians to require payment in these circumstances. After all, libertarians do believe people should be held responsible for their own actions and should pay for what they get, right?<br />
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But the problem I'm having is this. Other than direct fees for specific services, taxes are how governments function. To make a blanket statement that all taxation is theft is essentially to render all government illegitimate: it's saying government really ought not to exist at all.<br />
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And that means that police officers, fire fighters, judges, lawmakers, all would have to be for-profit, private organizations.* If the police came to your house to catch a thief, they'd have to charge you a fee. If you couldn't pay, they wouldn't come to your house next time. Maybe some people, out of the goodness of their hearts, would choose to help others by paying more than just what it costs to protect their own property-- but would it be enough to protect everyone?<br />
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And what about roads and bridges? We all benefit from them. Even those without driver's licenses go to the grocery store and buy food delivered across those roads and bridges. If we made road maintenance taxes voluntary, what would happen? Would all the roads continue to be maintained, or only those with enough traffic that private owners could make a profit charging tolls? What would happen if you couldn't afford to pay someone to maintain the road to your own house?<br />
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Is a world with no government really what we want? And since this is the implication of the "taxation is theft" mindset, what is it that makes this anti-government stance so very Christian?<br />
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The New Testament never treats taxation as theft, but as the legitimate "due" of government:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. 7 Render to all <i>what is <b>due</b> them: tax to whom tax is <b>due</b>; </i>custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.</span> (<span style="color: #660000;">Romans 13:6-7, NASB, emphasis added.)</span></blockquote>
In Matthew 7:24-27, tax collectors ask Peter whether Jesus pays the temple tax. When Peter asks Jesus, Jesus acknowledges that the "kings of the earth" collect taxes, and says nothing whatsoever to contradict their right to do so. He only indicates that, since this tax is for the Temple, he (as the Son of the God whose Temple it is, presumably) should be exempt--but then he agrees to pay it anyway.<br />
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In my three-part blog post on "The Bible and Human Authority," (which can be read <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-1-old.html">here</a>, <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-2-new.html">here</a> and <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/01/bible-and-human-authority-part-3-great.html">here</a>, I note that the Bible in general treats human governments as necessary, and that God's plan for the earth includes them. Though many passages appear to support limitation of human governmental power, the attitude that government should not exist at all, or that taxation in and of itself, absent any abuses, is evil or criminal, is simply absent from the Scriptures.<br />
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As I said earlier, some versions of this viewpoint don't consider taxation <i>itself </i>to be theft, but only taxation which redistributes resources from the haves to the have-nots. In<i> Left, Right and Christ</i>, D.C. Innes declares that the Bible limits the role of government to one thing:<span style="color: #660000;"> “The task of government is simple and limited: punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. . . God appoints government for our benefit, but it is not to provide every good. It is only to prevent bad conduct with creditable threat and punish it. . . .”</span> (pages 58-60). However, as I explained in <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/thoughts-of-christian-centrist-on-role.html">an earlier post</a>, the verses Innes uses to support this claim were never intended to give a comprehensive theory of government; they do not, expressly or implicitly, limit government to <i>only</i> the functions those passages highlight.<br />
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Certain passages instead seem actually to support required redistribution of wealth as a form of equitable justice. As I said in <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/thoughts-of-christian-centrist-on-role.html">the same post</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[W]e can glean certain basic principles from the Law regarding how a civil society should govern the treatment of one another. God, working with the people of that time and place, simply did not promote economy liberty over basic equity and fair-dealing. In economic dealings, as in other areas of life, the Law restrained the people from fully exercising their liberty, recognizing that the natural human bent towards selfishness and greed needed to be curbed.</span><span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><span style="color: #660000;">The gleaning law in Leviticus 23:22 amounted to a tax on all landowners of a portion of their income, for the benefit of the poor. The Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25:13 amounted to a redistribution of wealth every 50 years, so that each family could return to its own land and possessions—and so that the concentration of all the nation’s wealth in the hands of a few could never take place. One of the most foundational principles of the Bible is that all of humanity is sinful, and therefore cannot be trusted to simply do the right thing as long as you leave it alone. The Law included certain regulatory provisions to make sure that everyone in the society did the duty of the society to the poor among them. Though free-will giving was encouraged, it was not left up to free will alone.</span></blockquote>
One argument I recently heard raised against this was that it was ok for God to take people's money away from them, because He's God and it all belongs to Him anyway-- but it's wrong for human governments to do any such thing! However, these passages are not about God requiring money to be given to Him, but to be given to the poor or to those who had lost their ancestral land through financial hardships. These passages really don't say, "I'm God and all your resources came from Me, so I want you to give some of it back to Me." There are passages in the Law pertaining to religious offerings that do exactly that-- but that's not what <i>these</i> passages are about. These passages are about achieving a more equitable society through required redistribution of wealth.<br />
<br />
Of course, in our various modern Western societies, most taxation is not even something imposed by "the kings of the earth" upon us as helpless subjects. Democratic representative government means that our elected officials are sent by us to create tax codes on our behalf, and if we don't like what they're doing, we can protest, we can write or call them, or we can vote against them. Representative government means <i>the government is us</i>, not a monarch or an emperor. If we through our elected representatives decide on certain taxes, then the requirement to pay is our own requirement, imposed on ourselves as a people. Taxation <i>with representation</i> has always been an underlying principle of American concepts of freedom. Taxation with representation is not stealing, but a decision by the people, for the people, to pool our money and use it for the common good.<br />
<br />
It's true that there will always be those who don't agree with laws passed by our elected officials, but we don't expect to be released from other laws just because we don't agree with them or didn't vote for the representative who helped pass them. We don't equate other laws with criminal activity just because we are required to obey them. We don't say, "the officials who installed that stop sign are thugs, forcing me to stop when I don't want to."<br />
<div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-taxestheft.htm">Steve Kangas</a>, a Christian liberal, is living proof that "taxation is theft" is certainly not <i>the</i> Christian position on this issue. He says: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Taxes are part of a social contract, an agreement between voters and government to exchange money for the government's goods and services. . . Arguments like "taxation is theft" are . . . the equivalent of saying "Everything I make is by my own effort" -- a patently false statement in an interdependent, specialized economy where the free market is supported by public goods and services.</span></blockquote>
Kangas <a href="http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-earnedmoney.htm">also points out</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">No one truly makes 100 percent of his money by himself. Individuals depend on a wide array of government services to support the very free market in which they earn their money. Without these supports, there would be no free market in the first place.</span></blockquote>
He then gives a long list of social supports and physical infrastructure provided by government that enables citizens to prosper and make wealth. It hardly seems to me to be a definitively Christian viewpoint that looks on each individual as a sort of island, independent of the community structures that are largely responsible for our financial well-being.<br />
<br />
Even many libertarians object to the "taxation is theft" mantra. Washington DC writer and policy analyst <a href="http://www.juliansanchez.com/2014/07/14/on-the-slogan-taxation-is-theft/#more-5375">Julian Sanchez</a>, who is himself a libertarian, says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[A]lmost nobody residing in any actually-existing state can justify their present holdings by reference to an appropriately untainted provenance running back to the State of Nature.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Serious theorists tend to acknowledge this at least in passing, but it’s one of those elephants in the room. . . If there’s a libertarian theorist who’s grappled with this at the length it merits, I haven’t seen it. I would love to be able to point to a few serious book-length efforts, but the Year Zero approach that just takes current holdings as given and proposes Entitlement Theory Starting Tomorrow have always struck me as the sort of ad hoccery that makes caricatures of libertarianism as an elaborate rationalization for privilege more plausible than they ought to be. So an independent reason to shy away from “taxation is theft” as a slogan is that it can be interpreted as an unreflective endorsement of distributional patterns riddled with profound historical injustices.</span></blockquote>
As a middle-class white American, the assets I came into the world having (because my parents had them and used them to support me) had a lot to do with exclusionary practices that kept other, non-white, non-middle class people from being able to acquire what I took for granted. My father went to college on the GI Bill, but if he had had black skin, the GI Bill would not have helped him no matter how long he served in the military. He also bought land and built a house using a Veterans Housing loan that a person of color could not obtain.<br />
<br />
My own ability to earn wealth, similarly, only partially came from my own merit or my own efforts-- a lot of it came from opportunities afforded me due to my social and economic status. Other opportunities have eluded me at least partly because I am female in a society where women still bear the greatest burden of the care of the young, and where jobs traditionally held by women pay less than jobs traditionally held by men. <br />
<br />
So when those who benefit most from these inequitable systems claim some absolute moral right to hold onto what they have, they are ignoring the fact that some people were to all intents and purposes denied a chance to even try for those things. <a href="http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/2011/02/uweekly-race-matters.html">This article from By Their Strange Fruit</a> details some of the built-in advantages of being white that we did not earn, that have resulted in our simply having more to call our own. In what sense is this just?<br />
<br />
The active undoing of unfairly weighted systems is not injustice, even if it may seem for a time to be "unjust" to the group in power. But when something starts off out of balance, you have to balance it by throwing weight on the other side. Taxation for programs to help right old wrongs is hardly theft. What it amounts to instead is restitution.<br />
Another libertarian, <a href="http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/06/loren-lomasky-taxation-is-not-theft/">Loren Lomasky</a>, protests the "taxation is theft" mantra in terms of the radical nature of its criminalizing language:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> [I]f it is then taken in its straightforward sense, that pronouncement <b>denies the legitimacy of the social order and announces that I regard myself as authorized unilaterally to override its dictates as I would the depredations of a thief.</b> It says to my neighbors that I regard them as, if not themselves thieves, then confederates or willing accomplices to thievery. Is it pusillanimous to suggest that declaring war, even cold war, against the other 99 percent of the population is imprudent? [Emphasis added.]</span></blockquote>
Words like "taxation is theft," as Lomasky points out, are "fightin' words." To say this is to set yourself against the social order, to declare yourself a rebel against the system. As Christians, is this what we should be fighting against? To declare our governments illegitimate and criminal-- to fight to hold onto our own <i>stuff </i>against all comers-- neither of these seem like particularly worthy Christian endeavors to my mind.<br />
<br />
Taxation is not theft. And we're not helping anybody when we say it is.<br />
<br />
<br />
---------------------<br />
*I don't mention the armed forces because most of the time Christians concede to them, at least, as being an exception.<br />
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<br /></div>
Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-44665485422655742262014-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:002014-10-25T08:00:01.841-07:00About Halloween. . . .I'll always remember the Halloweens when I was a kid. Mom decorated the house with cutout witches and bats made with stencils and black or orange construction paper. We would start planning our costumes, and what faces to put on our pumpkins, weeks in advance.<br />
<br />
