Hannah Farver's Blog, page 18

I am a firm believer inThe hidden in the extraordinaryThe specks...

I am a firm believer in
The hidden in the extraordinary
The specks of dross we try to hide
The childhoods and pasts and fears
That tie us together,
…That push us into night.

I am also a believer in fireflies,
Who, in the dark, run with their sorrows
But instead of burrowing in,
Bring dark to light.

The God Called "Abba"

I just recently came on board with Hope for Orphans, an organization that serves to promote adoption, care for orphans, and support adoptive families.

To say that I have learned much would be an understatement.

My job is in publicity. I sit in an office chair with a headset, to hopefully save my head from cell phone waves and brain cancer. You'd think I'd be learning mostly about publicity. How to write a good press release. How to navigate church phone systems to get the right ministry leader on the line.

But what I've learned is different. I'm learning about the theology of adoption. I'm learning more about what it means to be a family.

I think of orphans a lot more than I did before. The voice of eleven-year-old me, memorizing Galatians 4:6 for church, flings itself back in my soul with new meaning: Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."

Russell Moore pointed out in an article for Christianity Today that this cry for Abba isn't written in just in a context of a child's affectionate pet-word for "Father." Rather, "Abba" is always used in the Bible in a context of screaming:

"Jesus cries "Abba, Father" as he screams "with loud cries and tears" for deliverance in the Garden of Gethsemane (Heb. 5:7; Mark 14:36, ESV, used throughout). Similarly, the doctrine of adoption shows us that we "groan" with the creation itself "as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23). It is the scream of the crucified.

The gospel of adoption challenges us, first of all, to recognize ourselves as spiritual orphans. The gospel compels us to see our fallen universe—and our own egocentric kingdoms therein—as not the way it's supposed to be."

The theology of adoption underlines our desperation. A child screams "Daddy" because he is a guaranteed defender. No three year old can outrun the neighbor's snapping dog. No infant can rummage through the fridge to find something to eat. As toddlers are helpless on their own, so I am before God. I have nothing. None of my own efforts can save my soul; none of my strength can dam the world's pain. I have nothing but to cling to the knees of my Abba Father, asking with the impudence of childlike faith for Him to move in and work in my world.

The theology of adoption underlines God's love. J.I. Packer noted in Knowing God, that adoption is a greater gift than justification. Yes, being adopted into God's family is more a sign of His grace even than being legally declared righteous before God. Justification declares our souls as righteous by virtue of Christ's death; adoption declares that we are now as close to God as family. Those who were far are now brought near (Eph. 2:13). Once, God was in His Heaven, far and away. Now He dwells with us. (Matt. 1:23; Rom. 8:9)

To bring this home, when a Chinese orphan is brushed off by adoption officials due to a cleft palate, the picture is that of us. When that child's muscles atrophy because it can barely eat enough to survive, and when his nerves fight to develop in spite of almost never feeling the sensation of touch, that is us. When we were too broken to be noticed, and our voices were too weak to even scream, God tore the Heavens to come and save. (Isaiah 64:1) We have been given dwelling-place with the same God who tells us to call Him "Abba."

Adoption isn't just a picture of our relationship with God. Adoption is our relationship with God. Only when we are bowled over with the grace of that adoption can we see ourselves in the orphans of the world.

Originally posted at Hope for Orphans's blog.

This was going to be some sort of love letter, but my words have...

This was going to be some sort of love letter, but my words have already run out.

In Texas, we're under a drought advisory. Since the skies haven't rained down in full force since who-knows-when, we have to be careful not to run the wells dry.

But my well flies up in a cyclone of dust when the wind blows by. My reservoir of words ran dry long ago.

Sometimes when my soul is praising God with all that it can muster, I fall back in disappointment. "These words aren't enough. I've run out." No praise does Him justice. It's humbling when that one gift that won you good essay grades in school, amounts to nothing in the area that most counts. It's humbling when what you think is your greatest attribute ends up being useless when you try to describe God.

Like all the times in the Bible when angels appeared to men, and then had to convince the men not to worship them. "You think I'm God, but I'm just the guy that delivers His mail." All this mistaking-God-for-His-messengers business—it goes to show we have no concept of the glory of God. We fall to our knees at the sight of an angel. Just wait til when we see God Himself.

If I run out of ways to describe His glory while sitting on the corner of my bed at night, how much more when I stand in the cathedral of Heaven, where storeys of animals I've never seen will flutter around singing in notes I've never heard about the wonderfulness of God.

Just think—if the God who makes soul-shattering beauty here on earth, will be designing the buildings there Himself—those mansions in Heaven are going to make the mansions here look like gaudy plastic Barbie dollhouses.

