Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 89

Foundations of Mercy & Mission #3: The Politics of Sex

Ps. 19:1-14, Rev. 21:1-8, John 4:5-26

Introduction

One periodic objection leveled at Christians when it comes to the topics of sex and marriage is that we are unnecessarily politicizing private preferences. The implication is that the Christian impulse to care about the way our culture speaks about and enacts our sexuality is like turning food or clothing or sports preferences into deep moral and political issues. And sometimes well-meaning Christians swallow some of these assumptions and agree to a truce that is deeply at odds with the way God created the world. So the first argument is over how important being created male and female is, how important human sexuality is, and how important marriage is to human flourishing and public life. We are sometimes told that Jesus was far more interested in matters of justice, or systems of political and economic oppression, than He was about sexual ethics and marriage. But not only is that a significant misreading of the gospels, it is a significant misunderstanding about the public nature of sexuality and marriage. To be involved in the work of Christian mercy and mission, we must have a biblical understanding of God’s creation and salvation here.

Sex & the Pursuit of Happiness

Even though Christians generally know sexual intimacy is reserved by God for marriage, it is not always clear why that is the case. Perhaps especially in America where the “pursuit of happiness” is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, it’s difficult to know what to say to someone who says their “immoral” relationship makes them happy. If someone’s sexual relationship is their own private business, what kind of perverse do you have to be to care? In the Old Testament, a man who slept with a woman prior to marriage was fined fifty shekels of silver (Dt. 22:29). The Bible insists that sexual sin is a form of theft. In other words, we might ask what price tag would you put on loyal, chaste, and heartfelt love? Moderns are scandalized by the thought of putting a price on virginity. But in the place of this outrage, they de facto insist that a woman’s virginity is worthless. And yet, no one can quite figure out why it’s still such a scandal to participate in pornography and prostitution. Related to all of this is the fact that sexual relationships never remain completely private. A woman who has been mistreated sexually is far more likely to misuse drugs and alcohol. Despite the ugly promises of birth control, children are still born. And sometimes diseases are spread. These are all matters of public concern. On the flip side, men who are not held accountable for their sexual actions are being trained to be impulsive and irresponsible. Infidelity goes hand in hand with joblessness, crime, and lack of productivity. We should also note that an institutionalized form of so-called “marriage” between members of the same sex where childlessness is assumed and infidelity is normal is also a matter of public concern. On the positive side, God created families to be powerhouses of productivity and mercy (Gen. 1-2, Prov. 31, 1 Tim. 5). Sexual infidelity, in addition to all of the emotional scarring, is a supreme waste of time and resources. Human beings are the most precious resource in the universe because they alone are made in God’s image.

The Samaritan Woman

When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, there were any number of buzzworthy dynamics potentially at work: racial/ethnic (he was a Jew, she was a Samaritan), religious (deep theological divisions between Jews & Samaritans), political (both are people out of power, perhaps angling for power), gender (not common for a man to casually chat with a woman), even sexual (would the woman or others, mistake Jesus’ intentions?) (Jn. 4:9, 27). But what Jesus chooses to address with the woman is theological (Jn. 4:10-15) then without skipping a beat, sexual (Jn. 4:16-18), and finally liturgical (Jn. 4:19-26). For Jesus, the fact that this woman has had five husbands, and is now living with a man who is not her husband is not unrelated to the “living water” that he is able to give her. And while some believe the woman is trying to change the subject, Jesus does not seem to think that right worship is unrelated either. In other words, if we are to follow our Savior’s lead, and we claim to care about the living water that Jesus gives, and we claim to care about worship in Spirit and in truth, then we must also care about who someone is sleeping with. It seems likely that this woman has some standing in the Samaritan town since her testimony convinces so many to believe in Jesus (Jn. 4:39). At the same time, having been with six men is clearly not an indication of happiness. Clearly, she is a woman in search of happiness. She is thirsty.

Our Redeemer

Psalm 19 says that the heavens declare the glory of God, and they speak in every language known to man (Ps. 19:1-3). They are like a great tent that God has set up for the sun, which travels throughout the earth announcing the glory of God in every tongue (Ps. 19:4). This glory goes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man, running his course (Ps. 19:5-6). And in the next breath, David begins extolling the glory of God’s law (Ps. 19:7-11). In other words, whether or not every tribe of men has known exactly what the sun in the sky meant, it actually proclaims God’s word, His character: it is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. In other words, marriage between one man and one woman is impressed indelibly on nature itself. When Christians stand for marriage, we are not standing for a quaint old-fashioned value like horse drawn carriages or bonnets. We are standing for something as old and as plain as the sun in the sky. But someone will say that I’m making too much of a metaphor in poem. But having extolled the goodness of God’s law, David does what we all must do and prays that God would keep him from all sin, small and great (Ps. 19:12-13). And yet even then, he closes in great humility pleading with God to make him acceptable in His sight because God is our Redeemer. That word for “redeemer” is the same word often translated “kinsman-redeemer,” like Boaz who married Ruth to save her from poverty and barrenness (Ruth 4). A kinsman-redeemer is a husband, a bridegroom who comes for a woman in desperate need, like Jesus came for the Samaritan woman, and came for the woman caught in adultery, and came for all of us.

Conclusions

If the Christian Church has often failed to remain steadfast about the goodness and glory of marriage, perhaps just as often we have failed to remain steadfast about the goodness and glory of the Great Marriage, Christ’s marriage to His Church. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her, that he might make her holy and clean, that He might present her to himself without spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Eph. 5:25-26). In Jesus Christ, every spot, every wrinkle, every blemish is paid for out of the infinite treasury of God’s love poured out in the precious blood of Jesus. How much is loyal, chaste love worth? It was worth the death of God’s Son, that all things might be made new (Rev. 21:1-7). And this glory is a city, a public place descending out of heaven.

Foundations of Mercy & Mission #2: Time & Resources

Dt. 5:12-15, Gal. 2:16-20, Mt. 6:19-34

Introduction

The mission of Jesus is to baptize the nations and teach them everything He commanded. This is how you distinguish between God providing in what seems like scarcity and folly. If God commands it, then He promises to provide for it. Justification is God’s gracious gift of setting up an account in our name that draws off of His infinite resources, and sanctification is the process by which we learn to draw off of that abundance for all of our needs. Frequently when Christians are foolish, flake out, or burn out, it is because they’ve been going to God’s bank and trying to draw off of different accounts, doing what other people thought they should do, doing what seemed like a good idea, rather than simply doing what Jesus said to do. We draw off of God’s abundance when we trust and obey Him, and we see this principle in the biblical teaching on keeping Sabbath and tithing.