We lived high in the Rocky Mountains, and the houses in our little community were few and far between. Every year one of the mothers would volunteer to drive all the kids (there were around ten of us) around to all the houses (about 20 of them). Usually it would be very cold, and often it would be snowing. Everyone knew everyone else, and at every house we'd be invited in and asked to take off our coats to show off our costumes. At some houses we'd be offered cocoa. Often the treats would be homemade popcorn balls or caramel apples. <br />
<br />
When I was a little older there was a scare about some people putting razor blades in Halloween treats. We knew no one in our own neighborhood would do that, but it was a weird thought. According to <a href="http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp">Snopes</a> there have been a few documented cases of this actually happening, but it's always been very rare. We didn't worry too much about it.<br />
<br />
The real problem with Halloween arose when I became a Christian in the early 1980s. Committed Christians, I learned, didn't celebrate Halloween-- not if they were truly serious about Christ. Halloween was an evil, Satanic holiday, a glorification of the occult. The Christian group I was with in college generally had a prayer meeting on Halloween. With locked doors and lights low to discourage trick-or-treaters, we prayed fervently for God to prevent the devil and his demons from doing any real harm that night. Gullible people, we were told, by celebrating Halloween had "opened a door" in the spiritual realms for demonic forces to dominate during the holiday. So we did "spiritual warfare" by praying against the powers of darkness, and drew a sigh of relief each year when it was all over.<br />
<br />
By the time I had kids (the mid-1990s), attitudes were loosening up a little in our Christian circle. It was conceded that ordinary people who celebrated Halloween were not demonically influenced. The best thing to do was to either use the opportunity to spread the gospel to trick-or-treaters, or to hold our own alternative celebrations. These, instead of focusing on scary things, were designed to thank God for the harvest. Harvest parties were organized at county fairgrounds and other locations, where church volunteers would lead a variety of games for youngsters. The kids were even allowed to wear costumes-- as long as they didn't dress up as ghosts, witches, devils, vampires or other occult creatures.<br />
<br />
It was nice that things had changed so that our kids didn't have to feel they were missing out. Harvest parties were certainly more entertaining than prayer meetings! I was glad we no longer had to hide in darkened rooms while our neighbors were out enjoying themselves. But I had to admit what the kids suspected-- that the harvest parties just weren't as fun as trick-or-treating.<br />
<br />
The year our younger child was two, we gave up on harvest parties and went back to really celebrating Halloween. It was a pleasure and a relief. The new church we had recently begun attending, though it helped sponsor the local Christian harvest party every year, believed in letting its members make their own decisions about these things. This was in fact one of the main reasons we had begun attending!<br />
<br />
So the kids began trick-or-treating, both downtown at the local businesses during the afternoon and around the neighborhood in the evening. They came home with a lot of candy, and we dumped it all out on the carpet and sorted and counted it with them. We passed out candy to the trick-or-treaters who came to our door and didn't give them any religious tracts. We relaxed and enjoyed the fun of creepy things, of scary things that never caused <i>real</i> fear because they <i>weren't</i> real. And I began, finally, to begin to understand Halloween.<br />
<br />
Not that my earlier Christian view of Halloween has died out. Sites like <a href="http://www.born-again-christian.info/christian.view.of.halloween.htm">Born Again Christian Info</a> still promote the idea that this is an evil, occult celebration that no real Christian would have anything to do with:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It is plain from its roots that Halloween has nothing to do with Christianity, but is simply Satan worship, derived from Babylonian practices. Christians should only ever get involved for one reason: to denounce, expose and destroy it by proclaiming Christ's Victory over all the works of the Devil. . . those who dare to indulge in the occult will not go to heaven. . . You may not be serious, but Satan is. You are being deceived and sucked down a slippery slope. . . Ignore these warnings and you will lose your children to Satan.</span></blockquote>
The website cites a number of scriptures against witchcraft and divination. It cites the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain as a form of sun-worship similar to ancient Babylonian practices, and traces Halloween back to these early pagan rituals.<br />
<br />
I understand the religious devotion that gives rise to this viewpoint; after all, I once subscribed to it myself! But I cannot sanction the practice of listing a set of proof-texts and claiming that they support the one and only clear Christian position on something like Halloween, implying that anyone who disagrees is simply being stupid and rebellious against God. The modern celebration of Halloween really doesn't include any divination or witchcraft. It has nothing to do with sun-worship; in fact, it's not about worship at all. <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40596-history-of-halloween.html">LiveScience</a> website offers a more objective and accurate overview of the origins of Halloween:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Because ancient records are sparse and fragmentary, the exact nature of Samhain is not fully understood, but it was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[A]ccording to Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University in Toronto and author of "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195168968/?&tag=livescience01-20">Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night</a>" (Oxford University Press, 2003), "there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship.<br /><br />"According to the ancient sagas, Samhain was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the sidh [ancient mounds] might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld," Rogers wrote. Samhain was less about death or evil than about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy (and rebirth) of nature as summer turned to winter, he said. . . </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Some evangelical Christians have expressed concern that Halloween is somehow satanic because of its roots in pagan ritual. However, ancient Celts did not worship anything resembling the Christian devil and had no concept of it. In fact, the Samhain festival had long since vanished by the time the Catholic Church began persecuting witches in its search for satanic cabals. </span></blockquote>
In any event, the rejection of Halloween by Christians is a fairly recent development. This archived 2009 post by the late <a href="http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-internet-monk-annual-halloween-rant-2">Michael Spencer, the "Internet Monk"</a> laments the change which occurred in the late 1970s and early '80s:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">From the late sixties into the early seventies, the churches I attended and worked for–all fundamentalist Baptists– were all over Halloween like ants on jam. It was a major social activity time in every youth group I was part of from elementary school through high school graduation in 1974.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">We had haunted houses. Haunted hikes. Scary movies. (All the old Vincent Price duds.) As a youth minister in the mid to late seventies and early eighties, I created some haunted houses in church education buildings that would win stagecraft awards.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The kids loved it. The parents loved it. The pastors approved. The church paid for it!</span> . . .</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It was fun. Simple, old-fashioned, fun. No one tried to fly a broom or talk to the dead. Everyone tried to have fun. Innocent play in the name of an American custom.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">And then, things changed.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Mike Warnke convinced evangelicals that participating in Halloween was worshiping the devil. Later, when we learned that Warnke may have been one of the most skillful of evangelical con-artists, lying about his entire Satanic high priest schtick, the faithful still believed his stories. </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Evangelical media began to latch onto Halloween as some form of Satanism or witchcraft, and good Christians were warned that nothing made the other team happier than all those kids going door to door collecting M&Ms.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Evangelical parents decided that their own harmless and fun Halloween experiences were a fluke, and if their kid dressed up as a vampire, he’d probably try to become one. If there was a pumpkin on the porch, you were inviting demons into your home, just like it says in Hezekiah.</span></blockquote>
Speaking of Mike Warnke, the website <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.me/">Swallowing the Camel</a>, a fact-checking site similar to Snopes (if a bit snarkier), has archived research on the roots of the whole evangelical Halloween scare. It's the story of <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-i-doreen-irvine.html">Doreen Irvine</a>, who published an autobiography in 1972:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">She was the first of many born again Christians who claimed to be ex-witches and/or ex-Satanists, among them women who claimed to have been high priestesses in destructive Satanic cults, so her testimony provided a sort of blueprint.</span></blockquote>
Irvine's story of Satanism and Satanic ritual abuse was later determined to be false. But by far the most popular of such claimants was <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Mike Warnke</a>. As a young Christian I listened to Warnke's record albums and read excerpts of his books in which, from his purported expertise as a Satanist high priest of the inner Illuminati, he denounced Halloween as the Satanist high holiday. <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_20.html">It turns out</a> that he was actually capitalizing on Christian enthusiasm for stories like this in order to catapult himself to fame and fortune. <br />
<br />
Quite frankly, the stories were lurid and shocking and utterly fascinating. They showed us that we were not just ordinary people, but heroes in a larger-than-life romanticist saga of good and evil. We <i>wanted </i>to believe these stories. And so we did, until in the late 1980s <i>Cornerstone Magazine</i> launched an investigation into the claims of Warnke and others, and discovered that the known facts about their lives utterly contradicted their claims. Warnke never was a Satanist high priest, but was an ordinary, clean-cut Christian college student during the years he was supposed to have been participating in Satanic ritual abuse.<br />
<br />
Discovery of the falsehood of these stories put a real damper on evangelical enthusiasm for them, and probably contributed strongly to the loosening up of taboos that replaced those fearful prayer meetings with harvest festivals that were simply Halloween lite, complete with (friendly-faced) carved pumpkins, costumes and candy. Evangelical thinktank <a href="http://www.equip.org/articles/the-hard-facts-about-satanic-ritual-abuse/">Christian Research Institute's examination</a> of the 1980's Satanism scare concludes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">There is still no substantial, compelling evidence that SRA [Satanic ritual abuse] stories and conspiracy theories are true. Alternate hypotheses more reasonably explain the social, professional, and personal dynamics reflected in this contemporary satanic panic. The tragedy of broken families, traumatized children, and emotionally incapacitated adults provoked by SRA charges is needless and destructive. Careful investigation of the stories, the alleged victims, and the proponents has given us every reason to reject the satanic conspiracy model in favor of an interpretation consistent with reason and truth. </span></blockquote>
So what is Halloween <i>really</i> about? <br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40596-history-of-halloween.html">LiveScience</a> website cited above offers this insight, based on the research of folklorist John Santino:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Halloween provides a safe way to play with the concept of death. . . People dress up as the living dead, and fake gravestones adorn front lawns — activities that wouldn't be tolerated at other times of the year.</span></blockquote>
Facing our fears by laughing at them or playing with safe versions of them is a very human thing to do, and it seems to be a healthy coping mechanism. Our English idiom "whistling in the dark" encapsulates the concept, which takes other forms such as jokes about death and dying. The 1970s dark comedic television series <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068098/">M.A.S.H.</a>, about a group of field doctors during the Korean War who use humor to deal with daily carnage and chaos, is another prime example.<br />
<br />
John Santino was <a href="http://www.theofantastique.com/2007/10/25/jack-santino-halloween-folklore-and-death-festivals/">interviewed on the TheoFantastique blog</a> in October 2007, and he shared these further insights:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The study of ritual, festival, and celebration offers concepts for understanding large public events such as Halloween. The idea that there are certain periods when the everyday rules are meant to be broken is one. Also, the idea that during times of transition (in the life cycle or seasonal), all bets are off–the dead can mingle with the living; children are allowed to demand treats from adults, people dress in special costumes; things are turned upside-down and inside-out. These ideas help us to see Halloween for its importance. It is a time when we face our taboos (death being a major one) and playfully accept them as part of life.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">I understand people’s objection to Halloween insofar as they believe strongly in the existence of a literal Devil who is engaged in an effort to steal our souls. But I was raised in a religious atmosphere where that simply was not a problem with the celebration. I tend to view it as a healthy occasion for the parading and confronting of aspects of life — symbolically — that we usually pretend don’t exist. Also, Halloween is tied closely to harvest imagery, and I think the lesson is that, as the natural world faces death as a part of ongoing life, so must we. Halloween is many things. It allows us to mock our fears, and to celebrate life. There is room for parody and topical satire in the costumes and displays. But it also deals with deeply important issues involving life and death, nature and culture.</span></blockquote>
