Rachel Held Evans's Blog, page 47
March 3, 2013
Sunday Superlatives 3/3/13
Whew! I’ve got a BUNCH of Superlatives today thanks to your
fantastic nominations. So let’s get right to it…
Most Informative:
How to Become Pope
Most Powerful (nominated by Darin Campbell):
Jonathan Storment with “Everyday Idolatry: My God”
“In other
words, the scandal is not that Jesus is like God. The scandal is that God is
like Jesus."
Most Helpful:
Margaret Feinberg with “Why Doesn’t It Rhyme? 7 Tips and
Tricks to Reading Hebrew Poetry and Wisdom Literature”
“Wisdom
literature and poetry ground us in the truth that our struggles are struggles
that humanity has wrestled with throughout history. Thousands
of years ago, the Israelites wrestled with fear, doubt, insecurities,
suffering, and sin—much like us, today.”
Most Challenging:
Peter Enns with “Why I Don’t Believe in God Anymore”
“The older I get, making sure all my “beliefs” of God are lined up as they
should be loses more and more of its luster. I see the Bible focusing a lot
more on something far more demanding: trust. Try it. Which is harder to say? I
believe in God or I trust God?”
Most Practical:
Courtney Rowland with “The Great Fair Trade Chocolate Chip Experiment”
“The good news is, there are plenty of
companies out there who are committed to fair trade practices in chocolate
production. The bad news is, there aren’t a lot of them that offer fair trade
chocolate chips. After quite a bit of research, I narrowed down the field to
two primary brands of fair trade chocolate chips: Camino and SunSpire.”
Most Insightful:
Brandon Ambrosino with “No Beauty
without Ash: The Paradox of True Christian Art (or, getting ready for Easter)”
“Whenever we downplay
the horror of the crucifixion for the more pleasing story of the Resurrection,
we fall into the trap of sentimentalism.”
Most Eye-Opening:
NPR with “Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists in America”
“Today
there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or
jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the
Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out
of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities
today, more than half of working-age African-American men are either under
correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized
discrimination for the rest of their lives."
Most
Thought-Provoking:
Richard Beck with
“Good Enough”
“To be shamed, then, for being normal, average, good enough or
a failure is to be shamed by a fear-based illusion. Basically, you are being
shamed for being what you are--a human being. That's that tragedy of modern
life: You are not allowed to be a human being. You have to be better, something
more. A god. Otherwise you're a failure.”
Most Likely to Make
the Eyes Water (nominated
by Tara J. Haussler):
Baddest Mother Ever with “A Tuesday Kind of Miracle”
“The path of grief is not a straight line. You don’t
start off in the deepest slough then climb up each step to get back to
peaceful. Grief moves forward, but in a looping line. You’re going
along, making progress then you hit a loop and your stomach lurches and
everything is flipped upside down and you land right back where you were a few
weeks or months ago. Eventually, the loops get smaller and spread farther
apart, but they’re still there to…well, to throw you for a loop.”
Most Likely to Make the Tears
Fall (nominated by KJ Stanton)
Dave Barnhart with “How Being a
Pastor Changed My Thinking on Homosexuality”
“I also
know that plenty of folks have turned their backs permanently on the church, on
religion, on Jesus, because they have struggled with heavy yokes and been
locked out of the kingdom of God. I’ve had the privilege of helping a few hear
the good news in the Good News, and seen them stand up
straighter when the yoke is lifted off their shoulders. The church is still a
place where prisoners are released and slaves are set free.”
Most Likely To Say It Perfectly (As Always):
Kristen Rosser with “But That’s What the Bible Says”
“And this is the sad thing. That we'd
rather live with cognitive dissonance, believing that women are somehow equal
but yet somehow lesser-- or that they are to be restricted for no reason, but
that God is still just-- than to believe it's possible we're misreading our
Bibles. We'd rather restrict women and have the Bible be
"clear" than admit that we just might be wrong. Certainty is
more important than female humanity.”
Wisest (nominated by Connie Esther):
Emily Maynard with “I Stopped Guarding My Heart Ten Years Ago”
“If you really want to be in healthy
relationships, stop “guarding” your heart and start using it. Walk through the
mistakes you will inevitably make and learn from them. Find a community of
people who are practicing vulnerability. Fill your heart full of the love that
makes it come alive, full of grace, full of determination to walk with pain
rather than around it, and you will be much better off than any heart that has
been merely “guarded.” If you want to learn vulnerability, allow God to really
truly love you, exactly where you are, with a love that disintegrates shame. My
capacity to love has grown exponentially since I stopped guarding my heart.”
[See also Aprille at Kindred Grace with “Hearts Are Not
Construction Paper” for another excellent perspective on this notion of "guarding your heart" by shutting down emotions.]
Funniest
(nominated by Brian LePort):
Matt Mikalatos with “How Sesame Street is Undermining
Biblical Values”
“Strachan explains that this
is the undermining of Protestant values, because boys shouldn't be taught to
play with dolls, and that after this confusing message from Gordon, Baby Bear
needs the Gospel. While I sympathize with
Strachan's concern that boys might grow up to be nurturing fathers, both he and
Sesame Street are missing the point. The
fact is, Baby Bear should not be playing with baby dolls. He is a bear. And
socializing him with humans (let alone human babies) can only bring grief. I know,
you might think I'm overreacting, but the Bible is very clear on the role of
bears in human relationships. They are meant to be voracious
killing machines. I mean, the ONE COMMAND God gives
specifically to bears is to "Arise and
devour much flesh." This attempt to anthropomorphize and
humanize bears strikes at the heart of everything the gospel teaches about
bears.”
Best
Cartoon:
XKCD with “How It Works”
Best List:
Mental Floss with “7 Book Dedications that Basically Say ‘Screw You’”
“e.e. cummings wrote a book of poems that was turned down by
14 publishers. He finally published it under the title "No Thanks."
The dedication was a list of all the publishers who had rejected it, arranged
in the shape of a funeral urn.”
Best Response (nominated by Dianna
Anderson):
Mia
McKenzie with “The Thing About Being a Little Black Girl in the World: For Quvenzhané Wallis"
“The thing about being a little black girl in
the world who is already, at nine years old, confident enough to demand that lazy,
disrespectful reporters call you by your name, is that most people will not
understand the amount of comfort in one's own skin it takes to do that, will
not be able to grasp the sheer fierceness of it, the boldness, the certainty,
the love for yourself, and will not be blown away at seeing you do it, though
they should be.”
Best
Confession (nominated by Stephanie
Spencer)
Sarah Markley with “When A
Post-Crisis Marriage is Full of Imperfections”
“So when you read my bios, when you popA Few Highlights From #FemFest 2013…
over from twitter and read a post I write and somehow find my one hundred or
four hundred word about-me that talks about my redeemed marriage, please know
that it’s not perfect. It’s far from that. In fact, it’s a struggle
each day to love well and like wading through mud to suppress our own selfish
inclinations. Each step toward Jesus and toward grace is harder than
the last and we fall in to bed at the end of each day with a sigh, that
yes-we-made-it-through-another-day-barely-intact.”
My contribution
is an oldie: “Confessions of an Accidental Feminist”
“ I am an accidental
feminist, for my liberation did not come from Simone de Beauvoir or Betty
Friedan, but from Mary and Martha, Junia and Priscilla, Phoebe and Tabitha. It
came from the marvelous and radical recognition that if the gospel is good news
for them, then maybe it is good news for me too... “
Emily Joy Allison with “Feminism and Me: When I Cannot Cook But
Am Still A Person”
To me,
feminism was a soothing balm to a heart that had been battered and rejected by
Christian culture for simply not looking like what they thought it
should. Where
the prevailing culture said you are wrong, you are dangerous, you are
unsubmissive, you are undesirable, you are not enough, you are too
much, feminism said you are a person. At bottom, feminism is, as the
old saying goes, the radical notion that women are people.”
Antonia
Terrazas with “Feminism & Me, Whether I Knew It Or Not”
“And then
there were the prophets and the preachers: high-heeled at the pulpit, with
manicured hands to lay. They were beautiful, smart, strong, and spoke
with authority. Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves. I was
taught a fiercely loyal Ruth and a wise Deborah; through the bravery of Esther
a nation saved, through the bravery of Mary, a world saved, a multitude reborn.
Because the Spirit moves where the Spirit moves.”
Shaney Irene with “Why Feminism Matters”
“Because the truth is that feminism is having conversations that the church is
not. The church is not yet a safe place for victims of abuse. The church is
still blaming women for causing men to stumble, thinking that “What were you
wearing?” is a perfectly okay question to ask a victim of rape, and refusing to
believe women when they come forward about being sexually assaulted by
Christian men. The church is not yet asking questions about privilege, and
seems to think oppression is something that happens outside its walls. The
church needs the framework that feminism is providing.”
Amy Lepine Peterson with "For My Son"
“I'm a
feminist because I want my son to see all people as valuable human beings,
created in God's image. I want him to reject culturally constructed ideas about
what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" and to
embrace biblical truth about what it means to be human, male and female,
created in the image of a loving God. So I'll teach him to love, respect,
nurture, and protect; to dance, weep, subvert, and sing.
I'll teach him how to turn
swords into plowshares, and I'll warn him that power and
domination are not the ultimate ends of manhood.
I'll tell him that the Bible does have a few things to say about what it
means to be a man; and that it has a lot more to say about what it means to be
loved, transformed, and made holy. I'll tell him the Kingdom is coming, and
that it's here.”