Keeping Sabbath for the Mission

The Christian mission cannot be carried out well apart from an understanding of Christian Sabbath. This is because keeping Sabbath rests upon the foundation of God’s abundance. First, the Old Testament Sabbath was predicated on God’s abundance in the creation of the world (Ex. 20:8-11) as well as God’s abundance in salvation in the Exodus (Dt. 5:12-15). This weekly day of rest was also to include a “holy convocation,” a gathering together of God’s people (Lev. 23:3). This leads to the second point which is the pattern of Christians gathering together on the Lord’s Day in commemoration of the new creation in God’s saving action in Jesus (Lk. 24:1, Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2, Rev. 1:10). Whereas the Old Covenant saints looked forward to resting at the end of the week, we rest at the beginning of our week because the new creation has begun in Jesus. The fourth commandment fundamentally commands us to “remember” what God has done, and in the New Covenant, that is what the Scripture read and preached and the Lord’s Supper are – they are the remembrance, the memorial of Christ’s new creation and salvation abundance. Third, we cannot be a church that rightly carries out the mission of Jesus, if we are not a church that keeps Sabbath. This is because when God calls us to set this time apart, He is giving us time to share. In our flesh, we think we cannot afford to lose this time. In our flesh, it is sometimes hard to see how struggling to get our young children through a worship service matters. But this is the point of the exercise: God is teaching us not to rely on ourselves, on our own wisdom, on our own ordering of our time. He’s teaching us to rely on Him, to remember Him, and His abundance to give us all we need. Keeping Sabbath means acknowledging that all of our time is His and resting in the abundance of God in Jesus Christ rather than living from one frantic, distracted day to the next. And this peace is what your family, your neighbors, and our hurting world around us needs (Mt. 11:28).

Giving to the Mission

Tithing is really the same Sabbath principle applied to money and resources. A tithe is an offering of ten percent, a tenth of a person’s increase. The first tithe in Scripture is Abram’s tithe to Melchizedek following the battle of the nine kings (Gen. 14). Abram’s tithe on the plunder from the battle was his testimony that the victory was from the Lord. The Lord seems to be pleased with this when He promises Abram a great reward in the very next scene (Gen. 15:1). Jacob vows a tithe of all the Lord gives him when renewing covenant on his way out of the land (Gen. 28:18-22). Israel demonstrated their dependence on God by tithing from their flocks and produce (Lev. 27:30-33). This tithe was centrally the means of supporting the ministry of the Levites who led the worship of the tabernacle and temple as well as the teaching of the law in Israel (Num. 18:21-24). A portion of the tithe was also designated to be used for celebrating in the presence of God, and this celebration was also to include foreigners, orphans, and widows (Dt. 14:22-29). The tithe was also meant to support the needy in the cities of Israel (Dt. 26:12-15). When faithful worship was restored under King Hezekiah’s reign, we learn that the tithe was also called the “firstfruits,” and the people gave abundantly to restore the temple (2 Chron. 31:5-6, Neh. 10:38, 13:12). In Malachi, God rebukes the people for robbing Him in failing to give their tithes, but He promises that if they bring in the full tithe, He will open the windows of heaven and pour down blessings until there is no more need (Mal. 3:8-10, Prov. 3:9). In the New Covenant, Jesus is our “firstfruits” (1 Cor. 15:20-21) just as He is our Sabbath rest, and we demonstrate our trust in His provision by how we give of our firstfruits. When the apostles called upon the first Christians to remember the orphans and widows, to remember the poor and needy, and to provide for their pastors and missionaries, the clear assumption is that this would be through tithing or additional offerings (1 Cor. 16:2, Gal. 2:10, Js. 1:27, 1 Tim. 5:17-18). This is tied directly to the new creation and our mission in the world. Jesus is the firstfruits from the dead, the new, resurrected world breaking into our world. When we give our tithes, we are demonstrating that we believe this. We are saying that we believe that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is now living inside of us and inside the Christian Church. We are saying that all of our money belongs to Jesus, and it is at His disposal.

Conclusion: Surrendering All

The bottom line of all of this is a question of identity. Whose are you? When we keep Sabbath, we are saying our time belongs to the Lord. When we tithe, we are saying all of our money and fruitfulness belongs to the Lord. But all of this is just short hand for saying, all that we are belongs to the Lord. I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. Burn out and over-commitment are actually based on not believing that you truly belong to the God. But God’s abundance allows you to take Sabbath and share Sabbath with a world running in frantic circles around us. God’s abundance allows you to tithe, when the world veers between materialistic greed and financial anxiety. When God’s people seek first His kingdom, He adds all that need to them (Mt. 6:33). When God’s people obey Him in the little things, He teaches them to be faithful in much bigger things. Those who are faithful in a little will be blessed with much more (Mt. 25:21-23).

Do we want to see the gospel of Jesus (in word and deed) fill Moscow and Pullman to the ends of the earth? God tells us how to accomplish this. We do this by resting in Him and sharing that rest with others, by surrendering our resources to Him that they may be shared with many others.

The Letter from the Synod of Nicaea II Concerning Icons

Just to be clear on what a person is agreeing to when converting from Protestantism to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism:

A portion from the letter from the synod of Nicaea II to the emperor and empress:

The things which we have decreed, being thus well supported, it is confessedly and beyond all question acceptable and well-pleasing before God, that the images of our Lord Jesus Christ as man, and those of the undefiled Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, and of the honourable Angels and of all Saints, should be venerated and saluted. And if anyone does not so believe, but undertakes to debate the matter further and is evil affected with regard to the veneration due the sacred images, such an one our holy ecumenical council (fortified by the inward working of the Spirit of God, and by the traditions of the Fathers and of the Church) anathematises. Now anathema is nothing less than complete separation from God. For if any are quarrelsome and will not obediently accept what has now been decreed, they but kick against the pricks, and injure their own souls in their fighting against Christ. And in taking pleasure at the insults which are offered to the Church, they clearly show themselves to be of those who madly make war upon piety, and are therefore to be regarded as in the same category with the heretics of old times, and their companions and brethren in ungodliness.

 

Loving Brothers in Error

One of the realities that Christians face with some regularity and difficulty is the challenge of loving brothers in error.

All three of those words are important: loving. brothers. error.

Given the harsh world around us full of violence and terror and murder, the Church is called to be a massively different kind of place. We have the blood of Jesus that is for the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth. We have the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth, who convicts us of sin, who binds us together in Christ.