I would go one step further than Santino and say that even Christians who believe Satan is a real being, need not have a problem with this holiday. Halloween is not about worshiping Satan, and it isn't about glorifying or celebrating evil. Halloween is about facing our fears through the joint vehicles of pretend and partying. It's about recognizing that while we live on this earth we are part of the cycles of this earth, and that "<span style="color: #660000;">seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease (Gen. 8:22)." </span>To celebrate the harvest is also to accept the dying of the year. Halloween is about both. Christ has taken the sting of death; why not let Halloween help take some of its still-remaining fear?<br />
<br />
And I like how Santino points out the way this holiday upends our rules and usual patterns. The kingdom of God is like that too: the child is the first to enter, the greatest shall be the servant, we save our lives by losing them. Halloween is the day when we open our doors to whoever knocks and give of our substance to "the least of these" who is standing there with an open bag. Isn't this a picture of the kingdom? Why, then, shouldn't we let it teach us its simple lesson?<br />
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So this year we'll carve pumpkins again, and we'll pass out candy, and we may even watch a scary old movie about the Wolfman or Frankenstein. And we will have fun.<br />
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I hope you will have some fun too.<br />
<br />Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-29273703246879121552014-10-18T11:03:00.000-07:002014-10-18T11:03:02.303-07:00Three Years of BloggingI began this blog on September 27, 2011, with a post called <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2011/09/twelve-good-things-i-learned-from-being.html">Twelve Good Things I Learned from Being in a Coercive Religious Group</a>. I have tried to post consistently at least once a week since then (except at Christmas time), and this is my 169th post!<br />
<br />
Here are a few things I've learned from my experience of blogging so far:<br />
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1. It's really gratifying to have so many people read something I've written, without having to try to get a publisher!<br />
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2. It's even more gratifying when I can feel that what I've written has helped someone in some way. I started this blog with the purpose of spreading comfort and good news to people (especially my fellow Christians) who have felt constrained, shamed or coerced by religious teachings which don't seem to be the "truth that sets free" that Jesus and Paul both talked about. (And, incidentally, to just flap my metaphorical gums about whatever interests me, which I love to do too!)<br />
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3. Blogging is like what I've read about newspaper writing: the blog becomes a beast that has to be fed regularly. Therefore you constantly surf the blogosphere to see who's talking about something interesting, and you rack your brains for ideas whenever you don't have anything in mind that you particularly want to say that week. <br />
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4. After three years-- well, this starts to get burdensome. You start a blog to express yourself, and it's fun, but then when your 169th Friday rolls around and you realize that you don't even want to write that week, you start to think about this not actually being a <i>job</i> . . . .<br />
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5. And when you work full time and have kids, there's only so much time you get to take for yourself. I discovered that writing a blog means I don't have time or energy for other kinds of writing. And about a year ago, I found a way out of the corner I'd written myself into in the young-adult fantasy novel I'd been working on for years-- but I haven't been able to pick the thing back up again and finish it.<br />
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So this blog today is an explanation of why I'm not going to feed the beast every week anymore. I plan instead to just write whenever I have something I really want to talk about. This will probably be at least once a month (not counting Christmas time), so if you're subscribing to me, please don't unsubscribe! And sometimes I'll probably simply post links to other people who are saying things I think are well worth reading.<br />
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I've built up a good body of work (see my <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/p/blog-index.html">Topic Index</a>) about walking free of coercive, authoritarian and/or legalistic religious teachings. I hope people will continue to find those helpful.<br />
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To my readers: thanks so much for subscribing, for reading, and for commenting! You have been more valuable and helpful to me than you know. Please do stick around; you'll be hearing from me soon!<br />
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<br />Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-78101003271270486672014-10-11T08:00:00.000-07:002014-10-11T08:00:02.969-07:00Forgotten Women in Church History: Antoinette Brown<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT-images/10BlackwellMedium.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT-images/10BlackwellMedium.jpeg" height="200" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oberlin College Archives</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Antoinette Brown (1825-1921) is best known as the first American woman ordained to the ministry (in 1853). However, although some mainline Protestant denominations in the United States remember her (the United Church of Christ regularly honors outstanding women in ministry with the <a href="http://www.ucc.org/women/abawards.html">Antoinette Brown Awards</a>), as an evangelical Christian I had never heard of her.* After all, churches that are opposed to women pastors are hardly likely to celebrate the first woman who became one!<br />
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Her story, though, like those of other women I have commemorated in this "Forgotten Women" series, shows a woman of great intelligence, leadership ability and devotion; and it's hard not to wonder, if God really never intended women to be pastors, why He made a woman like Antoinette Brown.<br />
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According to <a href="http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00064.html">American National Biography Online</a>, Brown was:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">born in Henrietta, New York, the daughter of Joseph Brown, a farmer and justice of the peace, and Abigail Morse. Antoinette proved a precocious child, following her older siblings to school at the age of three. The preaching of evangelist Charles Grandison Finney in nearby Rochester during the Second Great Awakening deeply affected the family, and before she reached her ninth birthday, Antoinette Brown joined the Congregational church. The associated reform movements of the era--antislavery, temperance, and moral reform--also drew support from the Browns, who upheld the educational aspirations of both their sons and daughters. Antoinette attended local schools and the Monroe Academy before becoming a teacher in 1841.</span></blockquote>
Brown then enrolled in the only college at the time which would admit women: Oberlin College in Ohio. It was there that she met Lucy Stone, the now-famous Abolitionist and Suffragette. The two women became lifelong friends, and in time, sisters-in-law as well-- each marrying one of the Blackwell brothers whose sisters <a href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/blackwell/graduation.html">Elizabeth Blackwell</a> and <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/68635/Emily-Blackwell">Emily Blackwell</a> became the first and second woman medical doctors in America. Brown felt called into ministry and Stone desired a lecturing circuit-- but as women at the time were expected to stay out of the public sphere, the college refused to train them in rhetoric or debate. Stone and Brown therefore formed their own <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT-images/LucyStone.html">women's debating society</a>:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">The young men had to hold debates as part of their work in rhetoric, and the young women were required to be present, for an hour and a half every week, in order to help form an audience for the boys, but were not allowed to take part. Lucy was intending to lecture and Antoinette [Brown Blackwell] to preach. Both wished for practice in public speaking. They asked Professor Thome, the head of that department, to let them debate. He was a man of liberal views -- a Southerner who had freed his slaves -- and he consented. Tradition says that the debate was exceptionally brilliant. More persons than usual came in to listen, attracted by curiosity. But the Ladies' Board immediately got busy, St. Paul was invoked, and the college authorities forbade any repetition of the experiment.</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">A few of the young women, led by Lucy, organized the first debating society ever formed among college girls. At first they held their meetings secretly in the woods, with sentinels on the watch to give warming of intruders. When the weather grew colder, Lucy asked an old colored woman who owned a small house, the mother of one of her colored pupils, to let them have the use of her parlor.</span></blockquote>
Though Oberlin College was willing to give Brown the kind of education it thought suitable for a woman, its response to her desire to study theology was less accommodating. As <a href="http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/black-al.html">Distinguished Women of Past and Present</a> puts it:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Oberlin was the first coeducational school to grant college degrees to women and to accept students of all races. Women, however, were expected to clean rooms, wash clothes and serve food for the male students. . . In 1847 Brown finished the literary course taken by most women. She encountered serious objections from the faculty when she then decided to study theology. They did not think it an appropriate field of study for a woman. However, the school charter decreed that no student could be excluded on the basis of sex, so Brown prevailed and finished the theological course in 1850. The Oberlin College faculty, however, refused to award her a college degree and she did not receive a license to preach. The degree was eventually awarded to her twenty-eight years later.</span></blockquote>
After college Brown began to accept invitations to speak against slavery and on women's rights. Her work in support of women's rights and her attendance at the first National Women's Rights Convention caused her to lose a position she had obtained lecturing to raise funds for charitable work. She then became an independent lecturer, attracting the notice of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/244839/Horace-Greeley">Horace Greeley</a>, the Abolitionist New York newspaper editor. He offered to support Brown's preaching ministry in New York City, but instead she accepted an invitation from a Congregational church in rural New York state to become its licensed minister. She was ordained on September 15, 1853. <br />
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Attending the 1853 World's Temperance Convention, Brown became what <a href="http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00064.html">American National Biography Online</a> calls <span style="color: #660000;">"the center of controversy"</span> because of being an ordained minister. She was shouted off the speaking platform by her fellow delegates. About a year later she cited theological differences with the Congregationalists (mostly over eternal damnation and predestination) and left her pulpit, eventually becoming a Unitarian.<br />
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Back in New York City, Brown began ministering in the slums and prisons, contributing pieces to Horace Greeley's <i>New York Tribune </i>on the plight of the poor, and also writing her first book. In 1856 she married Samuel Blackwell. While raising five daughters, she continued her writing career, publishing on a variety of different topics, including egalitarian marriage (a very novel concept!). <br />
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According to the <a href="http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/antoinette-brown-blackwell/">German website "FemBio"</a>:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">The couple consciously tried to live out a model of equality within their marriage: “We will be governed very much by circumstances and what seems best as the years go by, but I think, Sam we can be self sovereigns, we can bend everything within and without to our wills, and our wills to our intellects.” A businessman, Samuel shared household chores and childcare, and Antoinette continued to lecture after having given birth to seven children. The couple raised five daughters to adulthood, two of whom became medical doctors, another an artist.</span></blockquote>
After her husband's death in 1901, Brown returned to ministry, this time as a Unitarian in New Jersey, where she remained until her death at the age of 96.<br />
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I believe Antoinette Brown Blackwell should be an inspiration to all women who seek ordination and/or pastoral ministry, or who believe in full equality in Christian marriage.** Even though 150 years ago it was much harder than it still is today, she showed that a woman in church leadership and in egalitarian marriage could succeed in both her church and her home.<br />
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The then-rampant opposition to a woman simply learning theology or speaking in public would be disagreed with now even by most complementarians. It's important to question whether, if those issues ultimately were judged as being without scriptural support, how much of the opposition to women as pastors or as full partners in their homes, is based on tradition more than on careful reading of scripture.<br />
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I might also point out that attempts to prevent Antoinette Brown from becoming a minister ultimately failed. The words of Rabbi Gamaliel about the new Christian sect in Acts 5:38-39 should perhaps be taken note of here:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.</span></blockquote>
Or, in this case, "leave these <i>women </i>alone." Perhaps its time for the church to stop fighting against women's equality, and leave it in God's hands. <br />
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As Gamaliel said, if it is of human origin, it will fail. <br />
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But if not. . . .<br />