Suzannah Paul with “All Oppression Shall Cease:
A Feminist Theology of Power”
This is where my faith intersects my feminism:
worldly political and religious power crucified Christ, and when he
rose from the dead, Jesus made a spectacle of their oppressive power,
greed, fear, and blood thirst. The
equality we seek is found
not on the altar of empire but the upside-down Kingdom of Christ.”
Carrie McKean with “Neither male nor female”
“Undoubtedly this world needs to know the
Father’s Heart. But in a culture where His people are often seen as
harsh and cold, judgmental and stoic, and in a generation where that mirrors
the way many fathers treated their children, is it any wonder that we have such
misconceptions about what His heart may look like? I think it is
time that we know the Father’s Mama-Heart, too. And as I look
around at a new generation of women – confident in the gifts God has given
them, and bearing light and love in their homes, communities, and worlds, I’m
beginning to see new currents of compassion, grace, mercy
and gentleness come alive. It’s always been a part of His
heart, but when mama-hearted-women step into their calling, I believe it unveils
the Father in new and vibrant ways. “
Liz Myrick with “Yes, I Am”
“I've been told I'm smart for a
girl, funny for a girl, good at math for a girl,
handy for a girl, easy to talk to for a girl.
Until people started lining up to tell me all the things I was good at doing,
you know, for a girl, I didn't realize people thought that those
were things girls weren't good at doing in the first place.”
Conner Park with “Unshackling
Imagination”
“Because
I grew up sharing a room with Ramona Quimby, I want to see all children
affirmed in their capacity to understand and imagine the world as creatively as
they can. Because I sat impatiently through schoolwork with Anne, I want to
build a world where no one is mocked for their differences and I crave a life
built on intimate, bosom friendships. Because I wept with Lucy and Susan over
the altar of Aslan’s death, I can now raise a loud Eshet Chayil!, praising the
womanly valor of St. Mary of Magdala, Apostle to the Apostles, and all the
women who daily proclaim the Resurrection’s power into my life. And because I
loved and learned with Meg Murry to imagine a deeper and more beautiful world,
today I am proud to say that I am a feminist, participating in a conversation
that at its best, exists to unchain the imagination, to envision and build a
world set free from imprisoning ideologies, a world where all are equal, even
if not alike."
Deborah West with “Jesus is my favorite feminist”
“He chose her. He commissioned her.
He gave her the privilege of
delivering the very first Resurrection sermon. To a room full of men.”
Preston Yancey with “When it matters because
of two gardens”
“And
I think of them, sometimes, of that second Man and that other woman, in that
garden west of Golgotha, and I think of her as she was sent forth, running
east, and I think of the tangled mess of grace tripping and dancing round her
in her wake, her feet bringing the news of healed cosmos, healed creation, and
He has done this, first, and we shall follow, and so comes the Light. So
blossoms the garden of us all.”
Luke Harms with “The Rehumanization of a Soldier and the
Reconstruction of a Man”
“For me, everything was at stake. My entire identity wasOn the Blog…
invested in this caricature of masculinity that had been cultivated in me my
entire life, and refined to perfection in the crucible of Army
culture. Certainly, there were a number of factors that contributed
to the disintegration of that identity, but feminism played a crucial role
in giving me the words to articulate much of what I knew all along was so
very wrong with this culture I was immersed in, and in turn, probably saved my
marriage, and ultimately brought me back and far deeper into my faith than I
had ever been before. It's funny, I've always seen the Holy Spirit as the
mother in the little nuclear family of Trinitarian theology, so there's a kind
of synchronicity in the fact that feminism was that thing that She used to woo
me back.”
Most Popular Post:
"How [Not To] Respond to Abuse Allegations: Christians and Sovereign Grace Ministries"
Most Popular
Comments:
In response to “Is
abolition 'biblical'?” LizBR wrote:
This
kind of thing is why I tell my students (all freshmen at a Christian college),
"Always be skeptical when someone starts a sentence with, 'the Bible
clearly says.'" If someone says those words, your first response should be
to question their position intensely. They might be right, or they might be
wrong, but you definitely need to investigate whatever it is they think the
Bible so clearly states.
and
in response to “Introduction to Wesley Hill’s ‘Washed and
Waiting,’” Cobalt wrote:
“Wesley is a very brave guy. By telling his story, he runs the risk of
condemnation from some Christians who choose not to show Christ's love to LGBT
persons. And he runs the risk of condemnation from some LGBT persons and
supporters who choose to rebuff him because he isn't supporting their position
on homosexuality. That has to be an incredibly tough, lonely place to be in. I
respect his bravery.”
Longest Sunday Superlatives Ever of All Time:
Rachel Held Evans with "Sunday Superlatives 3/3/13"
***
So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening onyour blog?
March 2, 2013
This week’s posts…
My posting schedule is a little irregular this spring due to
travel, and this week I crammed a bunch of posts into a few days, so I’m
linking back to them here, in case you missed one—like our interview with Shane
Claiborne!
So here they are:
Introduction to Wesley Hill’s “Washed and Waiting”
An Important Post from Mary DeMuth: “The Sexy Wife I Can’t
Be”
Ask Shane Claiborne…(Response)
Guys and Dolls: Exhibit B for the Absurd Legalism of Gender
Roles
How [Not To] Respond to Abuse Allegations: Christians and
Sovereign Grace Ministries
Help! I need your thoughts on the future of evangelicalism
so I can impress Roger Olson.
Hope that helps! As always, thanks for reading.
March 1, 2013
Help! I need your thoughts on the future of evangelicalism so I can impress Roger Olson
So I’m pretty excited because on Monday, March 11, I’ll be
partnering with Roger Olson and George Fox Seminary for what promises to be a
fascinating conversation about the future of evangelicalism.
From the George Fox Web site: In a time when “evangelical”
has more of a political connotation than a convictional connotation, we need
bright voices that can help sort through the noise and imagine a way forward
for those who call themselves evangelical Roger
E. Olson is
professor of theology at Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, Texas. Rachel Held Evans is
a blogger, speaker, and author of Evolving in Monkey Town and A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Together
they will discuss whether there is a future for evangelicalism and, if so, what
the future might entail.
Sounds interesting, right?
If only I knew what I was going to say!
I’m counting on my friend Roger to bring his historical and
theological insight to the conversation, which means I’ll be sharing a bit more
from a personal perspective, incorporating my own story with some of your
stories to make some
general observations about what I think is happening in evangelicalism and why
some of it makes me excited and some of it causes concern. I confess this isn’t
as easy task, as debating my evangelical status has become something of a sport
among Reformed bloggers, and a big part of me is just ready to toss the label
and stick with something simple, like Christ follower….or maybe “it’s
complicated.”
I wrote a post about the future of evangelicalism two years
ago, and not much has changed….except that now I see a more defined stream of
young, post-evangelical Christians finding their home in the Anabaptist
tradition, which I think is exciting. I think of folks like Shane Claiborne and
organizations like Red Letter Christians leading the way in this, not to
mention the possibility of Greg Boyd and Woodland Hill's joining either the Mennonite Church
USA or the Brethren in Christ, which speaks volumes. I too am drawn to the Anabaptist tradition and believe it has something really special to offer Christians who are tired of the
culture wars, as well as something important to say about how a post-Christian
culture in the U.S. might actually be good for the Church. If there was a progressive Mennonite
congregation in our community, I’d probably be a part of it. (I've tried to convince my friend Kurt Willems to plant his church here instead of the West coast..because Dayton, Tennessee and Seattle, Washington are pretty much the same.)
Anyway, I’d like to spend the weekend getting together my
thoughts on this, and since a large percentage of you are smarter than I am, I
figured I’d get your input. Know that I may quote you directly in my
presentation, with attribution of course.
So here are my questions for you. Feel free to take a stab
at one or all of them…or to go off on your own tangent. It’s a free country.
Do you identify yourself as an evangelical? Why
or why not? How do you feel about religious labels in general?2.
How would you define evangelicalism?3.
What are some of your greatest concerns for
evangelicalism? And what are some of your biggest hopes?4.
Do you know what Roger Olson’s favorite candy
is? Because I think I’m going to owe him one for compensating for my lack of
expertise on this. :-)
Note: You can register for the event at George Fox here. It's open to the public
February 28, 2013
How [Not To] Respond to Abuse Allegations: Christians and Sovereign Grace Ministries
[Trigger warning: child abuse]
As you may know, Sovereign Grace Ministries, an association of Reformed church plants, is facing a significant lawsuit that alleges church leaders covered up the abuse of children by discouraging parents from reporting abuse to authorities and requiring victims to forgive their abusers in person. The pending lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, recently added five new plaintiffs, five new defendants, and 28 charges, including the allegation that some defendants engaged in abuse directly.
As the situation has unfolded, some Christian leaders have called on their fellow Christians to withhold judgment from Sovereign Grace Ministries. Tim Challies took to his blog today to urge Christians to pray for the leaders of SGM who have been facing “troubling days” and to “maintain a hopeful attitude toward others, even, and perhaps especially, those who have been accused.”
While I think we can all agree that Christians should withhold condemnation regarding the abuse allegations until the facts come out in the case and the issue has been thoroughly investigated and subjected to due process, what baffles me is Christian leaders’ continued support of Sovereign Grace Ministries in spite of the ministry’s repeated efforts to evade external investigation into this matter.
This week, the Associated Press reported that SGM has asked a Maryland court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that courts should not get involved in the internal affairs of church business. This follows SGM’s statement in November appealing to protection under the First Amendment to defend its freedom to provide confidential pastoral counseling. "SGM believes that allowing courts to second-guess pastoral guidance would represent a blow to the First Amendment that would hinder, not help, families seeking spiritual direction among other resources in dealing with the trauma related to any sin including child sexual abuse," a representative of SGM said in a November 14 statement.