One of my favorite lectures I have ever heard was by Gordan Fee at Erskine Theological Seminary. I am paraphrasing, but as he explained the role of the Holy Spirit in Paul’s letters, he said that for Paul, the Church was proof of the reality of the Holy Spirit. The Church is a body of believers from every tribe, every class, every race, men and women, young and old, slave and free, etc. The fact that the Church exists, the fact that we can love one another (when we have no business doing so — humanly speaking) this proves that the Church is no human organization. We are no Elks Club, no political party — there is something supernatural that makes people of such opposites into friends. This is true. This is glorious. And we must endeavor to keep this unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:3).

And yet, the Holy Spirit still requires us not to associate with some believers. It is one thing to be obedient to the commands of Jesus, in excommunication, letting some be to us as “tax collectors and sinners” (Mt. 18:15-17). This is still terribly difficult. It is a terrible duty to hand someone over to Satan who arrogantly continues in their sin (1 Cor. 5:1-7). Many churches are even disobedient to Jesus in this regard. But perhaps it is yet more difficult in some ways for there to be some believers who are not outside the Church but who are still in grave error. How do you love those kinds of brothers? Listen to the Holy Spirit — the same Holy Spirit that binds us together in unity with many we have differences with:

“Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly… if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.” (2 Thess. 3:6, 14-15)

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.” (2 Tim. 3:1-5)

“But avoid foolish controversies… for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing to do with him, knowing that such person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.” (Tit. 3:9-11)

The same Holy Spirit of concord and unity requires us not to associate with some brothers, to avoid some brothers, to have nothing to do with some brothers — not counting them as enemies, but admonishing them as brothers.

In other words, the way that some brothers must be loved is by avoiding them, admonishing them, not keeping company with them, and withdrawing from them. This must not be done in a spirit of bitterness or malice. It must be done honestly asking God to use it to bring about reconciliation, peace, healing, restoration of fellowship, etc. But it is not obedience to God to go on pretending that everything is OK except for the fact that your brother has begun bowing down to pictures, kissing them, and praying to them. It is not loving to go on pretending that everything is OK except for the fact that they are routinely posting slanderous lies about godly pastors online. It is not loving to go on pretending that everything is OK and we’re still friends even though they are stirring up dissension in families or the Church.

No, the unity that we share in the Holy Spirit is a unity in the truth. It is not a false unity. It is not a pretend unity. It is not a hypocritical unity. It is only true unity when it is unity in the Truth. This does not necessitate that we agree with everyone about everything. Not hardly. But where we disagree, we have honest disagreements, not accusing one another of underhandedness or lies or deceit. I can maintain unity with a baptist brother who holds his views honestly, and does not accuse his presbyterian brothers of wickedness in baptizing babies. But you cannot accuse your brother of evil and lies and wickedness, and then honestly want to be friends. You cannot join a church that anathematizes your old church, and then honestly say its nothing personal. No, that’s pious sounding hogwash. That’s manipulation. At best, that’s oblivious folly, and at worst, it’s straight up evil.

Love in Christ is built on grace, and grace certainly covers multitudes of sins. But grace is not a wet blanket that pretends away sin and error. Grace names sin and then actually puts it away. But bitterness names it, lists it, memorizes it, remembers it, shares it, and weaponizes it. And godliness means staying far away from those kinds of people.

Lastly, it should not be surprising of course that many of the most divisive people will run to these very same verses to find comfort in their sin. Remember, Paul warned that they would have “an appearance of godliness” while denying its power. Some of the worst offenders have deep passive-aggressive tendencies, claiming to want peace and unity and healing, while insisting that the dagger they’re wielding behind their back is just for decoration. They will accuse the righteous of being the divisive ones and claim that they have only sought peace but now they’ve been forced into separation. It was no different in Paul’s day. He was hounded by these very accusations as well. And he assures us that all who desire to live a godly life will suffer these same persecutions (2 Tim. 3:12).

And on the flip side, it needs to be pointed out that certain prickly, perfectionistic, and legalistic Christians are far too quick to pull this trigger on their brothers. Remember that love is patient, kind, long-suffering, and keeps no record of wrongs. If you have a long list of people you’re avoiding in this way, you should do a serious gut check. If you are out of fellowship because your old friends might have one time said something that might have insinuated something bad, get a grip. But just because people will do this the wrong way, doesn’t mean the righteous must not do what is right.

So what is to be done? Live the kind of life that makes these accusations manifestly false (2 Tim. 3:10). Speak gently to your wife, respectfully to your husband, discipline your children with joy and patience, be quick to confess your sins, quick to forgive, receive correction well, be friends with Christians that believe differently than you do, work hard with your hands, tithe faithfully, pray earnestly, and worship in accordance with Scripture.

And trust Jesus to sort it out.

Foundations of Mercy & Mission #1: Abundance & Scarcity

Gen. 3:14-24, 1 Jn. 4:7-21, Lk. 9:12-17

Introduction

The Bible opens in mission (Gen. 1:27-28), and the mission is predicated on abundance not scarcity (Gen. 1:29, 2:8-15). The mission of the Church rests on an even greater abundance in the inheritance and authority of Jesus (Mt. 28:18-20, Rom. 8:32). Sin is the assumption of scarcity of goodness, justice, and mercy in the world. Grace is the assumption of abundance. Because of the Fall, there truly is enormous need, suffering, and injustice in the world, but the Christian mission is grounded in the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. This must not be an excuse for apathy or laziness, but it is the ground of faith-filled, prayerful, audacious action.

The Texts: When Satan tempted the man and the woman, he tempted them with the thought that God was withholding some good thing from them (Gen. 3:5-6). This is what the devil does: he tempts you to focus on what you do not have (scarcity) despite the abundance you have been given. And this temptation is ultimately an invitation to see God Himself as greedy, hoarding, and reluctant to bless. But the first two chapters of Genesis prove that God is overflowing, generous, open-handed. Resisting temptation means keeping your eyes fixed on the abundance of God, believing that any good He withholds from His children is for an even greater good. Despite the cataclysmic results of sin entering the world (and death with sin), one of the most shocking aspects of the story of the Fall is how merciful God is: there will be sorrow, pain, enmity, and yes, even death, but God does not destroy the serpent on the spot or kill Adam and Eve immediately, but rather promises that one day the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), and God sends his children out of the garden clothed in the skins of animals (Gen. 3:21). This scene emerges as one of the most gospel-filled passages in the Old Testament. God is just, but also full of love and compassion for His sinful and rebellious children.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and provided propitiation for us (1 Jn. 4:10). Literally, propitiation means “covering” – in that opening scene God provided literal “covering” for the nakedness of Adam and Eve, but it was simultaneously a pledge that the nakedness and shame of sin would be covered by the death of another. Adam and Eve sinned and immediately cowered in fear. Sin doubts God’s abundance, and perhaps most viciously, it doubts God’s goodness in the face of sin and failure. Then, by believing in scarcity, we run away from God’s abundance. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling lie. But there is no fear in God’s love (1 Jn. 4:18). God’s love is super-abundant, super-efficient. And to the extent that we continue to live in fear, we do not yet fully grasp God’s love. Frequently, we fail to live out the mercy and mission of God in our lives because of fear. We are afraid we won’t know what to say or what to do. We are afraid we won’t have enough money. We are afraid it will be too messy, too difficult, we will fail, etc. But John has the audacity to say that knowing the love of God gives us boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world (1 Jn. 4:17).