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*I never heard of her, that is, until reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Daughters-Church-ministry-Testament-present-ebook/dp/B003TFE1W6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413000863&sr=1-1&keywords=daughters+of+the+church+women+and+ministry+from+new+testament+times+to+the+present">Daughters of the Church</a> by Ruth Tucker and Walter Liefeld. Her story appears on pages 279-281.<br />
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**Some might claim that Antoinette Brown Blackwell's move into Unitarianism, reflecting as it does a departure from Christian orthodoxy, disqualifies her as an example for Christian women or as evidence for women's ordination or egalitarian marriage. However, no one would ever claim that a <i>man</i> becoming a Unitarian proves that men should not be ministers or leaders in their homes. And in the early 1900s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unitarianism">Unitarians</a> were still a Christian sect, if an unorthodox one. We don't have to agree with everything Brown came to believe, to honor her integrity and her contributions to American religion. As she herself <a href="http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/antoinette-brown-blackwell/">said</a>, <span style="color: #660000;">“One thing is certain. I am not afraid to act as my conscience dictates, no matter what the world may think ….”</span>Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-31235959778073521412014-10-04T08:00:00.000-07:002014-10-05T10:12:56.037-07:00But Is It Science?This week someone close to me brought to my attention an article in the online <i>New York Times </i>called <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/opinion/sunday/god-darwin-and-my-college-biology-class.html?emc=eta1&_r=0">God, Darwin and My College Biology Class</a>, by Professor David P. Barash. <br />
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Not surprisingly, Barash refutes the literalist view of the Genesis creation narratives (which I, coming at the issue from the literary rather than the scientific side, <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-creation-evolution-debate-and.html">actually agree with</a>). But Dr. Barash goes much further in his claims for evolutionary science; in fact, he stops just short of claiming that it renders belief in God impossible. Barash takes exception to the view put forth by <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould">Steven Jay Gould</a> that science and religion are <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-Overlapping_Magisteria">"non-overlapping magisteria"</a>. A "magisterium" is an authoritative source of knowledge, and "non-overlapping" means that religion and science as sources of knowledge are not actually in conflict, because they deal with entirely separate spheres of human experience. Gould's view of science and religion in terms of non-overlapping magisteria is called "NOMA" for short. <br />
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Barash's article explains how every year he gives his new biology students "The Talk," in which he presents evolutionary science as progressively removing any place left in human thought for the existence of God. As he puts it:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">These magisteria are not nearly as nonoverlapping as some of them might wish. As evolutionary science has progressed, the available space for religious faith has narrowed: It has demolished two previously potent pillars of religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and omni-benevolent God. The twofold demolition begins by defeating what modern creationists call the argument from complexity. . . Living things are indeed wonderfully complex, but altogether within the range of a statistically powerful, entirely mechanical phenomenon. . .<br /><br />Next to go is the illusion of centrality. Before Darwin, one could believe that human beings were distinct from other life-forms, chips off the old divine block. No more. . .<br /><br />Adding to religion’s current intellectual instability is a third consequence of evolutionary insights: a powerful critique of theodicy, the scholarly effort to reconcile belief in an omnipresent, omni-benevolent God with the fact of unmerited suffering. . . The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">A</span>ll this sounds fairly damaging to religion, and Barash concludes his article by pretty much giving God a pat on the head and saying He hasn't necessarily struck out yet-- but it's clear that in Barash's mind it's the bottom of the ninth and evolution has been pitching a no-hitter. But what it looks like to me is not that science's magisterium overlaps to the point of overwhelming religion's magisterium-- rather, it's that Barash does not seem to understand the real difference between the two. <br />
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Barash conflates the functions of science and religion, treating religion as if it were just another way (a failed way) to answer the questions addressed by science, and treating science as if it were fundamentally capable of answering the questions addressed by religion or philosophy. Joe Hinman on <a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ideology-of-scientism-part-1.html">Metacrock's Blog: The Ideology of Scientism (Part 1)</a> defines this common misconception of the nature of religion as follows:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">God is evoked where knowledge runs out. That is a wrong concept because it imposes the wrong view of religion, that religion is failed primitive science. . .The problem with it is that it seems to imply that religion only takes over where we have no facts, thus implying that religion [like science] is also about understanding the workings of the world but it just doesn’t proceed by collecting facts.</span></blockquote>
But the primary purpose of religion has never been to answer questions about how the physical world works. It's true that humans have at times <i>used</i> religion to answer such questions, but those questions have always been a side issue for religion. The real purpose of religion is to address issues of transcendent value, meaning and purpose, and to mediate spiritual experience.<br />
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Science, on the other hand, is defined by <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science">the online Webster's Dictionary</a> as:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific%20method">scientific method</a>; such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phenomenon">phenomena</a>.</span></blockquote>
"Scientific method," of course, refers to the hypothesis-experiment process of collecting information about the world through data. <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientific%20method">Webster's</a> again:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.</span></blockquote>
So if science is ultimately concerned with the way the physical world works, why is it treated as if it were the arbiter of all reality, capable of shrinking any possible role religion might have played until it pushes religion out entirely?<br />
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<a href="http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ideology-of-scientism-part-1.html">Hinman's article</a> explains the problem:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Modern thought tells us science is pure objective observation of facts and direct proof of all that is reality. . . [But] when we examine the nature of modern science, especially in so far as it is used in opposition to belief in God, we find that there is no pure objective science, unsullied by the ideological impulse to impose a truth regime upon reality. . . </span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">Of course science is about a deeper understanding “of the world.” What does that mean? Is it about understanding the world of metaphysics? Or is it about understanding the world of politics, or the world of meta ethics? What kind of understanding? Is that quotation limited to the “natural” world? Does it mean all “worlds” of our conceptualizing? The more varied the definition the looser they become. We see the definitions drifting away form [sic] the concept of systematic understandings of the workings of the physical world and nothing more. It’s in those “stretches” of definition that are probably designed to allow flexible field of study that we see creeping in various agendas such as the ruination of religion. This is strictly speaking not a goal of science, not even part of science’s business.</span></blockquote>
However, if we look closely at the kind of claims that Barash's <i>NY</i> <i>Times</i> article is making for evolutionary science, he is actually addressing issues of philosophy or religion.<br />
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Any statement about what might or might not exist outside/above or in addition to the physical world is a <i>metaphysical </i>statement. Even to say that there is <i>nothing</i> except the physical world involves making metaphysical assumptions that cannot be supported by physical evidence. <i>It cannot be proven scientifically that everything that exists can be proven scientifically. </i> This is because science by its very nature can <i>only find </i>physical phenomena-- either past or present. To say science can prove that nothing except the physical world exists, is like saying there is no such thing as air pressure because you can't measure it with a ruler. Anything non-physical, while it may cause physical <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/05/book-recommendation-trace-of-god-by.html">traces or "footprints"</a> in the natural world, cannot itself be directly tested or proven by science. But that doesn't mean it cannot exist.<br />
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Science also cannot say that because there is suffering, there are therefore only natural, amoral processes. Barash has set up certain parameters for what kind of world he thinks God would create, and then eliminates God because this isn't that kind of world. But Barash's conclusions are not science, nor do they come from science. The questions, "Is this a <i>good</i> world? or "Is there any meaning in suffering?" are questions of philosophy. Not science.<br />
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To claim there is no God because humans are not apparently divinely central to the universe, is the same sort of thing. Barash says that evolution somehow shows that there is no divine spark in humanity. But any divine spark in humanity is exactly the sort of thing that science would be unable to find, because divinity is not part of physicality. And to claim there is no God because humans don't appear to be <i>physically</i> distinct from the rest of creation is to make an assumption about what God would be likely to do if God existed. But "If there were a God, what would God be likely to do?" is a theological question. Also not science.<br />
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Further, the point of religion is not to say something like, "The world is complex because God." That kind of religion is a straw man that hides fearfully in the ever-shrinking gaps of what we still can't explain about how the physical world works. But religion, though it can be, and has been, used to explain the physical world, is not really <i>about</i> such explanations. These things are completely peripheral to religion in terms of human religious culture and experience.<br />
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So what Dr. Barash has done is claim that religion is losing out to science because religion is meant to do the same things science does, but just doesn't do them very well. Also that science is defeating religion because its methods alone (and <i>not </i>the philosophical conclusions of people like himself in interpreting its data) are succeeding in answering the questions of transcendent value, meaning and purpose with "no such things," and in mediating spiritual experience by denying it.<br />
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Bararsh is committing the error called "scientism." Scientism is defined in <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scientism">Webster's</a> as:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science">science</a> applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sciences">sciences</a>, and the humanities).</span></blockquote>
Science can help us in matters of morality by informing us, for example, whether a particular thing is healthier for humans than another, upon which "do unto others" would kick in to instruct us to seek the healthier thing. But science cannot decide whether "do unto others" <i>itself </i>is morally good or not. That takes humans making philosophical or religious judgments. Scientists make those kinds of judgments just as much as anyone else-- but what underlies them is not science.*<br />
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Barash would object to a religious preacher using the Creation narratives of Genesis to teach on matters of science. But I find it just as objectionable for a science professor to use evolutionary science to teach on matters of religion. Science professors should teach <i>science</i>.<br />
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Just because a person is a scientist or science professor, does not qualify them as an expert in religion or philosophy. In fact, a man like Dr. Barash, who is in a position of authority, lecturing to students whose grades are dependent on his favor, needs to be very careful on how he uses that authority. Barash's "Talk" is designed to undermine religious belief. Sure, at the end he kindly gives his students permission to hold onto their religious beliefs-- if they can. But Barash is a professor, and they are only college kids. Barash speaks as an expert, while they sit in the position of learners. And these students, especially the young ones just out of high school, probably have not acquired enough understanding to see the flaws in Barash's assertions.<br />
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The power differential is completely in the professor's favor. So I think he should be asking himself, "Is it right for me to attack the religious beliefs of young people who have neither the background nor the authority to be able to rebut me?"<br />
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One thing is for certain. Whatever answer he gives to that question, it will not be science.<br />
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*In fact, from a naturalistic point of view which strives to be objective, it's debatable whether humans thriving is a <i>good</i> thing or not. It's good for humans, certainly, but has historically been very bad for the thriving of many other species.<br />