Yes, we should withhold judgment unless the defendants are proven guilty. But what we can judge, and what we should flatly condemn, is Sovereign Grace Ministry’s repeated efforts to evade any external investigation into these allegations.As David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Christianity Today in a helpful article on the subject, "the First Amendment is not—and shouldn't be—a defense against child abuse.”
I bring this up, not to “sow disunity” or “pass judgment on fellow Christians” (criticisms I’ve already received), but to bring attention to a problem that Christians absolutely must confront.
Over the past year, I’ve been corresponding more regularly with victims of abuse who have patiently and graciously exposed me to the ways in which the Church routinely mishandles abuse allegations by shaming the alleged victims and protecting church leaders. I’m working with several of these smart, inspiring survivors to post a weeklong series here on abuse and the Church, hopefully this spring or early summer.
What concerned me about Challies’ post in particular was its disproportionate emphasis on protecting the leaders of SGM over protecting the alleged abuse victims.
He writes, “We tend to believe that the side that is slow or hesitant to release information must be in the wrong, that their silence is an admission of guilt. Keep in mind, though, that Jesus did not protest his innocence and that people took this as a sign of his guilt, though he, of all men, was completely innocent."
My friend Elora Ramirez was floored. “I wonder if he understands the implications?” she wrote on Facebook. “Does he know what that line of thinking does to victims of abuse? Devastating.”
As Christians, our first impulse should be to protect and defend the powerless, not the powerful. Furthermore, by characterizing allegations of child abuse as a sad case of “disunity” and “strife” within the church and urging his fellow Christians not to ask too many questions about the situation, Challies only perpetuates the painfully common narrative that those who raise concerns about abuse in churches are troublemakers, out to sow disunity and dissention, and that we are wise to keep this matters quiet. (I don’t think he intended it that way, but it's how it came across.)
Even if these allegations turn out to be false—which they may be—how Christians respond to them sends a signal to victims of abuse about how they will be treated if they come forward. So we have got to put a stop to these shaming narratives that cast the alleged abusers as innocent like Jesus and the alleged victims as persecutors. The effects of narratives like these are simply devastating.
Dianna Anderson puts it well here:
"You see, victims – especially victims in evangelical environments – are told that their allegations of abuse are private matters, that opening their mouths and saying that things are not okay is “divisive” and “against Christian unity.” It is no small matter for victims to bring forth accusations and to go to court against their abusers. It is no small feat for them to stand up for themselves and continue to speak."
And the fact remains: “slow to release information” is entirely different than evading external investigation by hiding behind the First Amendment, which is exactly what SGM is doing. If SGM indeed has nothing to hide than its leaders should be transparent and cooperative in this investigation.
So while we should withhold judgment regarding the specifics of these sexual abuse allegations, Christians should flatly condemn SGM’s attempt to keep the facts from coming out by appealing to the First Amendment. That’s an abuse of freedom of religion and an insult to the gospel, plain and simple.
***
Note to commenters: Please remember to refer to “alleged” victims and “alleged” abusers. This is an important distinction to make in a pending case like this one, even though the percentage of false allegations in abuse cases is quite small.
Is abolition "biblical"?
It
may seem like an absurd question, especially given the increasing enthusiasm
among evangelical Christians for the abolition of modern-day slavery. (Be sure to check out Refuse to Do Nothing by Shayne Moore and Kimberly McOwen Yim, pictured above.) But it’s a question that haunted
our evangelical predecessors in the 19th century as they took to
newspapers, pulpits, street corners, and staterooms to debate whether or not
the Bible supported the abolition movement to free African slaves in the United
States.
“The
tree of Abolition is evil,” declared Reverend Henry Van Dyke in 1860, “and only
evil—root and branch, flower and leaf, and fruit; that it springs from, and is
nourished by an utter rejection of the Scriptures.”
Having
lived in the South all my life, I’ve long been aware of the stain of slavery
and segregation on our national conscience, and I’ve known for some time that
many Christians appealed to Scripture to support their ownership of slaves.
(This is why we have the Southern Baptist Convention, for example.) But it
wasn’t until picking up Mark Noll’s excellent book, The Civil War as a
Theological Crisis, that I familiarized myself with the rhetoric and logic of
the anti-abolition movement. And the results were startling.
I
highly recommend reading the book for yourself, but what I found most striking
was the familiarity of the various lines of argumentation put forth by
evangelicals invested in the debate, particularly the accusation from
Christians on the pro-slavery side that Christians who supported abolition were
ignoring the particulars of the biblical text in favor of vague generalities
regarding love, justice, and progress, thereby discounting the “plain meaning”
of the Bible and threatening its authority.
For
example, Moses Stuart of Andover Seminary in Massachusetts (who was sympathetic
to the eventual emancipation of American slaves, but was against abolition), published
a tract in which he pointed to Ephesians 6 and other biblical texts to argue
that while slaves should be treated fairly by their owners, abolitionists just
didn’t have Scripture on their side and “must give up the New Testament
authority, or abandon the fiery course which they are pursuing.”
Methodist
minister J.W. Ticker told a Confederate audience in 1862 that “your cause is
the cause of God, the cause of Christ, of humanity. It is a conflict of truth
with error—of the Bible with Northern infidelity—of pure Christianity with
Northern fanaticism.”
Van
Dyke also stated it dramatically: “When the Abolitionist tells me that
slaveholding is sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I
point him to this sacred record, and tell him, in all candor, as my text does,
that his teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine.”
As
you can see, Christians advocating for the preservation of slavery did not
characterize their abolitionist opponents as simply disagreeing with them on
the interpretation of the biblical text, but instead tended to accuse them of
not taking the Bible seriously at all. Christians on both sides, but especially
the pro-slavery side, urged followers to simply abide by the “plain meaning” of
biblical texts and not allow complicated, nuanced argumentation to cloud their
mind.
As
Noll observes:
"On
the eve of the Civil War, interpretations of the Bible that made the most sense
to the broadest public were those that incorporated the defining experiences of
America into the hermeneutics used for interpreting what the infallible text
actually meant. In this effort, those who like James Henley Thornwell defended
the legitimacy of slavery in the Bible had the easiest task. The procedure,
which by 1860 had been repeated countless times, was uncomplicated. First, open
the Scriptures and read, at say Leviticus 25:45, or, even better, at 1
Corinthians 7:20-21. Second, decide for yourself what these passages mean.
Don’t wait for a bishop or a king or a president or a meddling Yankee to tell
you what the passage means, but decide for yourself. Third, if anyone tries to
convince you that you are not interpreting
such passages in the natural, commonsensical, ordinary meaning of the words,
look hard at what such a one believes with respect to other biblical doctrines.
If you find in what he or she says about such doctrines the least hint of
unorthodoxy, as inevitably you will, then you may rest assured that you are
being asked to give up not only the plain meaning of Scripture, but also the
entire trust in the Bible that made the country into such a great Christian
civilization." [p. 50]
Obviously,
this way of looking at things was highly influenced by Enlightenment confidence
and its marriage to Christianity, which Noll is quick to point out manifested
itself in arguments from both sides.
But
the fact of the matter is, the pro-slavery side had more going for it in the
way of proof texts. Slavery apologists could cite passages like Genesis 17:2,
Deuteronomy 20:10-11, 1 Corinthians 7:21, Ephesians 6:1-5, Colossians 3:18-25;
4:1, and I Timothy 6:1-2 to support their case. They pointed out that slavery
was practiced by the people of Israel and regulated by God, and that Jesus
never said a word against slaveholding. Even the apostle Paul instructs an
escaped slave, Onesimus, to return to his master, they observed. [Notably,
many of the texts in question are the exact same texts—the Household Codes of
Ephesians, Colossians, and 1 Peter—that are used today to support gender
hierarchy in the home. I touched on this important connection in my post about
submission in context and in A Year of Biblical Womanhood.]
“The
general result was that by the 1840s American debates over the Bible and
slavery had assumed a critical new gravity,” writes Noll. “In particular, those
who saw in Scripture a sanction for slavery were both more insistent on
pointing to the passages that seemed so transparently to support their position
and more confident in decrying the wanton disregard for divine revelation that
seemed so willfully to dismiss biblical truths.”
Noll
explains that abolitionists had a far more challenging task, for they had to
appeal instead to the “broad sweep of Scripture” and to generalities regarding
justice, love, and common humanity. As abolitionist Gerrit Smith put it, “the religion taught by Jesus is not a letter
but a life.”
Noll
points to an 1845 public debate between Nathaniel Rice (pro-slavery) and Jonathan
Blanchard (anti-slavery) which lasted for eight hours a day, for four days! Rice
“methodically tied Blanchard in knots over how to interpret the proslavery
implications of specific texts” while “Blanchard returned repeatedly to ‘the
broad principle of common equity and common sense’ that he found in Scripture,
to ‘the general principles of the Bible’ and ‘the whole scope of the Bible’”
rather than specifics.
Many
Bible-believing Christians, including those who were uncomfortable with
slavery, just weren’t buying the abolitionist argument that placed the “spirit
of the law” over the “letter of the law.” As Connecticut Congregationalist
Leonard Bacon put it: “The evidence that there were both slaves and masters of
slaves in churches founded and directed by the apostles, cannot be got rid of
without resorting to methods of interpretation that will get rid of
everything.”
see Bacon’s dilemma, don’t you? Frankly, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to make a
biblical case for abolition in the 19th century. I’m not sure I could
have…or would have. Which is kind of sobering, right?