Ministries of Abundance

Throughout the Bible, God’s people are required to serve, give, love, share out of their abundance. You cannot give what you do not have. But a central part of understanding God and the way that He made the world is this principle of abundance and apparent (or temporary) scarcity. When the disciples saw the crowds of thousands of people, they saw a need that their meager supplies could not meet. But Jesus told them to provide food for the thousands (Lk. 9:13). And He took their meager supplies, gave thanks for them, and gave them to the disciples to give to the multitude (Lk. 9:16). And everyone was filled, and there were twelve baskets left over (Lk. 9:17). They could have easily filled many more hungry bellies. Perhaps the greatest threat to the ministries of mercy and mission in the Church are various places where assumptions of scarcity creep into our thinking and action. These assumptions creep in whenever we believe or act like the goodness of God is a zero-sum game – that the provision of God is a pie chart, and the bigger a slice that one person gets the smaller another gets. If you go into a messy situation assuming that there is only so much mercy and justice to deal out, that there are only two fish and five loaves, you will make an already bad situation worse. Remember, there is no situation so bad that you cannot make it worse.

But our mission is the gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed to all the world. And the gospel is God’s abundance, centrally in His Son, who has entered into our “scarcity.” He took our isolation, our anger, our fear, our grasping upon Himself, and when all our debts were completely paid, He rose without any deficit and was inherited all things. Our task in mercy and mission is to receive and believe this good news: that in Christ we will never lack anything we need (2 Cor. 8:12).

Conclusions

Faith means risk. If you are not risking anything for trusting in Jesus, you are not really believing in Him. This applies to giving your time, your money, starting businesses, sharing the gospel, loving difficult people, training your children. If you are risking nothing, you do not believe in God’s abundance.
Distinctly Christian applications of mercy and mission believe and act believing in the abundance of God and understand how God often provides His abundance in and through apparent or temporary scarcity. In the “scarcity” of the cross is the abundance of grace for the world. This the pattern for our ministry: a scarcity of wisdom causes us to use what we have and to ask God for more, a scarcity of patience should drive us to use what we have and ask God for more, a scarcity of money should drive us to give what we have, trusting God for more.
When we look out at our world full of deficits: broken families, racial tensions, economic oppression, malnutrition, loneliness, addictions, sexual exploitation, depression, the first and most audacious thing we must believe is that everything we need for all of it is found in Jesus Christ.

The Economics of Marriage

Marriage is an economic reality. Every wedding is an economic transaction and creation. The word “economy” itself comes from the Greek word that meant “household management.” An economy literally is the establishment and norms of a household. So every wedding is the establishment of a new household, and therefore a new economy. But we are a Christians, and so we should want to know whether the Bible actually teaches this, and if so, what does it mean?

I want to begin with a couple of negative examples. First, the Bible describes sexual sin and sexual infidelity in economic terms. In the Old Testament law, a man who conspired to divorce his wife by falsely accusing her of not being a virgin prior to marriage was fined a hundred shekels of silver (Dt. 22:19). Likewise, a man who slept with a woman prior to marriage was fined fifty shekels of silver (Dt. 22:29). Texts like these have scandalized many modern ears. Moderns accuse God of disrespecting women by putting a price on their virginity. But in the place of this outrage, they de facto insist that a woman’s virginity is worthless. They will not insist that anything is owed to a woman who has been dishonored. She may be accused of anything and divorced for no fault of her own. In addition to the emotional scarring, the various dangers and vulnerabilities a young, single woman is often exposed to (especially in the ancient world), she has also been robbed. She has been robbed of her honor. She has been robbed of her dignity, her reputation, her power as a woman made in the image of God. Not only would the fines significantly discourage these kinds of criminal acts, they acted as restitution and gave the young woman substantial protections from men seeking to take advantage of her.

Today, a woman’s virginity is scorned and despised. This is because on the one hand, evil men prefer guilty and helpless women. A woman who has been convinced that she is damaged and helpless is far more willing to put up with mistreatment. In her desperation and lack of recourse, she will stay with a man who pays her bills, who buys her clothes, despite his lack of anything approaching Christian love. And on the other hand, a woman’s chastity is scorned and despised because it remains one of the chief glories of a powerful Christian woman.

And this leads to the positive side of all this: In the Christian vision of purity, virginity is not something that once lost can never be restored. No, that’s the point of the restitution. Through the fines, through an economic transaction, God demonstrates that He restores the dignity of a vulnerable woman. Our modern culture, by rejecting God’s law, also rejects God’s grace. By refusing to call sexual sin fraud and theft, the world has left millions of women out in the cold, essentially agreeing with the men who misused them, leaving them unprotected. But the Christian gospel is the glorious announcement that all debts have been paid, of an inheritance far better than you could ever imagine, of purity restored. In Jesus Christ, every spot, every wrinkle, every blemish, every lustful glance, every stolen kiss, every fraudulent act is paid for out of the infinite treasury of God’s love poured out in the precious blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross.

All of this is why, within the marriage covenant, Paul says that a husband and wife “owe” one another affection and sexual intimacy. For one spouse to refuse the other is also an act of fraud. For when a man and woman are married they give themselves to one another, such that they no longer own their own bodies, but now they belong to one another. “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Cor. 7:4). Marriage is an exchange of property and goods and treasures, and at its center is a union, which freely gives to the other.

The fundamental presupposition of sin is scarcity. Sin presupposes that God’s goodness will run out, that there will not be enough, or that God is for some reason holding back. But God’s love is the fundamental power of productivity in the world. John says this: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10) And again, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… we love him, because he first loved us” (1 Jn. 4:19-20). Wherever there is a deficit in our lives, God’s love in Christ makes up the difference. Where we are slow, God’s love is patient. Where we are ungrateful, God’s love is kind. Where we doubt, God’s love believes. Where we falter, God’s love bears all things. When we want to give up, God’s love endures. But this is not merely a spiritual reality that gives us warm feelings and goose bumps. This kind of love drives Christian action. This kind of endowment drives productivity. In our sins, we are afraid, we are impatient, we falter, we doubt, — and so we are tempted to take matters into our own hands, stealing, defrauding, grasping, coveting, holding back. But God in His love paid it all. Our debts are completely paid, and He has given us an inheritance that surpasses our wildest dreams. And this, if we can get our heads and hearts around it, makes us bold. We love because he loves. We live because he lives. We work because He works.