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Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-23410900017143284872014-09-27T08:00:00.000-07:002014-09-27T08:00:01.714-07:00"Thus, Male Headship" - Christianity and Gender EssentialismMy <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/09/fathers-influence-on-childrens-church.html">last</a> <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/09/men-need-respect-women-need-love-really.html">two</a> posts have involved the use of sociological studies by Christians, in support of the doctrine of male headship, known in its harsher and gentler forms, respectively, as "Christian patriarchy" or "complementarianism." Using science as a support for our premises is very characteristic of the culture of Western thought in which most of us have been steeped since birth. And of course, rebutting or debunking the science or scientific methodology behind premises we disagree with, comes from the same basic mindset.<br />
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The problem, as I mentioned in my last post, is when we pounce on evidence that seems to support our own position, while simultaneously ignoring evidence that seems to point the other direction. This is called "confirmation bias," which is defined in <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm">Science Daily</a> as "<span style="color: #660000;">a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions." </span>In addressing the science presented by male headship proponents, then, I'm attempting to avoid this bias myself. Thus far, though, I have not seen any evidence that compellingly supports their position.<br />
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In this post I want to look a little deeper at underlying assumptions. Why <i>are</i> these sociological studies being used to support male headship? What is it that they are supposed to prove, that can then be used to say, "thus, male headship?" The answer, I think, is this:<br />
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<b><i>The studies examined in my last two posts, as used by male-headship proponents, are supposed to show that certain fundamental human traits are specific either to men or to women. And these fundamental differences are then supposed to prove that men are meant to be in authority, while women are meant to be under authority.</i></b><br />
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This idea of specific, fundamental traits belonging to either one sex or the other, is called "gender essentialism." Gender essentialism goes beyond biological differences between the sexes* to personality traits, fundamental desires and leanings, and so on. <br />
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This article at <a href="http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2013/10/19/men-and-women-are-not-equal/">Ignitum Today</a> illustrates Christian gender essentialism very clearly:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">I am sorry to be the one to raise this issue but I am going to put it straight out there so there is no confusion: men and women are not equal. For two things to be perfectly equal they would need to be the same and it should be self-evident that a man and a woman are not the same. . .</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">This is where society is getting it wrong; a false notion of equality. It begins at a subliminal level where the message is diffused that one’s gender is a social construction, meaning that a woman is a woman because she was dressed in a skirt and given dolls as a child, and a man is a man because he was dressed in trousers and given toy trucks. . .</span> </blockquote>
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<span style="color: #660000;">When a society fails to understand the nature of men and women it is true that everything can look unfair but we set rather arbitrary standards of where fairness lies. Men dominate senior positions in the largest global companies, most likely because they have particular natural abilities to do those tasks well. Women dominate the raising of the next generation of humanity and professions which nurture and educate, most likely because they have particular natural abilities to do those tasks well. </span></blockquote>
Gender essentialists tend to resist the distinction between one's "sex," which is biological, and one's "gender," which is sociological. They believe to be a man and to be masculine, or to be a woman and to be feminine are (or should be) the same thing. They often do make a sort of disclaimer that not all men fit the pattern, nor do all women; as the article above goes on to say:<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">Of course there will always be men and women who have certain talents which mean they are better in tasks that are not as common for their sex and that is fine also.</span></blockquote>
However, when it comes right down to it, this deviation from the gender-essential norm usually isn't "just fine" after all. The studies I examined in my last two posts show that there is always a percentage of the study group that goes against the trend-- but that doesn't stop male-headship proponents from confidently saying that the studies show the way "men" are and the way "women" are-- not "some" or even "most" men or women, but simply "men" and "women." And thus, male headship.<br />
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My real problem is that the Christian assertion of gender essentialism is fundamentally <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html">unfalsifiable</a>. That is, the way it is presented keeps it above the possibility of disproof, so Christians who believe in it never have to question it. The argument is usually that if a man is presenting masculine traits, or a woman feminine traits, it is evidence of God's gender-essential design-- but if they fail to present those traits, or present opposite ones, it is because of human sinfulness. <br />
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Therefore, though deviation from the norm is acceptable in theory, in practice it's not, and many men and women who simply don't fit the norms are treated as if they were in sin. As the <a href="http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-024-v">Touchstone Magazine</a> article I quoted two posts ago puts it, men who have been "feminized" by the Church of England's theological training become<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">wet, spineless, feeble-minded, or compromised. . . malleable creatures of the institution, unburdened by authenticity or conviction and incapable of leading and challenging. Men, in short, who would not stand up in a draft</span><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></blockquote>
To not be "masculine" (which these gender-essentialists apparently define, fairly typically, as authoritative, independently minded and leadership-oriented) is to be weak and sinful. Similarly, the <a href="http://www.truewoman.com/?id=370">True Woman </a> website teaches that embracing the submissive, responsive, nurturing "<span style="color: #660000;">Divine design of His female creation" </span>will save us from the sinful, unfeminine pattern of unsubmissive, worldly womanhood:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Whether they realize it or not, the vast majority of Christian women have bought into this “new” way of thinking. In the home, the church, and the marketplace, they have adopted the values and belief system of the world around them. The world promises freedom and fulfillment to those who embrace its philosophy. But sadly, millions of women who have done so have ended up disillusioned, wounded, and in terrible bondage.</span></blockquote>
Thus, it becomes impossible to refute gender essentialism using the evidence of real women's experience. If a woman is quiet, gentle and submissive-- it's because it's natural for women to be that way. If a woman is assertive, extroverted, and leadership-oriented-- it's because of her sin nature that is fighting against her true nature. For real Christian women just trying to be themselves, it's a shaming and muffling experience. One kind of personality is honored and the other rejected and silenced, because God is limited by their interpretation of the Bible, as to what kind of woman He is allowed to make.<br />
<br />
The percentages of deviation from the gender norms in the sociology cited by male headship proponents, therefore, might as well not exist. Those who deviate are not being "real" men or "true" women, but are merely capitulating to wordliness or to sinful rebellion against their own natures. The sociology then becomes an unequivocable support for what male headship proponents believe the Bible teaches about the divine creation of the sexes.<br />
<br />
But does the Bible actually teach that there are separate and distinct personality traits which God designed for one sex and not the other? And even if it did so teach, would that lead irrevocably to "thus, male headship"? Interestingly, <a href="http://marccortez.com/2013/12/11/striving-clarity-debate-gender-ministry/">Marc Cortez at Everyday Theology</a>, who appears to be a complementarian, would answer "no" to both questions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[T]he main problem lies in thinking that these two are logically connected such that complementarianism requires gender essentialism to work. So egalitarians invest considerable effort in defeating gender essentialism, and complementarians conversely go out of their way to defend it. As interesting as that conversation might be, though, both sides need to realize that <b><i>complementarianism does not require gender essentialism.</i></b> . . .</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">There does not need to be any essential difference between men and women for God to decide, for example, that only men can be elders. He can decide this for any reason he wants. He is, after all, God.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> People might worry that eliminating step 2 would render God’s decision somehow arbitrary, as though he simply flipped a coin to determine how the gender qualification would work. But that doesn’t follow either. The fact that God’s decision does not necessarily rest on some essential difference in human persons does not make his decision arbitrary; it just means that his decision rests on something else, possibly even something he hasn’t told us about. [Emphasis in original.]</span></blockquote>
I don't think Cortez escapes the charge of arbitrariness simply by saying God, being God, must have <i>some</i> mysterious reason for denying and limiting women in church roles (the article doesn't discuss male headship in marriage). If, <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-have-written-extensively-on-this-blog.html">as I have contended</a>, denying and limiting women based purely on the fact that they are women is against "do unto others" and "love your neighbor," there seems very little justification for God to thus negate what He taught through His own Son, that<span style="color: #660000;"> "this is the law and the prophets."</span> Matthew 7:12.<br />
<br />
But Cortez is quite correct that this <i>is</i> a viable alternative to believing that God designed men and women according to gender essentials, such that men are designed for authority and women for submission to that authority. As he says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[T]he simple fact is that even if complementarianism is true, it’s hard to find the Bible giving any clear reason<i> why</i> certain roles/offices are limited to men. Some might point to 1 Timothy 2:11-15, a notoriously difficult passage. But whatever Paul intends by his explanation there, he doesn’t point to any <i>essential</i> differences between men and women. However you understand the reference to Adam being created first, that’s not an essential difference. My brother was born before me, but that doesn’t make his humanity essentially different than mine. And my parents may well give him greater authority in the family because he came before me, but that’s not an essential difference either. The same holds true for Adam and Eve. Adam’s being created first doesn’t present some kind of essential difference between men on women on the basis of which God decrees male headship. If the order of creation is significant for understanding gender roles in the church, a question for another time, it would only be because God decided to do it that way for reasons that he has not ever explained to us, not because mere temporal order establishes some kind of essential difference between the two genders.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Again, I’m not going to walk through all the relevant passages. . . But for now I’ll leave it with saying that I don’t think there are any biblical passages that even complementarians should read as grounding ministry roles in some kind of gender essentialism. [Emphasis in original.]</span></blockquote>
Many times the Scripture passages that are used to support male headship are read in terms of gender essentialism: words like "head" are understood as showing God's design for men to be natural leaders and women to be natural followers. But <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-bible-teach-male-headship-part-2.html">taking account of literary and cultural contexts</a> results in grounding male authority firmly in the culture in which the writer was writing, and not as a divine mandate. And <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/11/men-must-be-spiritual-leaders-real-life.html">when real, devoted Christian men and women</a> just don't fit the norm, it doesn't make sense to simply write them off as being sinful or worldly.<br />
<br />
There are plenty of other Bible passages that we don't interpret in the teeth of the evidence, insisting on face-value readings no matter what-- the passages on slavery, for instance. We don't commandeer all the evidence we can find to prove that slavery is good and God-given (though <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/08/male-headship-comparion-with-christian.html">we used to do just that</a>), while we ignore all evidence to the contrary. <br />
<br />
So isn't it time to give up on "thus, male headship"?<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000;">-</span>---------------------<br />
*This whole argument by Christians also tends to ignore completely the existence of transgender people or others who don't fit into the binary boxes of male/masculine and female/feminine. It's not my intention to ignore them or their struggles here, but in examining gender essentialism as used to support male headship, it's easier to stick with the categories used by male-headship proponents. Let me here promote <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sarahoverthemoon/2014/09/on-the-same-side-bell-hooks-gavin-de-becker/">the voice of a Christian sister</a> who is not cisgender, to show that there are more sides to this story.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-7875144246684387702014-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:002014-09-20T11:45:42.955-07:00"Men Need Respect, Women Need Love" - Really? <div class="tr_bq">
An anonymous commenter on my last blog post told me this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">God, in His wisdom, made man the head of the union between man and his wife. He has created a desire in the woman to be loved, and in the man to be respected, and there is no amount of social re-engineering that can change that.</span></blockquote>