My words will run out, even in describing those buildings; those seraphim; those heavenly praise-songs—-not to mention God Himself.

I won't have anything to say. Neither will any poet laureate, Dickinson or Shakespeare. The beauty of God will reduce us to the same condition as babes who haven't yet learned to speak.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. That doesn't mean that God can't sense that my praises are jumping to get off the ground, but just can't reach high enough. That doesn't mean He doesn't take delight in them. Fathers love when their kids draw them "I love you, Daddy" pictures, even if they're stick figures with purple marker hair. Not saying that to be cutesy, but to be accurate. God delights in the praises of His people, even though those praises must sound awfully cliche and unpoetic when compared to Him as He actually is. He knows our frame, and knows that this is the most we can do as we are now.

So I don't have anything to say. There is not a single sound left on my tongue that would do Him justice, not even if repeated for a thousand years.

But that doesn't mean I shouldn't still try until my heart collapses.

Until the earth dawns in its new-made form…

and forever plus-one-day after that.

I wrote this piece for WORLD magazine's website. Since a shortened version was published,...

I wrote this piece for WORLD magazine's website. Since a shortened version was published, here's the full piece. If you like debate on the issue of feminism, there is quite a discussion going on over at WORLD about it.

Is Anti-Feminism Anti-Intellectual? How a college history class made me think twice about gender roles //Hannah Farver

My womanhood was liberated when I went to college. No, it's not a story of "girl-meets-birth-control" or some awakening of feminine mystique within.

I was in history class. We were reading the 1955 commencement address at Smith College given by Adlai Stevenson. Adlai, a diehard liberal and once-upon-a-time presidential candidate, told the bright-eyed crème de la crème of America's educated women: "I think there is much you can do…in the humble role of housewife." He said their education was preparation for the "primary task" of homemaking.

Those aren't out-of-context quotes taken from some old speech. Smith College is elite, and the alma mater of famous feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Adlai's words were so broadly accepted, the Woman's Home Companion reprinted them in their September 1955 edition.

Why is that significant? Why was it that as I sat at a desk, shivering beneath the AC vents in my Northern Virginia college, this antique speech so captured me?

Adlai Stevenson proved male and female roles are not inherently regressive. See, I have long fought the sneaking suspicion that no educated, thinking person would give traditional male-female roles a second glance.

Here's the reality check I caught like a sucker punch: up until the 1960's, you would be hard-pressed to find an educated, thinking person who did not give credence to traditional gender roles in Western Civilization. While there were fringe feminist voices, their arguments had not gained mainstream traction.

Adlai was a Unitarian Universalist, old school Democrat whose New Deal liberalism would put most modern so-called liberals to shame. He wasn't pro-tradition. He wasn't cozy with evangelicals. Yet he cheered on purposeful femininity as a life preserver for Western Civilization.

Dr. Robert Spinney, a historian with a B.A. from Harvard and Ph.D. from Vanderbilt, emphasized that Adlai was at his essence a politician. He wouldn't have said anything taboo from a commencement podium. In fact, Adlai only echoed the Catholic essayist, G.K. Chesterton, from decades previous.

Chesterton had read the women's suffrage movement like tea leaves. Realizing that the traditional role of women would soon be questioned, he defended it, saying that a wife's calling was intended "to be the red heart of a man's house and that hearth for which…a man should die."

That said, Chesterton admitted that women have had a tough track record in history. This victimization of women, which became the rallying cry of feminism, is a reality with no expiration date. Chesterton acknowledged it in the 19th century, but it has never been more true than now:

According to the New York Times' Nicolas Kristof in his bestseller, Half the Sky, "more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century."

I heard a hundred times growing up that women in a pre-feminist world were treated like ornaments. But a glancing survey of Christina Aguilera's neckline on The Voice tells me the same is true of today. Women are still objects. Internationally, women are still targeted by gender-specific abortions and sexual slavery. Feminism didn't fix the problem. So what exactly did feminism do?

Feminists sought to erase gender altogether.

"Darwin's ideas changed everything, because implicit in Darwinian ideas is 'strong is good, weak is bad,'" Spinney said. No one wanted to champion "the weaker sex," so feminists changed their rhetoric, stepping away from femininity.

"The only perceived difference between males and females [became] sexual characteristics. Women are now objectified in terms of sexuality; they have nothing unique to offer men except for sex ." Trying to ease the plight of women, feminism made objectification mainstream.

While the practical application of gender roles may be up for debate, it is not unreasonable to ask if we were better off with tradition.