And so the full court press to destroy the sanctity of marriage and to dishonor the marriage bed is not merely a sin against God and other people in some kind of mysterious spiritual way; it is a sin against the economic foundations of the world. It is an economic sin. But it is not only robbing men and women of their dignity, and leaving them enslaved to regrets and guilt and shame, it is also robbing the world of what God has designed to be a powerhouse of productivity. When a man and woman come together in marriage, they are asking God to do what He designed the first man and woman to do: to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and to subdue it. This means studying horticulture, weather patterns, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, languages, history, ship building, mining, zoology, nutritional science, educational philosophy, not to mention deep sea exploration, space travel, nano-technology, and even, international business and web design.

And as the first man and woman set out to tackle all of this, they would have become aware of one of the central, most valuable resources they would need to carry out this task — a unique contribution that only a husband and wife together make for the world, namely, people. Marriage is designed to produce the most valuable thing in the whole world: people. People who sing, people who paint, people who build, people who invent, people who explore, people who write, people who fix, people who share, who give, who serve. People are producers, creators, manufacturers, explorers, inventors, storytellers, poets, and gardeners. This is why, as one of my favorite historians is want to say about weddings (quoting Shakespeare, I believe): the world must be peopled.

So Justin, my exhortation to you is that you understand that God is giving you out of the abundance of His goodness and grace a person, a valuable, precious woman, who is made in the image of God, who carries within her eternal being untold powers of creativity, wisdom, and joy. As a husband, the Bible teaches that you receive those gifts by giving yourself completely to her. You lay your life down for her; you sacrifice in order to make her powers more potent. You are to love her the way Jesus loved His bride the Church, by laying His life down for us, so that there would be no blemish, no spot, no wrinkle. Your temptation will be to think that you do not have enough to give. Sometimes you will get tired. There will be less money, less time, less food than perhaps you had hoped for or planned on. Perhaps you will face trials, difficulties, tragedies, and you will be tempted to hold back, pull back, to reserve some for yourself. But this is to imagine that the goodness of God is scarce. But the love of God in Christ is abundant, overflowing, and it never runs dry. So the only way you can love your wife the way God requires is by drawing off of His infinite reserves. Today God is giving you a priceless possession. Honor her, guard her, – she is your glory, your crown. God is making you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

Morgan, today, you need to understand that God is also giving you a priceless possession, a person of infinite value, a man made in the image of the eternal God. He carries within himself the extraordinary powers of creativity and wisdom and joy. As a wife, you are called by God specifically to receive his gifts by respecting him, thinking highly of him, looking up to him, following his lead. As you do this, as you give yourself completely to him, you are a potent ministry to him. In the economy of God, when you give what you have away, you always end up with more. This does not mean that you always end up with more of what you gave away. But you always end up with more of God’s goodness. You may be called to give away your time, and you may not end up with more time. But when you give away your time, you will end up with more of something better. Perhaps it will be more joy, more opportunities to serve, more riches in friendship and love. Morgan, every wedding is an answer to many prayers, frequently offered by parents and grandparents and close friends. But it wouldn’t be right to finish without noting the fact that this wedding is the answer to the prayers of thousands. When it seemed like there wasn’t enough, we asked God for more, we asked God for this. And God, drawing from His infinite treasury of goodness and love, has given it to you and to all of us today. There will be times in the future when energy is scarce, when difficulties seem insurmountable, when you will be tempted to hold back, when it will seem like you just don’t have enough. Never forget this day. It is a sign of God’s infinite reserve for you. You will run out, but He never does. He never will. Because His love never fails.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Civil War, Culture War, and the Cross

Apart from the peace of the cross of Jesus, our attempts at dealing with the severe effects of the fall will only create more tension, resentment, and violence.

“… through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross…” (Col. 1:20).

Think about it. The grace of God is what allows us to start over. When God declares a man clean, he really is clean. When the blood of Jesus washes a woman clean, she really is clean. There may be pieces to pick up. There may be restitution to do. But it’s the forgiveness and cleansing accomplished by the cross that allows people to put things right without demanding a pound of flesh (or ten) in the process. But short of this kind of grace, people are necessarily driven by resentment or shame, frequently oscillating between the two and sometimes holding them together however contradictory.

And this applies to nations and cultures as much as it does personal relationships. One of the greatest scars on our collective memories is the American Civil War. Our collective sins of pride and racial prejudice and cruelty and greed spilled onto battlefields where over 600,000 men lost their lives in the course of four years. Today we are still reeling from many of the shocks of those events. The remaining racial animosity and distrust in many places in our country, the massive overreach of the federal government, deep resentments, bitterness, wrongs, shame, and mistrust cloud our collective memories and afflict our souls. From the federal tyrannies that overturn the constitutions of states defining a marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the chaotic rage of Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland — we are still experiencing the deep trauma of the Civil War.

And this is why Jesus was crucified. He was crucified to make peace through the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things — whether things on earth or things in heaven, whether things in government or things on plantations, whether things in families or things in cities, whether things between old friends or things between old enemies.

In a best case scenario, some Union generals and soldiers really were fighting for justice and mercy, but the historical record suggests something of a far more besotted, complex reality. The generals Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and others are on historical record for being white supremacists and racists and primarily opposed slavery because it tended to get in the way of big businesses in the north (railroads, factories, etc.), jobs for lower class whites, and the expansion and centralization of the federal government. Several of the new “free” states entering the Union simultaneously outlawed blacks from living in them. No slavery, but also, no free blacks either. Perhaps many things motivated these men, and we don’t have to thoroughly demonize them to suggest any number of human concerns. With population booming in the north, jobs were needed to provide for the needs of many, land was needed to create living space for the many, not to mention food, clothing, and homes. And with all of these expansions, it could be natural to look to the biggest fish in the pond (the federal government) to help balance the many different interests while expanding opportunities for many. They were deeply flawed men who believed they were choosing various “lesser evils” for the sake of what they considered greater goods.

And on the flip side, the Confederacy hardened its vision around the institution of slavery, attempting to ground white supremacy in natural law or even Scripture. As the northern states pushed back against southern interests, it seems pretty clear that a deep bitterness drove southern secession. In some places, it was the offensive notions of centralization and federal expansion, but in other places it was clearly identified centrally with the institution of slavery and racial animosity. But again, there’s no need to demonize every one of the southern leaders, many of whom were sincere, though deeply flawed, Christians. They saw the growing liberalism in the churches of the north. They saw the creeping federalism of the north. They saw the greed and ambition and racist hypocrisies of the north. Best case scenario, they believed they were choosing lesser evils for the sake of what they considered greater goods.