This seems to me to be a good opportunity to address the whole love-vs-respect idea that most male-headship proponents espouse. Where does this idea come from, that God made women to need love more than respect, and men to need respect more than love-- and that this is a basis for belief in male headship?<br />
<br />
The chief source of this idea appears to be the very popular complementarian book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Love-Respect-Desires-Desperately-Needs-ebook/dp/B004MYFQ3Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411098129&sr=1-1&keywords=love+and+respect">Love and Respect</a> by Emerson Eggerichs. Eggerichs is quoted in his guest series on this topic on the <a href="http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/communication_and_conflict/the_love_and_respect_principle/basics_of_love_and_respect.aspx">Focus on the Family</a> blog:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Women need to feel loved, and men need to feel respected. This may explain why Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:33 that a husband must love his wife and a wife must respect her husband. Both commands are unconditional. The hard part is that respect comes more easily to men, and love comes easier to women.</span></blockquote>
To be fair, Eggerichs doesn't teach that men need <i>only</i> respect and not love, or that women need<i> only </i>love and not respect. On his <a href="http://loveandrespect.com/blog/men-women-need-both-love-respect-equally/">Love & Respect Website</a> he elaborates:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">We all need love and respect. I preach this and I teach this. I am not dogmatic in suggesting that a husband does not need love. I am not dogmatic in suggesting that a wife does not need respect. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">However, because Ephesians 5:33 reveals that a husband must love his wife and a wife must respect her husband, we see a distinction that is full of significance. Maybe we can answer this way: though we all need love and respect equally, like we all need water and food equally, a wife has a felt need for love and a husband has a felt need for respect. Said another way, she feels hunger pains for her husband’s love more often in the marriage and a husband feels more thirsty for his wife’s respect.</span></blockquote>
Ok, but is this really what Ephesians 5:33 is talking about? Do men really feel more need for respect and women for love? <br />
<br />
Psychologist Shauna Springer, PhD., wrote a rebuttal in <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-joint-adventures-well-educated-couples/201210/women-need-love-and-men-need-respect">This Psychology Today online article</a>, questioning the universality of the results Eggerichs obtained from his study samples of 400 men and a similar number of women. Four hundred is not a very big number from which to extrapolate to what all (or even most) men vs. women want. Springer used a sample group that was deliberately weighted towards highly achieving women, and obtained the opposite result from Eggerichs' sample of women:<br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #660000;">To test my theory that respect is equally critical for many women as for many men, I set out to profile the marriages of some of the smartest women I have known and their equally capable friends (The Lifestyle Poll). The first phase of data collection for The Lifestyle Poll was based heavily on a Harvard college graduate sample. In this group of 300 women, 75% reported that they would rather feel alone and unloved than disrespected and inadequate.<br /> </span><span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span><span style="color: #660000;"><b>In other words, within this group of highly educated, accomplished women, the tendency to favor respect over love was equivalent in degree to the preference expressed among males that was used to launch a best-selling book predicated on what now seems to be an inaccurate assumption of a consistent gender difference. </b>[Emphasis in original.]</span></blockquote>
Given the differences between Eggerichs' study results and Springer's, it appears that at least for women, their felt need for love vs. respect depends a lot on <i>individual differences between women</i>. The same is likely to be true for men. If Eggerichs' study samples contained, for example, a high proportion of evangelicals, then the results he obtained may have been more related to the expectations of evangelical culture than to any general tendency in all men as opposed to all women.<br />
<br />
In any event, common sense tells us that respect is part of love. You really can't love someone if you don't respect them, and a person who is treated without respect will not feel loved. As the same Psychology Today article puts it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">At times, I thought that Eggerichs might begin to see how disrespect is at the core of many marital problems for wives as well as for husbands. For example, he says that a wife “yearns to be honored, valued and prized as a precious equal” (p. 11) and that wives “fear being a doormat,” (p. 53) and informs his male readers that a wife will feel “esteemed” when “you are proud of her and all that she does” and when “you value her opinion in the grey areas as not wrong but just different and valid” (p. 73). Why not just substitute the word “esteemed” with the word “respected?”</span></blockquote>
Words like "honor" and "esteem" are really pretty synonymous with "respect." In fact, the Bible does indeed tell husbands to respect their wives:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;"> Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge,<i> giving honor unto the wife</i>, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. 1 Peter 3:7, King James 2000 version, Emphasis added.</span></blockquote>
Honor, especially in the <a href="http://g.christianbook.com/g/pdf/hp/1565634101-ch01.pdf">honor-shame culture of the New Testament</a>, is pretty much <i>respect and then some</i>. To give someone "honor" in that culture was not just to be respectful and show esteem in your private lives together, but to give them <i>public</i> recognition and respect. <br />
<br />
The Bible also advises that wives should love their husbands:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sensible, <i>to love their husbands</i>, to love their children... Titus 2:3-4, King James 2000 version, Emphasis added. </span></blockquote>
So why this emphasis on respect vs. love in terms of men as opposed to women?<br />
<br />
Some of this is simply <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm">confirmation bias</a>, which is defined as <span style="color: #660000;">"a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions." </span>We Christians may think we believe in male headship because the Bible teaches it, but we have to watch our tendency to conclude that the Bible teaches male headship because we believe in it.*<br />
<br />
The idea that men feel the need for respect more than women do, tends to confirm the idea that men are natural leaders, and the idea that women feel the need for love more than men do, supports the idea that women are emotional, dependent beings-- and thus, male headship. So a verse like Ephesians 5:33, which tells husbands to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands, is easy to read as a statement of fundamental gender differences underlying the principle of male headship. <br />
<br />
The problem is that other verses (like 1 Peter 3:7 and Titus 2:2-4) simply don't support the use of Ephesians 5:33 as a proof-text for a love-and-respect difference between men and women. After all, if we were to base our theory of gender relations on 1 Peter 3:7 all by itself (as we've been taking Ephesians 5:33 all by itself), we would conclude that what women need most from their husbands is actually public honor.<br />
<br />
So, since the social science doesn't seem to bear out this love-vs-respect differentiation between men and women either, then it's most likely that Ephesians 5:33 is talking about something else altogether.<br />
<br />
What it comes down to, I think, is a fundamental failure to consider the Ephesians 5 passage in terms of its original authorial intent, as it would have been understood by its original audience. <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/09/assumptions-make-you-know-whats-out-of.html">As I've said before</a>, until we understand what it meant to <i>them</i>, we can't understand how to apply it to<i> ourselves</i>.<br />
<br />
<b><i>The real question to ask, then, is what were the basic dynamics of marriage in the time and place Paul was writing Ephesians?</i></b> To refrain from asking this question is to read into the Ephesian passage the modern, Western dynamic of married life: that is, that two people who are essentially social equals, with equal rights and responsibilities, fall in love with one another and choose one another to commit themselves to. Thinking of marriage in this way does give us very little reason to think why Paul would tell men to love their wives and wives to respect their husbands, if these instructions were not related in some way to the male and female psyche.<br />
<br />
However, what Paul was thinking about when he taught on marriage, and what his first-century Ephesian audience would have had in mind, was a different dynamic entirely. As this brief synopsis on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/weddings.html">PBS.org</a> states:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Marriage in Roman times was often not at all romantic. Rather, it was an agreement between families. Men would usually marry in their mid-twenties, while women married while they were still in their early teens. As they reached these ages, their parents would consult with friends to find suitable partners that could improve the family’s wealth or class.</span></blockquote>
As this article from <a href="http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/marriageinancientrome.htm">Women in the Ancient World</a> explains, marriage in the ancient Rome-controlled world did require the consent of the man and woman involved, but they often did not choose their spouse, but only consented to their family's choice. And for a woman, especially if the family had substantial assets and it was her first marriage, there was an even greater expectation for her to go along with her father's choice and put his authority first:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">[Y]oung girls were in no position to fight their parents even on something as important as the choice of a marriage partner. Over the years there was a gradual increase in women’s economic power and in their status in society, but a father’s right both in theory and in practice to choose at least the first husband of a daughter remained constant throughout the Republic and the Empire. . . For the last century or two of the Republic and throughout the Empire most marriages were <a href="http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/patriapotestas.htm">“without manus.”</a> That is to say, the wife remained under the authority of her father. If a woman had to be under someone’s control, a doting father living in another house was a much better bet than a husband. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-indent: 48px;"> </span></blockquote>
Further, though men also may have simply consented to, and not chosen, their bride, the groom was not expected to confine his sexual activity only to his wife. This <a href="http://www.classicsireland.com/1996/Dauphin96.html">scholarly paper by Claude Dauphin</a> states:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The fourth century BC Athenian orator Apollodoros made it very clear in his speech <i>Against Neaira</i> quoted by Demosthenes (59.122) that 'we have courtesans for pleasure, and concubines for the daily service of our bodies, but wives for the production of legitimate offspring and to have reliable guardians of our household property'.</span></blockquote>
So instead of our understanding of a marital union by mutual consent of two partners who love each other and both swear to be faithful, the shared assumption between the writer and the audience of the letter to the Ephesians would have been an authority-subordinate arrangement for the benefit of the man, in which he would most likely have been 10 years or more older than the woman, and where she had little choice and few options.<br />
<br />
I have written at length <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-bible-teach-male-headship-part-2.html">elsewhere</a> about the historical-cultural understanding of marriage in Ephesians, in which I summarized:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Paul was trying to grow an infant religious movement, which meant not fighting existing authority structures– but if within the body of Christ, Christians in positions of authority did not act on that authority, but laid down their privilege and served, and where those in subordinate positions did not passively resist or actively rebel, but willingly gave their best and served, it would all end up in a kind of functional equality, existing in Christian households in an age where the concept of “equal rights” as we now know them, did not yet exist. Paul’s teachings on Christian relationships would, if followed, undermine ancient societal norms from within, eventually resulting in more just, equitable social structures in cultures influenced by these teachings. </span></blockquote>
In light of this, what might Paul have been getting at by telling husbands to <i>love</i> their wives and wives to <i>respect</i> their husbands in Eph. 5:33?<br />
<br />
As the <a href="http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/NTpdf/eph5.pdf">Scripture4All online interlinear </a>informs us, the Greek word Paul uses for "love" in this verse is transliterated "agapato," while the word often translated as "respect" is "phobetai." "Agapato" or "agapeo" is, according to Vines' <i>Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words</i>, a kind of self-sacrificing, deliberate love that seeks first the good of the beloved, which is "the characteristic word of Christianity."(1966 ed., p. 20-21). "Phobetai" or "phobeo," on the other hand, actually means "fear," and often refers to the respect one has for social structures of authority, as in Romans 13:6-7:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; <i>fear to whom fear;</i> honor to whom honor. (Emphasis added.)</span></blockquote>
Understood this way, what Paul is probably saying about love and respect in Ephesians 5:33 is probably something more like this:<br />
<br />