[Noll
also points to arguments put forth by some abolitionists that said that while the
Bible never condemns slavery per se, it does condemn the kind of slavery
practiced in the American South. This was a strong argument, but suffered
because of its nuance. “This position could not simply be read out of any one
biblical text,” Noll says. “It could not be lifted directly from the page.
Rather, it needed patient reflection on the entirety of the Scriptures; it
required expert knowledge of historical circumstances of ancient Near Eastern
and Roman slave systems as well as of the actually existing conditions in the
slave states; and it demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice
replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text.” Thus, that argument never took off.]
Things
didn’t really turn around until the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which struck an emotional chord with readers and once again
appealed to the general sweep of Scripture rather than the letter.
Noll
points to a great scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin in which Mary Bird tries to make
the case for taking in runaway slaves based on Christ’s teachings in Matthew
25. John Bird’s response to his wife’s perspective made me laugh out loud:
“But, Mary, just listen to me. Your feelings are all quite right, dear, and
interesting, and I love you for them; but, then, dear, we mustn’t suffer our
feelings to run away without our judgment.”
I
underlined that bit and wrote in the margins of my book, “sounds familiar!” Reminds me of a few book reviews I've received.
The
Civil War as a Theological Crisis is a short but dense book, and I’m only
halfway through it. (The next chapter deals specifically with race, which was a
profoundly important element in the theological debate surrounding slavery.) But
I wanted to share these initial thoughts because I think it’s important to
remind ourselves now and then that we’ve been wrong before, and that sometimes
it’s not about the number of proof texts we can line up or about the most simplistic reading of the text, but rather some deep,
intrinsic sense of right and wrong, some movement of the Spirit, that points us
toward truth and to a better understanding of what Scripture really says.
The
clearest association I make, of course, is with the gender equality discussion
within evangelicalism—not only because it’s an issue near to my heart, but also
because we are dealing with many of the same biblical texts. But I wonder about
other things too—about homosexuality, for example—and I confess I spend some
nights lying awake, watching the lights from passing cars make strange shapes
on my walls, wondering if we’ve done it again, if we’ve marginalized another
group of people because we believed the Bible told us to.
Now,
to be clear, I’m NOT saying that slavery is the same as the gender debates or
homosexuality. So please don't hear that. Each situation is different, and each should be
discussed and debated on their own terms. It’s not fair to the people involved
to treat them all the same or to make an unqualified comparison.
But
the impassioned, Bible-based rhetoric delivered by both the abolitionists and
those who opposed them sure does sound familiar.
And that should give us pause.
***
See
also: “Alright, Then, I’ll Go to Hell”
February 27, 2013
Guys and Dolls: Exhibit B for the absurd legalism of gender roles
A couple of weeks ago we discussed the absurd legalism of
gender roles, as exemplified by John Piper’s illustration that a woman with a
black belt should not intervene if she and a male friend are
attacked, for according to Piper, it is the man’s divinely ordained role to
protect her.
Piper is one of the founders of the Council on Biblical
Manhood and Womanhood—a flagship organization for the complementarian movement
in America—which is now led by Owen Strachan. (Strachan made headlines not too
long ago when he referred to stay-at-home-dads as “man fails.”)
This week Strachan provided yet another illustration of
legalistic gender roles by critiquing an episode of Sesame Street in which
the character “Baby Bear” is told he should not be embarrassed for playing with
a baby doll. Strachan pointed to this scene as an example of how “the basic
foundations of the Protestant worldview are under assault.” Sesame Street, he
says, is on “the frontlines of the gender wars” and this scene represents a “disastrous
teaching on sexuality and gender.”
Caryn Rivadeneira wrote an excellent response at
Her.Meneutics that says just about everything that needs to be said about why
we shouldn’t shame little boys for nurturing and caring for baby dolls. (As did Kristen Rosser.) But I
also want to point to a response from Micah J. Murray entitled “Boys and Dolls:
A Father’s Response”
Micah writes:
At the heart of
Owen Strachan’s argument is the idea that Baby Bear’s actions are contrary to Biblical
manhood and womanhood. I’ve read the Bible. And I agree with Owen that God
created men and woman as equal but distinct, with unique strengths and
callings. The problem is, “biblical” as Owen Strachan uses it, really
means “Protestant America in the 1950′s according to Norman Rockwell” (my
words, not his). The Bible never says “boys shouldn’t play with dolls.” That’s
a cultural construct that Owen is projecting back onto the Bible.
You know what is
Biblical? God says that He will comfort His people “as a mother comforts her
child.” (see Isaiah 66:13) Jesus says that He longed to gather the children of
Jerusalem “like a mother hen gathers her babies under her wings” (see Mathew
23:37). The Apostle Paul described himself as a mother in labor, struggling to
give life to the church. (see Galatians 4:19). The concept of gender
differences is Biblical. What’s un-Biblical is the idea that caring for a baby
is somehow not masculine...
This is why it matters, Owen. Because you and the
Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood are in the midst of a very important
conversation about how to live out our masculinity and femininity in the
twenty-first century. But instead of approaching it as a conversation, you’ve
defined it as a battle. Those on the other side of the issue from you sometimes
accuse complementarians of wanting to revert to outdated patriarchal notions of
gender roles. And when you write things like this, you validate their
accusations.
Because this isn’t
about “what the Bible says about masculinity”, it’s about your assumption that
“dolls are for girls” and your assertion that anyone who disagrees is attacking
our moral foundation. If you want to blog about that, about your opinion that
we should raise our kids according to some rather arbitrary gender stereotypes,
that’s your business. But you dragged the Gospel into it. You claimed that
the Bible supported your assumption. And it doesn’t. Read the rest of the post.
It was encouraging
to see someone from a more conservative perspective weigh in on this…and with a
wise and thoughtful post. But it does
point to the problem of inconsistency within the complementarian movement.
When I write a post
about gender equality, for example, I try to point to very specific quotes from
complementarian leaders in order to avoid creating a straw man and to focus the
conversation around one or two ideas. But it never fails: Any sort of
engagement with complementrarian ideas is immediately followed by the
accusation that “that’s not what complementarians really believe” or “you’re
pointing to an extreme example” or “you’ve created a straw man.”
Now, today’s example
comes from the leader of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which I (and many
others) consider to be a mainstream expression of complementarian values. And
yet I have a feeling that there may be complementarians out there, who, like
Micah, do not consider it “foolish” for boys to play with dolls and who are
concerned by how these sort of gender stereotypes are put forth as “biblical
manhood.”
complementarians is this: Does the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
represent you? Does Owen Strachan? If not, what organizations or leaders do?
What do you see as the future of complementarianism? If I’m not engaging folks
like Strachan, Piper, Driscoll, and Grudem, whom should I be engaging? Mary Kassian? Tim and Kathy Keller?
And, by way of a
challenge: Since there is diversity within the movement, I think we could all
really benefit from seeing more of it in the form of complementarians calling
out the most extreme expressions of that view. Sometimes I get the idea that
there are complementarians who are concerned by some of what is being taught,
but are afraid to speak up.
I’m sticking to my
position on gender equality in the home and Church—(which doesn’t mean I don’t
think there are differences between men and women, by the way; it just means I
am reluctant to declare those differences universal and prescriptive or
indicative of some sort of God-ordained hierarchy between men and women)—but I
want to “fight fair” if you will, especially with folks I consider to be my
brothers and sisters in Christ.
So who are
complementarians looking to for leadership these days? I know what the internet
says (by way of stats), but I’d like to hear what you say.
Ask Shane Claiborne...(Response)
Today I am thrilled to share Shane Claiborne’s responses to
your questions for “Ask Shane Claiborne.”
Shane Claiborne graduated from Eastern University and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. In 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Eastern. His adventures have taken him from the streets of Calcutta where he worked with Mother Teresa to the wealthy suburbs of Chicago where he served at the influential mega-church Willow Creek. As a peacemaker, his journeys have taken him to some of the most troubled regions of the world – from Rwanda to the West Bank – and he’s been on peace delegations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Shane is the visionary leader of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He is married to Katie Jo, a North Carolina girl who also fell in love with the city (and with Shane). They were wed in St. Edwards church, the formerly abandoned cathedral into which homeless families relocated in 1995, launching the beginning of the Simple Way community and a new phase of faith-based justice making. where everything started back in 1995.
Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. Shane’s books include Jesus for President, Red Letter Revolution, Common Prayer, Follow Me to Freedom, Jesus, Bombs and Ice Cream, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers – and his classic The Irresistible Revolution. He has been featured in a number of films including “Another World Is Possible” and “Ordinary Radicals.” His books are translated into more than a dozen languages. Shane speaks over 100 times a year, nationally and internationally.
His work has appeared in Esquire, SPIN, Christianity Today, and The Wall Street Journal, and he has been on everything from Fox News and Al Jazeera to CNN and NPR. He’s given academic lectures at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Liberty, Duke, and Notre Dame. Shane speaks regularly at denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe.
Shane did a fantastic job responding to your questions, and I enjoyed talking with him about faith, community, marriage, and non-violence. (This interview was a little unusual in that we did it via phone and I transcribed it afterwards.) I hope you enjoy Shane's thoughts as much as I did. You asked some fantastic questions!
***
From Nish: Shane, thanks so much for stopping in here at Rachel's place to answer questions. I love the phrase that you coined, the Ordinary Radical. However, after reading your book(s), it's pretty clear that you live anything but an ordinary life! You've done huge things for the Kingdom in both your own community and around the world. My question is in regards to becoming an ordinary radical in the midst of ordinary, everyday life. I'm a stay-at-home mom and I struggle with fulfilling my duties and calling to care for my children full-time, while being an active Kingdom-builder in my city & community. Do you have any advice or ideas for those of us at home with small children, or working the daily grind 9-5 jobs, or in school full-time to honor our commitments to family, work and school while simultaneously working to benefit our communities? What are some good first-steps toward engaging the needs of our cities, and how do we do that while juggling the everyday?