Smith graduates of 1955 were expected to be happy at home. They spent big bucks on college educations just to marry, have kids, and train those kids to preserve Plato and Kierkegaard. The home was considered a perfectly legitimate calling warranting the highest academic preparation.

What is the point here? To bash everything feminism ever brought to our culture? To revere tradition for tradition's sake?

Not really. What hit me in this history lesson was awe. The original intent of femininity is different—both from womanhood a la Gloria Steinem and womanhood according to Maxim. It's far grander, more purposeful and necessary than either paradigm would ever suppose. It's greater even than the limitations we place upon it in a post-feminist world. The calling for women is, essentially, heroism. As Chesterton put it, "In other words, there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not 'give her best,' but gives her all."

[Many thanks to Dr. Robert Spinney for his tremendous research and for challenging his students to think ever more deeply on history.]

Matthew Paul Turner published a piece, "Is Modest Really...

Matthew Paul Turner published a piece, "Is Modest Really Hottest?" today in Relevant. He writes:

Once a month for 12 school years, I watched my female classmates forced to line up in the hallway, one straight line of girls kneeling. As they waited, a teacher would walk by and measure the distance between the floor and the hem of their skirts, then the distance between the lowest point on their blouse and their clavicles. If the distances were too great, they were sent home or forced to wear the school's official "ugly sweater," my school's version of the scarlet letter A.

I had three sisters. I watched all of them kneel in that line. And I have witnessed firsthand how my church's modesty laws have affected various aspects of their lives, from insecurity, to parenting, to how they interact with other women with different modesty ideals.

Our ideas about modesty are mostly Puritanically American. No, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but we must remember that our "modesty" is far more a cultural standard than it is a spiritual one. In a society with a history of making sure that women's parts were things not to be talked about but rather covered up (for the sake of the male's eyes/integrity!), is it any wonder our culture has grown into one that worships breasts and bodies as only sexual objects?

His article doesn't set out to give a corrective formula on the Church's approach to modesty, but is apparently an invitation to talk about it. Reading the article, one dominant point came to mind that I hope surfaces often as this discussion filters through the Christian social media world.

First, to backtrack and deal with some foundational thoughts:

Dress codes. The church has dealt with modesty in diverse ways. Although I'm not a fan of a dress code way of thinking, as it reduces modesty to a list in our minds rather than the thoughtful pursuit of a heart attitude, I understand the role of dress codes in Christian schools. Rules are tricky things, but there's no way to set a standard of dress in an institution other than a dress code. Lining girls up in the hallway for public humiliation is guilt-inducing and, I believe, entirely wrong, but I don't think dress-codes in Christian schools are themselves the problem.

Along the same lines, I suspect there's nothing inherently wrong with saying that being modest is a service to others. Why? Because it's true. It is. It's not an objectification of women to remind each other that actions have consequences; that cleavage is distracting; that Oscar de la Renta and Jason Wu don't design their spring lines with purity or modesty as a goal, so the ball is in our court to evaluate what styles we put in our wardrobes. Reminding each other of the responsibility to love isn't legalism. Shooting for wisdom in clothing choices isn't legalistic either.

Annnd, the problem isn't modesty. I've seen critiques of Christian modesty quickly turn into criticisms of modesty itself, when like it or not, it is a Biblical concept. (If you agree, you might want to skip this part. If you don't, here are some things to consider:)

1 Timothy 2:9-10 could be paraphrased as saying that Christian women aren't supposed to be most remembered for their fabulous in-season ensembles of sailor-striped maxi dresses and espadrilles. (Muuch as I love espadrilles.) Instead, they should be marked by "good works." It's actions aglow with love for Christ that should be what gets us noticed by the rest of the world. It doesn't say there's anything wrong with fashion. It says that fashion isn't what should define our lives—that clothing is ultimately a stupid thing to be obsessed about in light of eternity.
And then there's that verse that is kind of awkward to read aloud in a woman's Bible study: "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion." (Prov. 11:22) The last thing woman wants to be compared is a pig. My guess is that was also the case when it was originally written. It's a frank verse from Proverbs with a pretty clear meaning: Lack of discretion (the pig) can make a beautiful woman (a ring) lose her beauty. I also draw from this verse that modesty is something that Bible speaks about in strong terms.
1 Peter 3:3-4 and 1 Peter 5:5-6 all have insight that could lend itself to the modesty discussion. But my point here is simply to say that modesty is indeed a Biblical concept, and even the concept of protecting our brothers from lust has Biblical roots (Philippians 2; Romans 13:14.) Our ability to have a constructive conversation on modesty will be hampered if we attack the idea itself.