There are harsh lessons here for us, and perhaps most centrally is the failure of fellow Christians to avoid such a bloodbath. Despite the massive problems on both sides, it’s a failure of basic Christian living for two sides in a conflict filled with so many professing Christians not to have reached a peaceful resolution. And if not before the first shot was fired, why not after the first four thousand lay dead after the First Battle of Bull Run?

In some ways, the culture wars being fought today have many of the same elements being fought over going all the way back to the 1860s. This is why I think it’s worth asking questions about how the war might have been avoided. I tweeted a paraphrase from Thomas Dilorenzo’s controversial book The Real Lincoln the other day: “6.6 billion spent by the North in the Civil War might have purchased all slaves along with 40 acres for each.” One friend linked me to a Ta-Nihisi Coates article addressing that very question. Coates’ argument is essentially that there wasn’t really enough money to do that and therefore would have required a gradual emancipation and steep debt, and besides, the South believed slavery and white supremacy was the will of God so they wouldn’t have wanted to. On the latter point, Coates has another article where he lays that out far more clearly in the words of southerners themselves, which is important and eye-opening. But be that as it may, Coates’ argument that there wasn’t enough money to do that is belied by the fact that the north and the south somehow came up with over 12 billion dollars to fight the civil war. Now granted, that funding may have come through steep debts and other unfortunate sources, but the point stands. We ended up spending over 12 billion dollars and over six hundred thousand lives. Couldn’t we have found some way to avoid war? Wouldn’t a gradual emancipation still have been better than the bloodbath that occurred along with the whiplash and trauma we are still experiencing today? Maybe the southerners would have initially balked at an offer of compensated emancipation, but did the north even seriously try? And would they have tried again and again? Dilorenzo claims that the south proposed several peaceful resolutions throughout the course of the war but they were ignored.

These questions are directly connected to our current situation, filled as it is, with many similar dynamics. Since 1973, we’ve murdered over 50,000,000 babies through legal abortion, targeting many black babies in particular. If violence and bloodshed justified overturning the constitutionally protected rights of some men to own other men, how can anyone object to people blowing up abortion clinics, where other men and women are dismembered and their organs are harvested and sold? Why can’t the state of Louisiana invade Florida in order to end abortion there? Or as racial tensions continue to build in some cities, how can we (consistently) object to violent outbursts? Go read liberal Vox editor Emmett Rensin’s recent twitter tirade from June 3 to see somebody from the left noticing similar schizophrenia on the left with regard to the recent violence at Trump rallies.

And to be clear, the point is: Christians ought to be at the forefront of seeking peaceful solutions to the horrific effects of sin. But at the center of our appeal must be the blood-soaked cross of Jesus Christ. That isn’t a pious platitude. That’s the only way justice can actually be meted out. It’s the only way animosity can truly die, the only way bitterness can be swallowed by sincere forgiveness. It’s the only way restitution can be a true restoration and not a backhanded way of squeezing another pint of blood out of a brother for what he (or his ancestors) did to me and my ancestors. Apart from the cross, there is no way to get back to ground zero, there is no way to start over. We are always hedging our bets, always suspicious, always worried that some infraction, some injustice will go unpunished, unnoticed, unpaid for, and I (or my children) will get stabbed in the back in the process. But the cross is God’s promise to pay for it all, that no injustice will go unnoticed or unpunished, and that the dead in Christ will never be lost or forgotten. And from the foot of the cross, we can begin to move forward. We can have hope for true peace, true healing, true reconciliation.

And from the shadow of the cross of Jesus, we can even look backward and imagine how certain tragedies might have been avoided, so that we might avoid repeating them.

I Saw Satan Fall

Luke XXXVII: Lk. 10:1-24

Introduction

One of the most important lessons of the Bible is that things are not always what they seem. Here, we have the relatively unassuming record of Jesus sending out the seventy to proclaim peace, heal the sick, and announce the arrival of the kingdom of God, but in this event, the seventy realize that something much deeper and darker and more profound is taking place. Related to this vision of the world is the way the Bible describes the history of the world as a series of dramatic ascensions and descensions or exaltation and falling or being cast down. In every story, some are being exalted and ascending to glory while others are being cast down and falling.

The Text: Jesus sends out the seventy, two by two, as harvesters and as lambs (Lk. 10:1-3). As with the apostles, the seventy are sent out without provisions, dependent on the hospitality of the cities and houses they enter (Lk. 10:4). Some commentators speculate that this episode may have happened around the Feast of Tabernacles, at the end of harvest. During this week long “thanksgiving-like” festival Israel was supposed to welcome foreigners and neighbors to the feast (Dt. 16:13-15). This would explain why it would be right for them to expect to eat and drink and be received hospitably (Lk. 10:5-8). And it may also explain the severity of judgment that Jesus pronounces against those cities that reject the seventy (Lk. 10:9-15). But the particular curse is the judgment of Sodom, which was also related to hospitality (cf. Gen. 19:1-5) and the refusal to receive the seventy is synonymous with the refusal to “repent” (Lk. 10:12-13). Likewise, this rejection is reckoned as a form of self-exaltation, and Jesus announces that because of this attempt at exaltation, they will be brought down to Hades (Lk. 10:15). It’s in this context that the seventy return rejoicing that the demons are subject to them, and Jesus seems to agree but expands the image to include Satan falling from heaven and authority over all evil (Lk. 10:17-19). Finally, Jesus exhorts them to rejoice that their names are written in heaven, and He rejoices in the Holy Spirit to His Father that the disciples are being exalted through Him (Lk. 10:21-22). Jesus blesses the disciples, saying that they are seeing what the prophets longed for (Lk. 10:23-24).

Spiritual Forces of Evil in the Heavenly Places

In Isaiah, the prophet announces the destruction of Babylon with language that has traditionally been understood to be describing the fall of Satan (Is. 14:12). The parallels between this prophecy and the words of Jesus are striking: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn… You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven… But you are brought down to Sheol (Hades)… you are cast out…” Daniel’s visions of the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms glimpse something similar. At one point, Daniel sees a vision of an angelic warrior who tells Daniel that he has been in conflict with the “prince of the kingdom of Persia” but Michael “one of the chief princes” came to help him (Dan. 10:5-14). He has come to confirm the visions that Daniel has seen, and he leaves Daniel saying that he’s going to fight against the prince of Persia, and then the prince of Greece will come but Michael “your prince” fights by his side (Dan. 10:20-21). These are somewhat cryptic messages, but an angelic figure named Michael appears again in the book of Revelation: “Now a war arose in heaven, Michel and his angels fighting against the dragon… and the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:7-9). Add to this what Jesus says in John’s gospel: “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ And this he said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die’” (Jn. 12:31-33). Putting all of this together, it seems that the demonic powers once hidden behind the old empires, had begun to be exposed through the ministry of Jesus, culminating in the cross. Here, as the time for Jesus to “ascend” has come, having fixed His eyes on Jerusalem, His disciples are being exalted over the demons, and the cities who reject the Kingdom of God are aligning themselves with Satan, seeking power through imperial grasping.