I love this question. What pops into my head is that Scripture that says, “let us not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds.” And to me, that’s invitation to live with imagination. Non-conformity doesn’t mean uniformity. Choosing non-conformity doesn’t mean we’re all going to end up doing the same thing, that we’ll all find ourselves working in a soup kitchen, or sleeping under a bridge. This is an invitation—a call— to re-imagine who we are and how we are to live in light of Jesus. And I get excited because I see folks who are doing that everywhere, in all kinds of different ways.
You also see in Scripture that when people encounter Jesus, they don’t all walk away to pursue the exact same lifestyle. For instance, Jesus dealt with two tax collectors—Matthew and Zaccheus. Matthew chose to sell everything, but Zaccheus, from what we know, sold half of everything, paid everyone four times what he owed them, and then went on. So they both reimagine their life and their economics, and they both challenge the system, but they did it in different ways. And you’ll notice that Matthew didn’t get all upset and come out and tell Zaccheus how to do it! (laughter)
So what this means is that every one of us is called to love our neighbor—including our global neighbor—as ourselves. I know a suburban mom who, for every biological kid she and her husband send to college, they’ve create a trust fund—kind of like another scholarship—for a kid that’s not biologically theirs, but is financially hard-pressed. I know another mom from California who was in this collective with a group of other parents who said they wanted their kids to learn compassion, so once a week they would gather together in a local park to discuss issues related to social justice and also to serve lunch to whoever might need it. One day, the police came and said that they couldn’t serve food in the park, so then it became a lesson on civil disobedience!
Now, while there are a million different ways to respond to this invitation, we do see compelling patterns in the gospel. So even if we don’t all respond in the exact same way, we can all, for example, see the suffering of this world as something we are called to enter into instead of flee from. We can reject the patterns of, for example, suburban sprawl that are often built around moving away from pain, or away from neighborhoods of high crime, or away from people who don’t look like us, and respond instead to the gospel inertia that invites us to enter into that pain. So this means we also have to challenge some of those patterns of consumerism and insulation, and sprawl, and homogeneity.
There are families in my neighborhood who have relocated here with their kids, and one thing they tell me is that they want their kids to grow up knowing that not everything is okay in this world—that racism exists, that injustice exists, that just because someone smells doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of them, and so on. So a big question we have to tackle is this: What do we shelter our kids from, and what do we allow them to see? And how do we allow that firsthand experience with pain and suffering affect how we spend our money and how we open our homes in hospitality. We all answer those questions a little differently, but there are patterns to be on the lookout for.
From Karen: Having lived in intentional community for a few years, I understand the challenges of sustaining a community. I’ve heard that Simple Way doesn't exist in the same way it did when it started. How many people actually live there in community? What is the community set up like? Does everyone share a home, are there multiple homes in the same neighborhood? Is there a lot of turn over of re-locators or do you have quite a few still living together who have been there for several years? Do you live in the same house with others in this Simple Way community or do you and your wife have your own home?
The forms of our community have certainly changed over the years, but the spirit of community and sharing and doing life together hasn’t, and that’s what we’re committed to. The forms change, but the spirit, I hope, stays the same.
Coming out of college, a half a dozen of my friends joined together and we pooled our money together, rented a house, and started sharing food and time with other people in the neighborhood. Over time, and as we grew, and we realized we weren’t just an intentional community house anymore; we were building a village!
So now we have a little more elbow room, because we’ve been moving into abandoned houses and growing the neighborhood together with indigenous neighbors. Some houses we’ve gotten for a dollar! We’ve been able to grow into abandoned drug houses like the kind my wife and I live in now, for example. All said, we have about a dozen properties in the same neighborhood. So now our goal is really growing the neighborhood. Today we celebrated a neighbor who was able, for the first time, to get his own a home.
[See Shane’s post at Red Letter Christians, “Building a Better World One Home at a Time”]
Obviously, it’s a little harder now to create a shared rhythm in life. (When you’re living on top of each other, it’s almost impossible not to!) Still, we have morning prayers together every morning, we share meals together, we tend shared gardens together, we’ve got kids coming over after school this afternoon to get help with homework, we’ve got food bags we distribute. But what’s cool is that now the food bag projects, for example, are run by neighbors, so there’s a lot less “us” and “them” now, and a lot more just “us.”
But this is not without its challenges. It raises questions about the distinctiveness that holds us together, for example. So there are always new challenges that come with new seasons—just like in our individual lives. It’s like, having a new baby is exciting and wonderful and new, but you’ve also got dirty diapers to deal with too. Teenagers go through that time when they feel like anything’s possible, but it’s also kind of awkward and uncomfortable. In the same way, community is an organic thing that continues to grow and evolve and become something new, and with that evolution comes new challenges.
I think it’s important to not grow too attached to one form of community. At Simple Way, we’re inspired by the monastic tradition—although most monastics would probably flip if they find out we do morning prayers at 8:00 when they’re nearly to midday prayers by then! (laughter) Some communities have more structure; others have less. At the Simple Way, we’re not trying to spread a franchise or start a brand. But we value that same community spirit. I think all of us are made in the image of community. Our God reflects community, so we hunger to love and to be loved, whether the starting point is a half dozen friends in an inner-city rental or a small group in a suburban congregation. It’s not like you either have community or you don’t have community. It’s more amorphous than that, and we’re all on a journey to find it.
Follow-up from Rachel: A lot of people were surprised--hopefully pleasantly-- to hear you got married. Were you surprised by that too? How has marriage changed you?
Well, its funny because after I got married, people kept quoting my book [The Irresistible Revolution] to me, and I thought, well, maybe I need to go back and read what I wrote! (laughter) So I went back and read it and everything I wrote, I still feel so passionately about—for example, that our deepest longing is not for sex but for love and that what we really long for is community. You can live without sex, but you can’t live without love. That’s something I’ve learned from my celibate friends.
I’ve also learned that, in a sense, you’re not ready to married until you’re comfortable being alone. In other words, I don’t need another person to make me whole or to complete me. I think that’s a healthy attitude to have.
On the other hand, I still believe there is tons of work to do in the Church, and the world in general, to support celibate singles. So many champions of our faith have been able to live extraordinary lives, in part because of the freedom that singleness afforded them. No one says: Wow, wouldn’t Mother Teresa’s life have been more complete if she’d found a husband?! So I still believe passionately that we need to celebrate singleness, as well as marriage, and I suppose that, especially now, I don’t see those things as being at all mutually exclusive. In our community, we’re trying to do both—to support singles and married couples, to support gay and lesbian folks too, so that they find a community where they feel loved.
So, to be clear, I never took some kind of vow of celibacy. But I still believe there’s a lot of work to do, especially when the Church tends to place a disproportionate emphasis on marriage and families. I mean, you go to some of these Christian festivals and they have speed dating on the schedule! And I remember a pastor giving a sermon once in which he held up a picture of a mom and dad and two kids and prayed that everyone in his congregation would find that for themselves. That’s hogwash! It’s too much pressure, and it’s skewed theology.
Let’s teach people that whatever allows you to seek the Kingdom of God with your whole heart is what you should pursue. So if you do that better with another person, go for it. If you do that better within a certain structured community, go for it. At the end of the day, the point is to choose Jesus. So we have to do whatever allows us to pursue Jesus with our whole heats.
From Gerald: I struggle with balancing non-violence and self-defense. In theory I would like to think I would respond non-violentingly for myself. The idea however of someone endangering my family really challenges my willingness to turn the other check. Since being married have you noticed a change in your willingness to "protect" your family that perhaps have challenged you our attitudes toward non-violence?
Part of why I think Jesus talks so explicitly about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek is because it isn’t our knee-jerk reaction; it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to us. So I really believe that part of what it means to become more Christlike is to create disciplines and habits that cultivate the fruits of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—and to empty ourselves of other pollutions that keep us from being filled with the spirit.
My wife and I watched Les Mis the other night, and there’s that scene when Jean Valjean steals the candlesticks, and the Bishop covers for him and says they were a gift. Now, that sort of grace is not necessarily our first impulse. It certainly wasn’t my first impulse when someone stole our power drill! (laughter) I didn’t run after the person and say, “Hey, here are the drill bits!”
So, we have to practice non-violence. We have to train ourselves to produce the fruit of the Spirit. And a big part of that is surrounding ourselves with others who share those values. I like to say that it’s important to surround yourself with people who look like the kind of person you want to be. They rub off on you. Community can create a sort of compelling, positive peer pressure—an inertia toward non-violence—that you might not get on your own.
And my wife is a big part of that. Obviously, I would not have married someone who didn’t share my priorities as they relate to non-violence. And if anything, Katie has reinforced my convictions. In a lot of ways, she’s more non-violent than I am!
Now, non-violence doesn’t mean getting stepped-on. The call to non-violence is to disarm violence. A part of the way we do that is suffering with those who suffer. I’ve learned a ton of lessons about that by living in a neighborhood that has all kinds of reasons to hope, but also really struggles with an epidemic of violence, averaging about one homicide a day. That violence is something that we actively combat. We do it on our block, but we also believe in calling out the government. Violence anywhere is a threat to the love of Jesus that we see on the cross. So we try to teach our kids that, and we try to teach our presidents that.