<i>Husbands, in this marriage relationship you have a lot more power and agency than your wife does. I've already told you to lay down your power and position just like Christ did, in order to raise your wife up as Christ raises up the church. So love her as Christ loves the church! Deny yourself for her sake; don't deny her for your own sake. Don't treat her as only a vessel to give you offspring, or as a servant to take care of your house. Don't go visiting prostitutes or keeping mistresses. Put her needs first, give yourself for her, and treat her with the care you use to take care of your own body.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And you wives, I know you didn't choose this man you're married to, and that your consent to this marriage may have meant very little. I know he's much older than you. I know that society has placed you as a woman, under male authority. So I'm not expecting you to be able to give your husband the kind of self-giving love that I'm expecting him to give you. But since in many cases you're still considering your primary authority over you to be your father, I'm asking you to turn to your husband instead. I've already surprised you by treating you as not merely a possession for him to rule-- I've spoken to you as one who has a choice in the matter, because you're free in Christ. I've asked you to choose to submit to him voluntarily, and to consider that a service to Christ. So don't rebel against your husband, but respect the authority society has given him. I've told him to lay down his power and privilege and raise you up as Christ raised up the church, so if he does as I ask, you'll find yourself by his side and sharing his power, rather than beneath him and obeying his power. </i><br />
<br />
Am I putting words in Paul's mouth? Maybe-- but certainly not more so than those who say Paul was talking about some intrinsic characteristic of all women everywhere to need love more than respect, or of all men everywhere to need respect more than love. If I'm putting words in Paul's mouth, at least they're along the lines of what he and his audience would have understood about marriage at the time he wrote his letter to the church at Ephesus.<br />
<br />
If I'm putting words in Paul's mouth, at least they have the meanings<i> he</i> would have given to the words "love" and "respect," and not what they might sound like to us 2000 years later and half the globe away.<br />
<br />
Love and respect are not gender distinctions supporting male headship. As used in Ephesians 5, they're not stand-alone concepts that can be lifted out of context and used to make blanket statements about men vs. women. <br />
<br />
And it really doesn't make sense anyway to build a whole theory of gender out of one verse.<br />
<br />
<br />
--------------<br />
<br />
*Of course, confirmation bias can work the other way as well, as male-headship believers often tell gender-equality believers: that we <i>want </i>the Bible to teach gender equality and so we find that it<i> does. </i>Christian egalitarians need to be aware of this possibility-- but there are <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/06/does-bible-teach-male-headship-part-1.html">other compelling reasons</a> to believe the Bible teaches gender equality than simply that we think it should.Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-16880867297421374352014-09-13T08:00:00.000-07:002014-09-13T08:00:02.176-07:00Fathers' Influence on Children's Church Attendance: What Does this Study Actually Show? This week I want to talk about a particular set of social science statistics published in 1994 by the Council of Europe called <a href="https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=430177&Site=COE">The demographic characteristics of linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland</a>. As I have dialogued on the Internet about gender roles in Christianity over the last several years, I have noticed that male-headship believing Christians, or complementarians, really love this study and bring it up over and over again. Here is a detail of the results of the study, as set forth in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance#cite_note-HornerRalston1996-40">Wikipedia's Article on Church Attendance</a>:<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.0000019073486px; line-height: 14.9333353042603px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em;">
Practice of religion according to practice of parents (%)</div>
<table class="wikitable" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; border-collapse: collapse; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.0000019073486px; line-height: 14.9333353042603px; margin: 1em 0px;"><tbody>
<tr><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of Parents</th><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of Parents</th><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of the children</th><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of the children</th><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of the children</th><th style="background-color: #f2f2f2; border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em; text-align: center;">Practice of the children</th></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>FATHER</b></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>MOTHER</b></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>REGULAR</b></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>IRREGULAR</b></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>NON-PRACTISING</b></td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;"><b>TOTAL</b></td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">32.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">41.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">25.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">37.7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">37.6</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">24.7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">44.2</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">22.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">33.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">3.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">58.6</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">38.0</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">7.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">60.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">31.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">25.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">22.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">51.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Regular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">1.5</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">37.4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">61.1</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Irregular</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">2.3</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">37.8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">59.9</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
<tr><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">Non-Practising</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">4.6</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">14.7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">80.7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); padding: 0.2em;">100.0</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14.0000019073486px; line-height: 14.9333353042603px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em;">
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The point, as I understand it, is that a father who attends church regularly is much more likely to have his children attend church regularly after they grow up, than a mother who attends church regularly; and if the father is not a practicing Christian, his children are very likely to grow up to be non-practicing themselves, even if the mother is a regular church attender.<br />
<br />
There is also supposedly an American study showing that "<span style="color: #660000;">If the mother is the first to become a Christian, there is a 17 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow. But if the father is first, there is a 93 percent probability everyone else in the household will follow." </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> </span>According to this article in <a href="http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=15630">The Baptist Press</a>, the study is cited in the book <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=CglElq-WtecC">The Promise Keeper at Work</a> by Bob Horner, but I have been unable to locate any reference online to the actual study which generated these statistics.<br />
<br />
In any event, I have seen this Swiss study cited over and over again by male-headship proponents as a sort of definitive proof that male headship is God's blueprint for humanity. As one <a href="http://thewartburgwatch.com/2014/09/03/does-alastair-roberts-evoke-mark-driscoll-when-he-discusses-the-violent-priesthood/#comment-157568">commenter</a> on <a href="http://thewartburgwatch.com/2014/09/03/does-alastair-roberts-evoke-mark-driscoll-when-he-discusses-the-violent-priesthood/">this discussion of gender roles at the Wartburg Watch</a> put it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">To briefly summarize, the mothers spiritual life has virtually no effect on her children. But the fathers is HUGE. What dad does is what the kids will do.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">This, in conclusion, is why I contend for comp theology. Can mothers and women be amazing teachers, Godly examples, skilled leaders, etc….Absolutely. Is there an internal wiring that is deeply dependent upon male leadership (in this case…fathers) that shapes us, and our communities, in a way that women, regardless of their “skills” do not have? I think it is obviously and observably true.</span></blockquote>
Touchstone Magazine wrote an article showcasing the Swiss demographic study in June of 2003, now available online as <a href="http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-024-v">Touchstone Archives: The Truth About Men & Church</a>. Here is one of the main points Touchstone used the study to make:<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. <b><i>You cannot buck the biology of the created order</i></b>. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A mother’s role will always remain primary in terms of intimacy, care, and nurture. . . No father can replace that relationship. But it is equally true that when a child begins to move into that period of differentiation from home and engagement with the world “out there,” he (and she) looks increasingly to the father for his role model. . . </span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Mothers’ choices have dramatically less effect upon children than their fathers’, and without him she has little effect on the primary lifestyle choices her offspring make in their religious observances.<br /> [Emphasis added.]</span></blockquote>
Touchstone goes on to blame the advent of women priests for the decrease in church attendance in Switzerland-- and anywhere else where church attendance is declining. According to them, men just can't stand going to churches that flout God's created order by letting women lead, and when men stop going to church, so do their children. Touchstone goes on to blame feminism and the rise of women leaders for a plethora of society's ills:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">The disintegration of the family follows hard upon the amorality and emotional anarchy that flow from the neutering, devaluing, or exclusion of the loving and protective authority of the father. . . In the absence of fatherhood, it is scarcely surprising that there is an alarming rise in the feral male. This is most noticeable in street communities, where co-operatives of criminality seek to establish brutally and directly that respect, ritual, and pack order so essential to male identity.</span></blockquote>
After going on to denounce the feminization of the church (which I have written a refutation of <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-feminization-of-church.html">here</a>), the article concludes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A church that is conspiring against the blessings of patriarchy not only disfigures the icon of the First Person of the Trinity, effects disobedience to the example and teaching of the Second Person of the Trinity, and rejects the Pentecostal action of the Third Person of the Trinity but, more significantly for our society, flies in the face of the sociological evidence!</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">No father—no family—no faith.</span></blockquote>
Never mind that the First Person of the Trinity is also described <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-gods-nature-father-and-not-mother.html">using mother images</a>. Never mind that the Second Person of the Trinity never taught "male headship," and specifically <a href="http://biblehub.com/matthew/23-9.htm">spoke against the father-rule of His own earthly time and culture</a>. Never mind that the Third Person of the Trinity was poured out at Pentecost on <a href="http://biblehub.com/acts/2-17.htm">"sons and daughters"</a> alike. To challenge male headship is to challenge fatherhood itself, and to challenge fatherhood is to cause the demise of society.<br />
<br />
<b>The important thing to ask, though, is whether this one Swiss demographic study from 20 years ago really supports all the claims that have been pinned upon it. </b><br />
<br />
We have to take into account, for one thing, the religious climate in Switzerland, especially from around the time of this study. This <a href="http://www.swissworld.org/en/people/religion/religious_landscape/">Swissworld article on the religious landscape in Switzerland</a> looks at the state of the nation six years later:<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">In a wide ranging poll of Swiss attitudes taken in 2000, only 16% of Swiss people said religion was "very important" to them, far below their families, their jobs, sport or culture. Another survey published the same year showed the number of regular church goers had dropped by 10% in 10 years. Among Catholics, 38.5% said they did not go to church, while among Protestants the figure was 50.7%.</span></blockquote>
Given that the same article shows that in the year 2000, roughly 42% of the Swiss population was Roman Catholic and 35% was Protestant (with another 2% in Eastern Orthodox and other forms of Christianity), this means Switzerland was 79% Christian in 2000. And yet only 16% considered religion "very important." Does the relative lack of priority given to religion in Switzerland, compared to the United States, have any bearing on possible causes of the study's results?<br />
<br />
I think that if we're going to look at this in terms of sociology, we ought in fairness to consider another documented sociological factor: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/11/13/gender-contamination-why-men-prefer-products-untouched-by-women/">gender contamination</a>. In short, "<span style="color: #660000;">boys and men. . . are more tightly constrained by the prevailing views of masculinity that associate being masculine with avoiding anything feminine.” </span> In a country like Switzerland, where very few people consider religion a high priority, what happens to a family's view of churchgoing if only the mother does it? Touchstone's article itself gives the answer:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">When children see that church is a “women and children” thing, they will respond accordingly—by not going to church, or going much less.</span></blockquote>