Some concluding thoughts:

In short, it's super easy to criticize the Church. It's easy to criticize what previous generations have emphasized. While there is room for corrective criticism, I think people (myself included) have a tendency to tear down what bothers us without recognizing what was/is indeed valuable (i.e. modesty itself).

Furthermore—and this is the dominant point that personally hits me close to home—ultimately we can't blame the Puritans or the Church for our own legalism. Sure, pastors and teachers bear extra responsibility for teaching and preaching against legalism. But legalism is first a matter of our own hearts. It's looking at anything—whether modesty or purity or social justice or whatever—from a behavior-focused mindset rather than an intention that is purely to seek after Jesus.

To be honest, I really fought with this issue when writing my book. Modesty was a topic I knew I had to talk about, but approaching it from the right perspective was really hard. That's what I ended up writing a whole chapter on legalism before saying anything about modesty. Because before we can get a healthy view of modesty, we have to have a healthy view of why, as Christians, we do anything.

Tim Keller simplified the difference between legalistic religion and the gospel:

RELIGION: I obey-therefore I'm accepted.
THE GOSPEL: I'm accepted-therefore I obey.

It's not the reasonable response of a Christ-follower to say that modesty is all legalistic, and disregard it completely. Neither is it Biblical to pursue modesty just to bolster our pride or sense of piety. Obedience is a response to knowing Jesus, and our hearts being changed by Him. As we have been given grace, so we must give grace to others—both to Christians who run around in loincloths and to those who we perceive as legalistic.

There's a lot more to be said on the intersection of modesty and the gospel. I've written more about it (drumroll *ba boom clash*) in my book  (shameless pitch, I know). But I don't claim to have in any way covered the issue in its entirety. I do hope that Turner's article leads to a discussion that veers towards the gospel, and doesn't morph into a different brand of the same legalism it hopes to avoid.

"Scars and struggles on the way, but with joy our hearts can say…'Never once did we ever..."

""Scars and struggles on the way, but with joy our hearts can say…'Never once did we ever walk alone.'""

- Matt Redman

It's been one day short of a solid week since I heard this...

It's been one day short of a solid week since I heard this sermon. The notes took up three pages in my journal, but so much was packed in, I didn't feel like three pages was enough. Transcribing here what I wrote down then. For posterity. But mostly for myself. ;)

"Prayerlessness is a Gospel problem, not a discipline problem."

Your body craves air. There's no need for breathing discipline, to remember to breathe. Lack of prayer shows that you would give mental assent to depravity, but you haven't been ravished by that truth. You haven't been ravished by the knowledge of how much you need Him.

Luke 18 tells of the friend who knocks impudently at the door of his friend in the middle of the night, to ask to borrow some bread. The story shows the boldness we may have in approaching God. → This also shows the need for childlike faith. Who but a child could get away with that kind of trusting audacity?

//If dependence is the pursuit, weakness isn't a disadvantage.//

touching the garment of God like the unclean woman of Matthew 9 reached out and impudently touched the robe of Christ; at the risk of "defiling" Him with her uncleanliness, He calls her "my daughter." → God has great affection for you and will not turn away those who reach for Him

→ "God sometimes answers our prayer by giving us what we would have asked for had we known what He knows." When your kid asks for a scorpion, you don't give it to them. God is a Father, not a genie. He doesn't exist to fulfill our wishes. But He does graciously give us what is best.

You can listen to the full sermon by J.D. Greear at the link above, or at my church's website.

"It's weakness that the Maker turns into strength…I loved you even as you sang the song..."

""It's weakness that the Maker turns into strength…I loved you even as you sang the song that broke you. And I love you now in the glory of your humility.""

- Andrew Peterson, The Wingfeather Saga

Nevertheless, I am continually with You;You hold my right hand. [my hope for the now]You guide me...

Nevertheless, I am continually with You;
You hold my right hand. [my hope for the now]
You guide me with Your counsel,
and afterward You will receive me to glory. [future hope]
Whom have I in heaven but You? [nothing here pulls me more than You]
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.
My flesh and my heart may fail, [the line between fine and falling apart is so thin]
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever… [You are my Bread of Life]
But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord God my refuge, [on You rest all my hopes]
that I may tell of all Your works. [like grace, and Your intervention to guide my steps.]

Psalm 73:21-28

Heavenstobetsy! Much as I hold to the principle that anything...

Heavenstobetsy! Much as I hold to the principle that anything but writing in the margins of old books is vandalism, this is amazing. I want to do this. Except only with old, forgettable paperbacks no one should read anyway.

HT: LainiTaylor