From Kelsey: I hear often of non-violence & would consider myself a pacifist However, I have noticed that many of the voices of pacifism are men with unexamined privilege and and thereby do not address the street harassment and threat & fear of rape that women face frequently. I've heard about loving people through beatings and muggings - but there is something so dignity shredding about sexual violence, that the thought of it makes me want to forget I ever read the sermon on the mount. Do you have any women pacifists in your life who have touched on this issue at all?
We absolutely do have women in our community committed to the principles of non-violence. But I do want to be careful of using binary language here—like pacifist or non-pacifist. Polarities and labels can be really unhelpful in this conversation because the world is just so much…squirmier…than our categories.
What I do see is Jesus as a living, breathing, existential incarnation of love that challenges so many of our categories and camps. And when it comes to the patterns I see in the Kingdom of God, which are perhaps best expressed in Mary’s Magnificat—the mighty are cast from their thrones, the lowly are lifted, the hungry are filled with good things, the rich are sent away empty—what seems really clear to me is that God is deeply and profoundly protective of the vulnerable and marginalized. Jesus is very critical of those who step-on and exploit. In fact, Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for the religious elite and self-righteous, who, in many ways, made their religion violent in that they used it to exclude and oppress and marginalize.
Joan Chittister—I love her!—likes to say is that Jesus consistently challenges the chosen and embraces the excluded. So what does that mean for us? It means that we should be near to those who are hurting. We should do everything in our power to lay down our life if we must to get in the way, non-violently, of that which might hurt another person.
Now, I absolutely do not think that Jesus is pointing to a sort of pitiful, masochistic toleration of abuse, or suggesting that a woman caught in abuse or violence should simply love her abuser or allow such violence to continue. Not at all.
What I try to point to in Jesus For President, and also in Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream is what Walter Wink and others call the “third way,” a way that exposes evil without mirroring it. So a big part of responding to injustice is exposing evil and making people uncomfortable by it. You don’t have to be violent to expose evil; sometimes you just have to get out and make some noise. And it’s important that we do this in community. When a community responds to injustice together, there are a lot more options for the marginalized and abused. So, if we’re doing it right, a person caught in abuse will know that they are not alone. That’s a big part of the good news: that you’re not alone in those situations.
Christians of all people should be the most suspicious of violence. We should be the whistleblowers against violence, not the drum-beaters for it! We should be the last people calling for the death penalty because we have a God who died on a cross to save us from death! So one thing we have to be careful of is finding the hardest cases for non-violence and then using them to justify violence across the board. We have an entire culture that is infected with violence—we’re talking 10,000 homicides a day in America, $20,000 a second spent on war. So maybe not all of us come out saying we’re pacifists; maybe some of us simply make more deliberate moves toward non-violence. (For example, we have a great partnership with Hunters Against Gun Violence. These are folks who say, “we want to hunt, but we don’t want guns that can shoot a hundred rounds a minute in the streets.”)
So let’s be the champions of non-violence even when we find it difficult to know exactly what we would do in specific situations.
From Registered Runaway: Shane what is your position on same sex relationships? I remember a clip I saw of you and Boyd and Colson discussing this and sounded like you supported celibacy for gay folks. Am I correct? Also, what are your thoughts on the state of the culture war raging over gay rights? How do we redeem it? Where do you see it headed?
Frist of all, I think we have to begin by acknowledging that part of the reason this is a difficult topic, and part of the reason we have disagreement on it, is because Jesus never really talks about it directly. There are other things that are made much clearer in Scripture and in the teachings of Jesus, so we all have to start with a posture of humility, and a posture of listening, and maybe even a commitment to disagree well. That’s what we’ve had to do within our community.
Now, having said that, there are certain things that we would say, the first being that God is love. So when people are holding signs that say, “God Hates Fags,” that doesn’t look like the God we see in Jesus. So we have a duty in that regard to move the world closer to love and closer to Jesus.
Second, there is this tendency we have to think that it is our job to point out what we believe other people are doing wrong….on whatever issue it may be. Billy Graham has a great line on this. He said, “It’s God’s job to judge, the Spirit’s job to convict, and our job to love. And we dare not mix those up.” I think that’s a good posture to have—to trust that God is working in people’s lives and to keep in mind that people are known by their fruit. So in any relationship, I think the question is, “Does this have good fruit? Do I see the Spirit in this friendship or in this community?”
But in the end, when the studies (like the recent Barana research) show that the #1 answer from young non-Christians about their impressions of Christianity is that they think Christians are anti-gay (followed by judgmental and hypocritical), we’ve gone terribly, terribly wrong. It must break God’s heart that this is what we have become known for. Jesus said they will know we are Christians by our love. So my admonition on this is that we become known for our love again. And that’s not limited to this issue, but applies in a lot of areas—whether it’s in the Occupy movement, or anti-war movement or picketers outside an abortion clinic. They’re not going to know we are Christians by our bumper stickers or our protest signs, but by our love.
And finally, I think it’s important that this is not something we discuss simply in ideologies or rhetoric, talking at people and around people, but rather that we begin talking with people. That’s when the conversation radically shifted for me. I had plenty of apologetics on what I thought Scripture said about homosexuality, but then I met a kid who became a close friend of mine and he’s gay, and he told me he wanted to kill himself because he thought he was a mistake, that God had made a mistake. If people like him can’t find a home in the church, and if they can’t find a friend to confide in without that friend rattling off a list of what they should or shouldn’t do, I think we need to reexamine what our faith is and ask if it’s really embodying good news for these folks too.
From DeeBrew: Dear Shane, I got to see you in person on your "Jesus for President" tour stop in Dallas. My son, then 16, begged me to take him to see you. Not really knowing who you were, I agreed to make the drive from Tulsa. We pulled into the parking lot of the church where it was held just in time to witness several guys dressed in what looked to be home-made clothing, jumping on top of an old bus, I glanced over at my son wondering what exactly he had gotten us into. (It turns out this was helping the used vegetable oil that the bus burned for fuel!) But that night changed my life. It changed my son's life. You spoke about things that our family had been discussing for several years but had never been able to verbalize within our church or to our families. You gave us the words.
My question is - what should I do now? We have come full circle in our search for what it means to follow Jesus. I teach in a Christian high school. The Bible teacher was concerned when I gave the Seniors "Irresistible Revolution" for graduation presents. My children graduated from this school. I have known these people for years but now am completely at odds with how they see the world. Do you think that being an "ordinary radical" is to stay in this situation and try making small strides in opening students' eyes about issues such as -why do they just accept that Christians should be for war, etc? Or am I contributing to the problem by helping support this institution - one that has some amazing people but are dedicated to teaching students more about how evolution is wrong than in following the call of Jesus to love your enemies. I desire to use my life to bring others to the understanding that following Christ is radical. I know others are in the same boat as I am, some in churches, jobs, etc who see the great need for change, and are unsure as to how to proceed. Do we change everything or do we work for little victories where we are already and hope for long term change. Or are we just contributing to the problem, maintaining the status quo. As someone in her 50s, I realize just how short life really is. With your broader view of where America is going - Christianity and the Church in particular - I would like to know where you think we as Christians should be dedicating our time and resources most.
Remember that movie, “What About Bob?” and the line about “baby steps to the bus…”? I think maybe there’s something to that! (laughter)
I do think it’s important to keep in mind that conversion is not just about a moment; it’s about a movement, about continually changing into the people that God has made us to be. So we need to have the same sort of patience with one another that God has with us as we move through that process. Sometimes, when I speak at a mega-church or something, someone will ask, “How do you come here, after being in Iraq or Calcutta? How do you speak into a culture like this with love?” And it’s because I see myself in the mirror! We’re all in process and that should give us great patience and peace with one another.
….That and the fact that the Bible is full of really messed-up people! Saul of Tarsus was a terrorist, for example. David was a womanizer who pretty much broke every command there was in two chapters of the Bible. But that’s part of the story—that God uses not only our gifts, but also our brokenness and our history. Desmond Tutu says that the love of God is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free. What a beautiful reminder that we should should never write anyone off.
A guy came up to me when I was speaking in Texas the other day and said, “I’m a redneck, and I mean a textbook redneck—NRA card-carrying, gun-toting, pickup truck-driving redneck. But I’ve been reading your stuff, and it’s really messed me up. It’s got me reading the Bible and rethinking some things.” So you never know how your life might impact people.
And when you look at Jesus’ ragamuffin group that included a tax collector and zealot, you can’t help but approach this whole thing with a little more humility.
But still, I think it’s important not to compromise on the cost of following Jesus. I don’t want to get so wishy-washy that I gloss over that and say you can just do anything with your life. One of my mentors says that a Christian can do any job as long as they’re willing to get fired at any point.” So if you’re a soldier, or if you’re working for a company that has a history of exploiting workers, well there may come a point when you might lose your job.
At the end of the day, we need the prophetic word both inside and outside. We need the voices in the wilderness, like John the Baptist, but we also need the Daniels. Daniel worked inside the king’s court, but he never compromised; even though he was in the king’s court, he wasn’t drinking the king’s Kool-Aid. This is why it’s really good to have a group that keeps us accountable, a community that helps us grow. And sometimes, if you’re the only one growing, it may be time to move on.
***
Be sure to check out the rest of our "Ask A..." series here.
February 26, 2013
An important post from Mary DeMuth: “The Sexy Wife I Can’t Be”
If you have a moment today, please stop by A Deeper Church
and read Mary DeMuth’s post today entitled “The Sexy Wife I Can’t Be.”
An excerpt:
“I walk with a giant limp in the sexy wife arena. I
still feel outright rage when I read that for the sake of my husband, I’m
supposed to be adventurous and wild, that to be this way represents true
spousal godliness. Because honestly? Those words just make me feel less than.