Conquering Through the Blood of the Lamb

There are a number of hints that this “mission trip” wasn’t exactly successful in terms of numbers of conversions. Jesus sent them out as lambs among wolves (Lk. 10:3), and while there is some possibility that the cities will receive them, much of the rhetoric assumes rejection. All of this makes the disciples’ exclamation and Jesus’ confirmation regarding the fall of Satan more curious. How is the rejection of Jesus and the seventy a moment for rejoicing that Satan is falling from heaven and the demons are subject to the seventy? The point seems to be that it is precisely in the rejection of the seventy by many Israelite cities that Satan and his angels are being “drawn out” into the open (in order to fall). While the seventy returned this time, many of them will ultimately lose their lives and conquer the dragon and his angels through the blood of the Lamb and their testimony (Rev. 12:11). It is the crucifixion of Jesus which draws out the full fury of Satan and his angels, and it is the cross the strikes the crushing blow to Satan’s head. Satan is the accuser of the brothers, but by the blood of Jesus our Lamb every accusation falls flat (Heb. 2:14). Satan, the accuser, resents every whiff of innocence. It is innocence that brings the demons out like wolves for the kill, and this is why bold, forgiven sinners are the best Satan-bait there is. But we belong to the kingdom of God (Lk. 10:22).

Conclusion & Application

It is sad to see our culture in such a steep decline, but the more clearly people reject Jesus and those who follow Him, this passage teaches us to rejoice and to see through the politics and see the demons drawn out and subject to us, to see Satan falling and raging, and the Church rising and ascending. The ultimate difference is between those driven by accusation and those driven by grace. When the accusations fly, we are here as lambs among wolves. This is not pacifism; this is how the saints conquer. But our joy is not merely in God’s ultimate triumph; our joy is in the fact that our names are written in heaven. We have fellowship with the Father and the Son through the Spirit. We have seen and heard what many prophets and kings longed to see and hear. In Jesus, we have seen Satan fall, we are forgiven, and now nothing can harm us.

Sex and Power

“Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26-28)

I want to point out two things about this passage briefly: First, God created human beings male and female, and second, He created them to rule together. Sex and power go together according to the Bible. It is the image of God in particular that equips people to have dominion, but that dominion is shared in men and women. And clearly, a significant part of that dominion is carried out through being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth.

There are many lies running rampant in our day as in every generation about what it means to be a man or a woman, and about what it means to be married, and about what it means to have authority and power. On the one hand, some Christians speak as though men have authority and women do not. Some Christians are rather embarrassed by all of that and don’t want to speak about authority of any kind at all. Power corrupts we are told again and again, and many Christians buy this line and are suspicious of the idea of power and authority altogether.

On the other hand, the leaders of unbelief propagate significant confusion as well. They frequently claim that there is no intrinsic difference between men and women – it’s all culturally conditioned. If you gave little boys dolls to play with, they’d grow up as women, they claim. And vice versa, if you gave little girls guns and trucks to play with. With the obvious biological and physiological differences between men and women, feminism has argued that even these differences are merely the result of evolutionary chance and therefore, they are not absolutes. Just as you might want to get braces for crooked teeth, so birth control and abortion have been claimed as triumphs for women, enabling them to be just as powerful as men through the elimination of unwanted children, erasing what they refer to as the “gender gap.” And meanwhile as they demand that women be treated like men (e.g. be drafted into the military), some men have decided that they’d rather be women and begin hormone therapy in order to “reassign” their gender – as though being a woman merely consists of some hormones or body parts.

All of these various lies are why a marriage between a man and a woman remains one of the most potent opportunities for Christians to tell the truth about the world God has made. There is a shape to a Christian wedding ceremony that proclaims the gospel of Jesus into the chaos and confusion of the world. Fundamentally, when we proclaim the gospel, we are proclaiming good news to the world in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But too often our gospel comes out garbled and unclear, and therefore it doesn’t seem very good. Sometimes our gospel sounds like 1950s stereotypes, when it turns out many people were mistreated and dishonored by those stereotypes. Sometimes our gospel sounds like pacifism, as though the Christian message is masochistic and dehumanizing. If you are suffering, Jesus will help you enjoy it, and maybe you’ll get to suffer some more!

But the Bible opens with these wonderful verses about God’s design, about the dignity of being made male and female, about the authority given to men and women to rule over the world together, and about the blessing and power of children and fruitfulness. But all of these things come from the Creator God, and all of these things are received from Him by faith with thanksgiving. He promises authority and power in being male and female and the blessing of the union of one man and one woman. And in Jesus Christ, God is remaking the brokenness of humanity. In Jesus, God is restoring men to manhood, restoring women to womanhood. In Jesus, God is restoring the glory and authority of men as husbands and fathers, and the glory and authority of women as wives and mothers. Through Jesus, the lies, the lust, the abuse, the grasping, the envy, the rebellion, the bitterness, the rage – all of the poison of sin is put to death. In the cross of Jesus, all the distortions of manhood and womanhood, all the lies of unfruitful marriages – all of it was crucified, in order that by the power of the resurrection, men and women might be washed, cleansed, healed, and restored to the glory they were made for.

One of my favorite pagans these days is a woman name Camille Paglia, a sort of old school feminist and Darwinist, but she is more perceptive and honest than most. She says: “You have to have strong women in order to deal with masculine men. Masculinity is constantly being eroded because it allows women to be weak.” Paglia speaks here better than many Christians. Egalitarianism wants to blunt the sharp edges of masculinity and strip women of their distinctive glory. In the name of freedom and happiness (and power), modernity wants to steamroll the differences between men and women. But to paraphrase the perceptive, Erich Fromm, writing decades ago: When equality comes to mean sameness, we destroy the very ground of love since love is a kind of union that preserves the unique integrities of each individual. And without love, all authority and power will corrupt and destroy.