Is this really the same thing as there being some intrinsic, God-given authority built into men and not women, so that children naturally follow their father's example and not their mother's? Even assuming that the study's results are accurate (and corroborating studies seem pretty hard to find)-- and even if the same dynamic is going to repeat itself in every culture everywhere (which is not proven), there are three even bigger assumptions being made, none of which are proved by the study: first, that this father-influence is innate to humanity; second, that it is from God; and third, that it comes from or is part of what Christians call "male headship": that is, the essential spiritual authority of manhood over womanhood.</div>
<br />
<b>First of all, it cannot be definitively shown that fathers have an innate influence over their children that supersedes the influence of the mother.</b> After all, what the study's numbers seem to show is that a mother who wants her children to be regular churchgoers would do better (if the father is a regular churchgoer) to stay in bed eating bonbons and watching soap operas than to go to church with the family. The numbers show that if the father and mother are both regular churchgoers, their children are 32.8% likely to be regular churchgoers-- but if the father is regular and the mother is non-practicing, this percentage jumps to 44.2! This actually would mean that the mother actually has a <i>big</i> influence in pushing the children to follow their father even more closely. But does this even make sense? Is it logical to think children would react against their non-churchgoing mother to that extent? Couldn't it be more sensibly accounted for by other factors?<br />
<br />
For instance, what may be going on is that in Western culture as it stands right now, it takes a certain kind of man-- one with a great deal of energy, devotion and sense of responsibility-- to get his kids ready week after week to go to church with no help from their mother.<br />
<br />
Comparatively speaking, a mother who is devoted to church attendance when the father is not, is a different story. We still have a culture (and this is apparently <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2007-18208-004">true in Switzerland too</a>) where the mother does most of the day-to-day dressing, nose-wiping, and gathering-together-and-herding-into-the-car-ing. In short, mothers are used to it. But for a father to get his kids up in the morning, dress and wipe noses and herd them into the car while the mother watches TV or lies in bed, he's got to <i>really</i> want to go to church.<br />
<br />
The dynamic, then, wouldn't be so much that the children's tendency to stick with church attendance rises with the mother's slackness at all. The dynamic would be that children whose father puts himself to extra effort to get his kids to church while the mom stays home, is the kind of man who is more than usually devoted to church attendance-- <i>and that superlative devotion is what rubs off on the kids</i>.<br />
<br />
I suspect that many dads who want to go to church, but mom doesn't, simply say to themselves, "This is too much trouble," and don't go at all, thus moving the family into one of the different statistical groups. In short, this influence of the fathers is probably not innate, but a result of social factors. Raw numbers in a sociological study simply don't give us the whole story-- and because they don't, they certainly don't prove that the fatherly influence they show is innate.<br />
<br />
<b>Second, it simply cannot be shown that this father-influence is from God, even if it were innate.</b> Not everything that is innate to humanity is from God; orthodox Christian doctrine states that humanity is deeply affected by sin. Often, indeed, society's role is to civilize humans so that we can live peacefully together, through the imposition of laws and social rules. But then again, not every law or social rule is from God either. As Christians, we can look to the Bible, of course-- but does the Bible ever advise children to pay more attention to their fathers than to their mothers? <br />
<br />
Well, in fact it doesn't. The Bible tells us to <span style="color: #660000;">"Honor your father <i>and </i>mother."</span> Exodus 6:2. Proverbs 6:20 says, <span style="color: #660000;">"My son, keep your father’s command, and do not forsake <i>your mother’s</i> teaching." </span>Even Ephesians 6:1, which continues from the Ephesians 5 passage so often used to support male headship, says, <span style="color: #660000;">"Children, obey your <i>parents</i> in the Lord." </span>Although the Bible often assumes a male power dynamic, it seems to be more in terms of <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-do-i-like-doctrine-of-accommodation.html">accommodation</a> than in any explicit teaching that says, "men, you are to take charge."<br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
It's just as likely that this extra influence of fathers, if it truly exists, is a factor of sinful human power structures that enhance the influence of one group while marginalizing another. Children pay more attention to their fathers because the world around them pays more attention to their fathers-- and so, sadly, does the church. In a culture which still puts spiritual women on a pedestal (a place where we can be admired and yet be prevented from having any real power or influence), is it that surprising that there would be an attitude of “My mother was a saint, but she was just my mother”? It certainly doesn't mean women should despair that no matter how devoted to God they are, it will do their children no good unless the father is also devoted. It means we should work to counteract this marginalizing influence, not glorify it.<br />
<br />
<b>Third, even if fathers have a greater influence over their children than mothers do, and even if this influence expands beyond this churchgoing study to other areas of life, we can't actually move directly from that to "thus, male headship." </b><br />
<br />
If the Swiss study tells us anything good, anything worth noting, what is it? Only that children having a relationship with an involved and spiritually committed father is a good thing; something we already knew. Only that fathers have an important role in their children's lives-- that they should appreciate their powerful influence on their kids and act responsibly.<br />
<br />
What the study certainly does not tell us is anything about mothers being subordinate to fathers. The study says nothing whatsoever about husband-wife relationships or that men belong in leadership over their wives. Neither does it imply that mothers cannot be leaders in their homes and churches, or that mom must be "first mate" and not "co-captain" with dad.<br />
<br />
Finally, the study does not actually give any reasons as to why any of the study group went to church, or didn't go to church, or stopped going to church. It doesn't address whether or not Swiss culture encourages grown children to do their own thing, like American culture does, or to stay more in line with parents' practices. It doesn't address the individual dynamics of each relationship between a child and his or her mother, or in what ways it differs from that child's relationship with his or her father. It's a sociological study; it's not a judge of internal motives, or a cookie-cutter shaper of every home into its own image.<br />
<br />
The fact is that many complementarians are taking this one 1994 Swiss study and using it to support a large number of things they already believe, whether or not the study actually justifies or even addresses what they conclude from it. Wouldn't it be better to recognize the study's limitations and keep our responses more in line with those limitations?<br />
<br />
I would suggest that the best way to use this study is for dad to use any extra influence he may have, to make sure the children pay more attention to mom.<br />
<br />
That would certainly be the Christlike thing to do. <br />
<br />
<div>
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</div>
Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7971820842270330168.post-58410858922614319582014-09-06T08:00:00.000-07:002014-09-06T08:00:03.830-07:00ReunionIn the early 1980s I was in college, living on fraternity/sorority row. But it wasn't a sorority house. It was the local branch of Maranatha Christian Churches/Campus Ministries founded by Bob and Rose Weiner. As I have described <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2013/03/spiritual-abuse-awareness-week-my.html">here</a> and <a href="http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2012/08/dont-talk-about-it.html">here</a>, Maranatha was a Christian group with strong authoritarian control. We lived in the Maranatha House and went to church in the meeting room of that house, and we slept on the sleeping porches on the third floor and tried to get our homework done or hold down our jobs, despite endless outreach meetings, prayer meetings and other Maranatha obligations.<br />
<br />
On Labor Day this year, 29 years after gradating from college, I went to an annual get-together of a long-standing group of former Maranatha members from my college town. The ties I have with these people are very strong, indeed practically unbreakable. As we ate and talked, laughed and took pictures and caught up on one another's lives, I found myself wondering what it is that binds us together so closely, after almost 30 years.<br />
<br />
It's certainly not because we still agree on everything the way we did back then, when we had all the right answers to all the right questions and knew how big a part our group of "God's Green Berets" was playing in the advance of God's "dominion mandate." It's not because we stayed physically close; though some members still live in the same city, some of us have been scattered long distances. And it's not because we spend our time together living in the past; in fact, I don't think the word "Maranatha" or our experiences there came up once in any of the conversations I had at the reunion this year.<br />
<br />
No, the bonds run much deeper than that. <br />
<br />
It probably helps that all of us in this group of former members somehow managed to stay married to the spouses we met in Maranatha (which seems a miracle in itself!), and that we all had kids and got jobs and watched the kids grow up-- in short, that we have lived basically similar middle-class lives. And we did all remain Christians. But those are really just general similarities-- and we have met at least once a year since our children were in infant carriers, and now most of those kids are in college or have finished school and moved out-- but we have not grown apart.<br />
<br />
The thing is this. Even if we don't always talk about our shared histories, the fact is that for several intense years we lived together and ate and slept and washed together (though of course boys and girls chastely slept and showered in separated areas). We rotated the cooking and cleaning, and we played games in the dining/fireside room and helped each other with homework and gave each other Christmas presents.<br />
<br />
We held car washes almost every Saturday of every summer to try to pay expenses for the house's upkeep. We saved as much as we could to buy oil for the ancient furnace. When school started, and again in the spring, we had six to eight weeks of meetings every night and were required to hand out flyers for these meetings on campus right after dinner. There were also shorter "outreach" periods (2-4 weeks each, with meetings 3-4 times a week) at other points during the year. Once a month we piled into cars and drove to Seattle for a "Maranatha Leadership Training Seminar." I'm really not sure why we didn't all flunk out of school!<br />
<br />
Several times a year we fasted and prayed for up to three days, and sometimes we held all-night prayer meetings, joined via satellite to other Maranatha congregations all over the globe. (I remember one year the central leadership found out that it's better not to expect even young, strong college kids to pray all night <i>and </i>fast at the same time. After several kids collapsed, fasting and all-night prayer were never observed at the same time again! The leadership was actually lucky that no serious health problems resulted that they might have been held legally liable for.)<br />
<br />
Whenever we could snatch any spare time, we'd go to movies together (if approved by the local leaders) or watch TV. One of the girls' favorite activities was to listen to me read stories aloud (<i>Winnie the Pooh</i>, or the <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i>), while they did embroidery or cross-stitch. (I was glad to be the reader because I loved to read aloud and secretly hated cross stitch, though as a woman I was <i>supposed</i> to like such things.)<br />
<br />
We shared with each other the details of our lives and our troubles with parents or siblings. We bundled up together when the furnace broke down from advanced arthritis or stopped for lack of fuel. We swam together in the house's swimming pool when it was hot (I'm sure the car wash money helped pay for pool treatment chemicals too). We all knew what each of us looked like in the mornings before showers. We all knew what we looked like in the middle of the night without sleep.<br />
<br />
All of this stays with us, even when we don't talk about it. We <i>have</i> talked about it, of course-- at great length, over the years. We walked with each other on our journeys <i>out</i> of authoritarian, spiritually abusive religion too. And it turns out that what we have done together is something pretty rare-- the fact that Maranatha Christian Churches voluntarily disbanded in the early 1990s meant that we could leave Maranatha without shunning or estrangement-- that we were able to come out <i>together</i>. <br />
<br />
And though we don't necessarily all agree anymore except on foundational Christian doctrines like the Trinity, the Incarnation, Atonement and Resurrection, we have all, I think, learned certain things from that journey out.<br />
<br />
What have we learned? I think it boils down to this: that ultimately, there is no value in trying to force one another, or ourselves, to conform to some cookie-cutter standard of who or what we're supposed to be. That each of us, in our own selves, is essentially and foundationally valuable. And that our relationships with one another are more important than any differences we might have.<br />
<br />
If nothing else good came out of being in a spiritually abusive religious group, this did: that in reaction to authoritarian control, we let go, once and for all, of any desire to control one another. Instead, we simply love one another.<br />
<br />
And that should last us another 30 years, and beyond.<br />
<br />Kristenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08252374623355509404noreply@blogger.com6