Those are a set of guidelines I’ll probably never meet….
It’s okay to struggle in this area. It’s normal. I give you
permission to say it’s frightening and bewildering. I pray you’ll find the
words to communicate with your spouse how you feel, how this is hard for you. I
hope for an understanding spouse who loves you utterly for who you are, not how
you perform. I want to tell you that it does get better, but that you won’t
improve by simply trying to on sexy clothes or offering your body as a fruit
plate. True sexual liberation comes from the inside out, where Jesus walks into
those terrible memories and mourns alongside you...."
February 25, 2013
Introduction to Wesley Hill’s “Washed and Waiting”
As we continue our yearlong series on Sexuality and The
Church, we will be working our way through Wesley Hill’s short book, Washed and
Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality, beginning
today.
Wesley’s book is meant to both
complement and contrast Justin Lee’s book, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel From the
Gays-vs-Christians Debate, which served as a starting point for our discussion.
Both Justin and Wesley are gay,
but whereas Justin concluded that a relationship with another man could be
blessed by God, Wesley has chosen celibacy. I picked these two books
because I think Justin and Wesley represent the very best in civil, gracious,
and loving disagreement on this issue…which for them is not a mere issue, but a
deeply personal journey with deeply personal implications.
Today
we will discuss the introduction and prologue to Washed and Waiting, which introduces
us to Wesley and his story.
Wesley
begins his story like this:
“By
the time I started high school, two things had become clear to me. One was that
I was a Christian. My parents had raised me to be a believer in Jesus, and as I
moved toward independence from my family, I knew that I wanted to remain
one—that I wanted to trust, love, and obey Christ, who had been crucified and
raised from the dead ‘for us and for our salvation,’ as the creed puts it. The
second thing was that I was gay. For as long as I could remember, I had been
drawn, even as a child, to other males in some vaguely confusing way, and after
puberty, I had come to realize that I had a steady, strong, unremitting,
exclusive sexual attraction to persons of the same sex.” (p. 13)
“Since
that time of self-discovery,” he says, “I have struggled week in and week out
to know how to live faithfully as a Christian who experiences same-sex
attraction.”
In
this sense, Wesley’s story is very much like Justin’s. Both grew up in
Christian homes. Both are committed followers of Jesus. Both are gay. But whereas Justin was eventually able to
reconcile his sexuality with his faith and with Scripture in such a way that
has left open the possibility for a relationship with a man in his future,
Wesley says that “my own story, by contrast, is a story of feeling spiritually
hindered rather than helped by my homosexuality. Another way to say it would be
to observe that my story testifies to the truth of the position the Christian
church has held with almost total unanimity throughout the centuries—namely,
that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity, that
it is, on the contrary, a tragic sign of human nature and relationships being
fractured by sin, and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s
express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ.” (p.
15)
Still,
in spite of his conviction that homosexual practice is against God’s will,
Wesley says he has not been able to change his orientation.
“Like Paul,” he
says, “I have prayed fervently, desperately, tearfully on multiple occasions
for God to take away this ‘thorn in my flesh,” but a change in orientation,
Wesley says, has not been a part of his experience “nor has it been the
experience of many gay and lesbian Christians who are silently struggling to remain
faithful as they worship and serve with us, day after day, in the fellowship of
the church.” (p. 15)
And
so his book is intended primarily for Christians who are “already convinced
that their discipleship to Jesus necessarily commits them to the demanding,
costly obedience of choosing not to nurture their homosexual desires,” but also
to the Church at large as it seeks to make a place for those Christians.
In the
introduction, Wesley acknowledges that, as a young adult (in his late twenties
upon the publication of his book), he is still growing in his understanding of
Christian discipleship and human sexuality and says, “there are still avenues
of possible healing that I want to explore,” that he is very much “in process”
when it comes to the journey of understanding how his faith and sexuality
relate to one another. “It is my prayer that God may use the reflections in
this book to help others live faithfully before him until the time when he
makes all things new,” he writes. “Until then we wait in hope (Romans 8:25),
washed clean by his Son and Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:11).
The
prologue invites us further into Wesley’s personal story. As with Torn, this
portion of the book is especially important to read because it challenges a lot
of assumptions Christians have about homosexuality---that it always involves a
deliberate “choice,” that it cannot manifest itself in Christian homes and
communities, that it is the result of sexual abuse or bad parenting, etc.
Like
Justin, Wesley was a highly invested in his faith, even at an early age. In
high school he was reading C.S. Lewis, Frederick Buechner, J.I. Packer, Henri
Nouwen, and John Piper.
“Birdlike,
I was testing my wings, coming of age. But at the same time that I was learning
to engage with God as a hungry , growing young Christian, the realization
dawned on me like a dead weight sinking in my stomach that no amount of
spiritual growth seemed to have any effect on my sexual preference…There was
nothing, it felt, chosen or intentional about my being gay. It seemed more like
noticing the blueness of my eyes than deciding I would take up skiing. There
was never an option –‘Do you want to be gay?’ ‘Yes, I do, please.’ It was a
gradual coming to terms, not a conscious resolution.” (p. 29)
Wesley
kept his same-sex attraction a secret—from his parents, from his friends, from
his pastors. He says his ears would perk up when he heard James Dobson talking
about homosexuality on the radio, but the only response from famous Christian leaders
centered around reparative therapy, which required “correcting” mistakes made
by bad parenting or from sexual abuse in the past. But, like Justin, Wesley had
a good relationship with his parents and did not have a history with abuse.
When
Wesley went to Wheaton College, his horizons expanded and he grew even more
interested in nurturing his faith and practicing spiritual disciplines. During
this time, Wesley realized that simply ignoring his sexual orientation would
not lead to redemption, so he worked up the courage to talk with a Wheaton
professor about his same-sex attraction.
One
thing I found really encouraging about Wesley’s story is that most of the
pastors and professors in his life appear to have responded to his coming out
with grace and kindness rather than condemnation. Each encouraged him to pursue
some kind of “healing”—the wisdom of which can be debated—but they did so
without legalism, fear, or anger, and with what appears to be genuine love for
Wesley. I’m hoping this indicates that strides have been made within the
Christian community regarding how to respond when a friend or loved one comes
out. (Wesley does not write about coming
out to his parents, so I’m not sure how that conversation went.)
Wesley
also opened up to a pastor who Wesley says “spent many hours trying to convince
me that…my homosexual temptations weren’t any more (or less) tragic than
temptations to greed, pride, or anger that Christians face on a daily basis.”
(p. 44) The pastor pointed Wesley to a statement from All Souls Church in London,
which reads:
We
also wish warmly to affirm those sisters and brothers, already in membership
with orthodox churches, who—while experiencing same-sex desires and
feelings—nevertheless battle with the rest of us, in repentance and faith, for
a lifestyle that affirms marriage [between a man and woman] and celibacy as the
two given norms for sexual expression. There is room for every kind of
background and past sinful experience among members of Christ’s flock as we
learn the way of repentance and renewed lives, for Such were some of you. But
you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:11). This is
true inclusivity.”
The
pastor encouraged Justin to be a part of a community like that, where “it’s
about the church being the church, as we all struggle toward wholeness.”
Wesley’s
pastor also encouraged him not to avoid building friendships out of fear of
being attracted to his male friends. This proved to be important, life-giving
advice, as Wesley began growing in his friendships, even sharing his
secret…which was becoming less of a secret…with some of his closest friends.
Again,
the response Wesley received was warm and caring—which I realize is not the
case for every LGBT Christian who shares their story with their church. But
because of this, Wesley strongly encourages other gay Christians to be honest
about their experience and to find older, wiser Christians who can mentor them
as they work through questions related to their sexuality.
“I
began to learn to wrestle with homosexuality in community,” he writes, “over
many late-night cups of coffee and tear-soaked, face-on-the-floor times of
prayer with members of my church.” (p. 48).
I am
so glad that Wesley found the Church to be a safe place to do this.
Wesley
concludes his introduction with this: “When God acts climactically to reclaim
the world and raise our dead bodies from the grave, there will be no more
homosexuality. But until then, we hope for what we do not see. Washed and
waiting. That is my life—my identity as one who is forgiven and spiritually
cleansed and my struggle as one who perseveres with a frustrating thorn in the
flesh, looking forward to what God has promised to do.” (p. 50)
Reading
Wesley’s story, I am both grateful by his honesty and impressed by his strong
commitment to his faith. You can tell that this a guy who thinks deeply about
what it means to be a Christian and cares profoundly about living a life that
glorifies God. I mean, who reads Frederick Buechner in ninth grade?!
As I
mentioned before, I am also struck by the loving responses of Wesley’s pastors and
mentors. That speaks well of their character, well even of the Wheaton
community, and well of some of the progress that’s being made within the
evangelical church. (I’d be interested to hear from other LGBT folks who may
have had similar…or perhaps radically different…experiences at Wheaton.)
But
finally, I confess I felt a little sad reading about Wesley’s deep desire for
“healing.” That sort of language conveys the idea that there is something
broken about him, something wrong, something to be fixed. And I guess I’m not
sure that I see homosexuality that way anymore. I was a little surprised, in
fact, by how often I winced at that sort of language. I can’t imagine what it
would be like to believe that something like my sexual orientation - something so intrinsic, so central to my being - was somehow corrupted and yet utterly beyond my ability to change.
Next week, we will examine Part 1 of Washed and Waiting, in which Wesley explains why his convictions related to Scripture and the example of Christ have led him to pursue celibacy within the Christian community.
Questionsfor Discussion
What
struck you about Wesley’s story? What did you find encouraging or discouraging?