So in the face of these sobering circumstances, Ian, my charge to you is to be what God made you to be and what you have acted the part of today: a man. You walked down the isle accompanied by other men. You are dressed in our culture’s distinctive garb of a groom. You have received Christina from her parents, and you are promising to be the manliest man you can be. This masculinity is not defined by the world or by pure instincts. It is defined by the Word of God, and so you must be a man of the Word. You must continue to study Scripture night and day, to find out what it means to be a man and then embrace it and practice it with all of the strength that you can muster with gratitude and joy before the Lord. Centrally, the Bible calls you to lay your life down for Christina. You are to love her and to lead her, but you are to do this by taking responsibility for her, seeing her needs as your needs and not resenting them. And in light of the power she wields as a Christian woman, your love must seek to empower her gifts. You are being called to rule in this world with this woman beside you. And today, Jesus is proclaiming to the world that you need this woman by your side. She carries within her authority from God to rule with you. So receive her with thanksgiving. Celebrate her power and authority as a woman made in the image of God: your wife, your crown, your glory.

Christina, my charge to you is similar: be what God made you to be and the part you have played today: a woman. You were accompanied down the isle with other women. You are adorned today in the beauty and glory of a bride. You have been escorted by your father, and you have received Ian’s arm. These ought not be read as signs of weakness. They ought to be to be seen as signs of strength and authority. No one speaks for you in this ceremony but you. You are a free Christian woman by the authority of God Himself. By the authority that He has invested in you as a woman made in His image, you are binding yourself to this man today to be his wife and to bear his children. Today you are promising to be the most feminine woman you can be. But this femininity is not defined by Cosmopolitan magazine or the sitcoms or the feminists or traditional family values or what you feel like; true femininity is defined by the Word of God. So you too must study Scripture night and day to find out what it means to be a woman and embrace it and practice it with all the strength you can muster with gratitude and joy before the Lord. Centrally, the Bible calls you to respect your husband and submit to him. Despite the claims of many, this does not mean you are inferior to him; rather, this is the uniquely feminine shaped authority that you wield. This is not manipulation; this is the power of the beauty of a godly woman. A woman whose heart rests in the care of the Lord Jesus Christ, rules with her husband in fearless joy.

Ian and Christina, we live in dark and confusing days, but today you shine the light of the gospel brightly. We charge you in the Name of Jesus, to remember this day and to rise up every day as a man and as a woman created to rule together in all fruitfulness.

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Experience of Trauma & the Healing of Jesus

In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, child psychiatrist Bruce Perry recounts lessons he’s learned over the years from working with children who have experienced severe trauma in their lives. In the first chapter, he describes an early experience with a young girl who had been sexually abused over a long period of time. This young girl’s behavior was (understandably) significantly inappropriate, and Perry worked with this girl over the course of three years, trying to impart to her the skills and habits for life that she hadn’t been taught. And though some progress was made, Perry ultimately concluded that his work remained rather superficial and that the trauma this little girl had experienced had significantly changed her brain, distorting her sense of what normal or appropriate behavior was.

It’s generally believed that memories are formed and stored, beginning when people are very young, and that it is typically the new or abnormal things that stand out and catch our attention. So for example, Perry notes that the first few times you learned to sit up, your body was learning an enormous number of things: balance, which muscles do what, the sensation of weight resting on your backside, etc. But slowly, as you learn to sit up, you don’t think about any of those things. You do it without thinking. This is the power of practice and habit. Your brain remembers how to sit up, and signals your body to perform all the requisite functions but it is the presence of abnormalities that will cause you to stop and think about what’s going on: if you experience pain, if you’re inadvertently sitting on something, etc. This is why we can drive for many miles often not thinking about our surroundings, not worrying about staying on the road or between the yellow lines: our brains really are running on a sort of auto-pilot. Accumulated memories and experiences have taught our brains a “range of normal” and so long as the drive remains within that range of normal, we can go on thinking about the children, or the grocery list, or the doctrine of justification without a thought about driving until something signals us to pay attention, e.g. the slow car in front of us, getting tired of sitting, etc. This is a great gift from God, allowing us to truly multitask and not go crazy, having to think about every little detail surrounding every single thought or action. We can walk and chew gum and carry on a conversation with a friend while minding the children all at the same time (most of us).

Perry suggests that with trauma you have something similar going on, only on steroids, so to speak. Trauma magnifies or amplifies the memory process. It seems to speed up the memorizing process, causing the brain’s function of accumulating normalcy to go into overdrive, such that the abnormality of trauma creates impressions of normality. And the longer the trauma lasts, the more deeply ingrained the impressions are. Makes me think of events in nature like volcanoes or hurricanes or earthquakes or floods that can change massive stretches of landscape in a relatively short period of time. Some studies have shown that extreme temperatures and pressures can even play with the chemical make up of matter. This is one of the ticklish aspects of carbon dating. The “normal” constant decay of carbon appears to sometimes speed up dramatically, leaving elements with the appearance of millions of years of decay, when it has actually been through a massive momentary “trauma.” Whether we have been severely sinned against or whether we have sinned against others (or both), the geography of our minds is warped in various ways. This is why we frequently speak and act and think in inappropriate, foolish, and sinful ways without thinking. And this is why we can momentarily convince ourselves that certain sinful actions are justified.

As a Christian pastor, there are a number of fascinating questions that arise from this kind of study. On the one hand, God created the human brain with this wonderful intricacy, and Christians do well to want to study it, understand it better, and seek to harness its natural capacities for healing and good. On the other hand, various connections between what might be described as the spiritual and the physical remain mysterious and no less real either. If the gospels portray anything at all, it most certainly includes the possibility of healing. And this healing is in body and soul. It is intriguing to me that the center of the Christian message is a traumatic event, the murder of an innocent man in the place of guilty sinners. And now we retell this trauma week after week in words and songs and actions. Christians are personal witnesses of a violent crime that has begun to heal our broken hearts (and brains). This horrific event, Christ crucified, is somehow a good trauma meant to undo all the bad trauma. It seems that God’s design is that the gospel preached is meant to cause people to experience this good trauma, to come face to face with this good horror, in order to “renew their minds.”

It doesn’t seem accidental that the Christian Church has historically been a people of liturgy, of repetition, of memory. Jesus told the first Christians to break bread and share wine often in memory of His death. And so for centuries, Christians have met together to remember again and again and again. The promise of Jesus is that in that remembering, He is present. And somehow He is ministering His life to us in the words read and sung, in water poured, in bread broken, in wine shared. His trauma overcomes our trauma. His abuse swallows up our abuse. His shame carries away our shame. His memory remakes our memories.

On the one hand, all of this seems to confirm the New Testament emphasis on the trauma of conversion. When sinners are saved, they have to die — “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). And on the other hand, the same Paul describes the Christian life as a sort of traumatic process, a repeated practice of “putting to death” old habits and patterns of life, reckoning ourselves “dead to sin.” This seems to be what Jesus means by taking up our cross daily and following Him, losing our lives for His sake, in order to find them again.