Does
your faith community have a similar statement regarding sexuality as All Souls
Church? What do you think about that position?
Do
you react to language about brokenness and healing in the context of homosexuality
positively or negatively, and why do you think that is?
As
always, please keep the conversation civil. I’ll delete comments that turn to
personal attacks. Thanks for your input!
February 24, 2013
Sunday Superlatives 2/24/13
Prayer for the Day: “O God, whose glory it is always to have
mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them
again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the
unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the
Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Book of
Common Prayer)
Favorite New Photo Blog:
You Are My Wild - a weekly portrait project that brings together 14
photographers to document how they see their children.
Most Powerful:
Abby Norman at Love Is What You Do with “Why I Stopped Telling”
“Somewhere along the way I stopped telling those stories, the
ones with the perfect punch line, the ones that made everyone gasp, the ones
that people responded to by telling me how good I was. Somewhere along the way
it occurred to me that those stories weren’t just entertaining, they were
damaging. The way I spun those too true tales was disadvantaging my already
disadvantaged students. The ones I was working so hard for. So I stopped
telling them, even if they were true…”
Most Relatable:
Addie Zierman with “An Open Letter to the Church: How to Love the Cynics” and
“Making Your Faith Your Own”
“We
need you to sit with us in the mad
season for as long as
it takes. We need to hear your stories – the messy ones, the
hard parts. We need you to tell us the pain of it without skipping ahead to the
happy ending. Maybe we can face our darkness
if you are honest about yours."
“I didn’t think I would ever start really believing again. I thought that it
would always feel hard and a little bit forced. I felt like it would always
wear me out, this act of moving forward in imperfect, resigned faith. But
sometimes all it takes is a decision: I want to get well. Sometimes
all it takes is one tentative arm, reaching to touch the edge of the holy.”
Most Informative:
Dennis Venema at Biologos with “Evolution Basics: Evolution
as a Scientific Theory”
“In common English usage, “theory” means something like
“guess” or “hunch”. It means something speculative, uncertain. In science,
however, the meaning is almost exactly the opposite. In science, a theory is an
idea that has stood the test of time. This difference between the common usage
and the scientific usage of the word is a frequent source of confusion for
nonscientists. In science, a theory is a
well-tested idea – an explanatory framework that makes sense of the current
facts available, and continues to make accurate predictions about the natural
world.”
Most Encouraging:
Antonia Terrazas with “This Online Thing [Or Why I’m Still Here, With You]"
“Because like I said, these things matter, and with the
humility, tenderness, care, and whole-hearted truth-seeking I have witnessed in
my blogroll, I think these things can matter and manifest in a holy and faithful way, to lead us to the good work that needs to be
done. On- and
offline.”
Most Beautiful:
Smithsonian Magazine with “An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Creation Myths”
Most Thoughtful:
Amy Lepine Peterson with “The F-Word: Whey Feminism is Not the Enemy”
“I’m a
Christian. And until the day when the world automatically understands
that to mean that I believe in the full humanity and personhood of both men and
women, you can also call me a feminist.”
Most Eye-Opening:
Sarah Moon with “On Being a Female Body at a Christian
College”
“It wasn't patriarchy holding me back, according to
this man. It was my body. This is why I could not be a pastor, or a spiritual
leader in my family. This is why I could not speak my mind too loudly or be too
bold. Because I had a vagina, and vaginas are not for giving. But I fell for it for
years and years. I saw myself as stuck in this body with its sinful breasts and
its useless vagina. I saw my body as a prison. And in seeing my body as a prison, I
blamed myself.”
Most Likely to Get You In the Mood for the Oscars:
“All the Best Picture Award Winners in
4 Minutes”
Most Likely to Make You Salivate:
Buzzfeed with “The 30 Best Places to Be if You Love Books”
Most Inspiring (nominated by Jamie Bagley)
Wes Foster with “My Dream for My Daughter”
“As Maya reconciles her own identity, maybe she will begin to
see the unique ways she was crafted in the image of God to display his glory.
And as she journeys with Jesus to a place of wholeness, maybe she will begin to
recognize and call out that image in others. Maybe she can become a prophetic
agent of reconciliation. Our God is in the business of restoring all things,
among every nation, tribe, people, and language. Where might he be calling her
to bring restoration, in a way that she alone is uniquely designed to do?”
Best Interview:
David Crumm at Read the Spirit interviews NT Wright
“In your country, for example,
there seem to be Christian political voices saying that you shouldn’t have a
national healthcare system. To us, in Britain, this is virtually unthinkable.
Every other developed country from Norway to New Zealand has healthcare for all
of its citizens. We don’t understand all of this opposition to it over here in
the U.S. And, we should remember: In the ancient world, there wasn’t any
healthcare system. It was the Christians, very early on, who introduced the
idea that we should care for people beyond the circle of our own kin.
Christians taught that we should care for the poor and disadvantaged.
Christians eventually organized hospitals. To hear people standing up in your
political debate and saying—“If you are followers of Jesus, you must reject
universal healthcare coverage!”—and that’s unthinkable to us. Those of us who
are Christians in other parts of the world are saying: We can’t understand this
political language. It’s not our value in our countries. It’s not even in
keeping with traditional Christian teaching on caring for others. We can’t
understand what we are hearing from some of your politicians on this point.
Yet, over here, some Christians are saying that it’s part of the list of boxes
we all should check off to keep in line.”
Best Analysis:
Kristen Rosser with “Boys Playing with Dolls? Oh no!”
“CMBW believes that the Sesame Street episode
was silly. But I think what's silly is believing that the foundations of
society are going to crumble if we tell a little boy it's ok to put his
baby-doll daughter to bed. “
Best
Conversation-Starter:
David Henson with “DJesus Uncrossed: Tarantino, Driscoll and the Violent
Remaking of Jesus in America”
“In the end,
whatever the fallout from the skit, American Christianity didn’t need Tarantino
or SNL or anyone in Hollywood to think up something as absurd and as base and
as hysterically inaccurate as DJesus Uncrossed. We’ve already done that for
ourselves. Say what you will about how offensive SNL’s sketch was. Our popular
theology is more so. Because we should know better."
Best Idea:
College Humor with “8 New and Necessary Punctuation Marks”
Best Challenge (nominated by Kelley Nikondeha):
D.L. Mayfield with “Because of Christ, It Gets Better”
“Another reason the church has been slow to
respond to the issue might stem from who we perceive to be the objects of
bullying. While Christians might think themselves the persecuted minority in
America, the truth is that most of the more visible forms of childhood bullying
center around not differences in religion, but differences in social
acceptability: being overweight, ugly, socially awkward, or not conforming to
strict gender norms.”
Best Reminder:
Peter Enns with “The Most Frightening Verse in the Bible (At
Least for Me)”
“The closest we ever get to seeing GodFavorite
is when we love one another, for that is when God lives in us.”
Tweets….
@haleykristine
You guys. It's all going to be okay. Because
Jesus. And also I made@smittenkitchen's
crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies.
@renovatuspastor
There is nothing more antithetical to the
Christian life than being the sort of person who goes around hoping others get
what they deserve.
@stephaniedrury
My new move in Draw Something is to draw a
crying uterus before scrapping it and doing a ladybug or an airport. Throws
them off.
@UnvirtuousAbbey
And they'll know we are Jedi by the force, by
the force, yes they'll know we are Jedi by the force. #JediHymns
@I_confirm
Seek ye first the droids on Tatooine. #jedihymns
@Nick_Payne
Lord the lightsaber of your love is shining,
in the midst of the dark side shining #jedihymns
@lukehyder
Ani walks with me Ani talks with me Ani tells
me I'm 3-P-O#JediHymns
@adamdmoore
Tomorrow morning you must go to the grocery
store. Buy all the bananas. Do NOT eat them. Can't explain all the reasons
here.#rickwarrentips
@lukeharms Never get involved in a land war in Asia. Can't explain all the
reasons here. #rickwarrentips
@kristenhowerton RT @JohnPiper: "Deep calls to deep is true of
her necklines and his knowing." <-- Can't explain all the reasons here. #rickwarrentips
@RtRDH
#RickWarrenTips + #JediHymns trending.
Can't explain all the reasons here.
Most Popular Post:
Swords into plowshares and hate mail into origami
Check it out. Since writing the post, I made a flower out of an especially mean
one-star Amazon review!
Most Popular Comment:
In response to “Torn: Chapters 14-15 & Conclusion: The Way Forward,” Aric
Clark wrote:
I've seen the Romans 14 path advocated in a few places,
including my own denomination and it has some merits, but I put forward a
couple cautions:
#1 - Genuine freedom of conscience has to be already permitted
for this to work. You can't say "let's stop pushing our opinions on each
other" in a situation where people aren't free to follow their conscience.
So, for example, in my denomination (PCUSA) we need to allow full ordination
and marriage and so forth for those congregations and ministers that are so
led, while not enforcing it for those congregations and ministers that do not
wish to participate.
#2 - When
Jesus says "don't place a stumbling block" he is referring
specifically to vulnerable parties (and Paul seems to be riffing on this idea).
It is more important that we protect victims of discrimination then that we not
offend the sensibilities of the privileged. We invert Jesus' message and the
whole direction of the Kingdom if we allow those with power and authority to
use the language of the oppressed to defend the status quo. I respect the
vulnerability of an individual Christian coming to terms with theology and
morality that is foreign to them. I do not think the heirarchy of our churches
needs protection from prophetic cries for justice.
***
So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happeningon your blog?
Rachel Held Evans's Blog
- Rachel Held Evans's profile
- 1710 followers
