Shared posts

07 May 00:12

Sex and Doubt

by Micah J. Murray

Doubt and Sex

Note: This post is written as a response to some of the ideas contained in a blog post by Derek Rishmawy. My response is strongly filtered through my own experience, and the shared experiences of others in similar situations. Derek has been so kind as to comment, and point out some mistakes I’ve made in this post. I certainly failed to clearly differentiate between Rishmawy’s words and those of Keller. I also focused specifically on one element of Rishmawy’s words that I particularly disagreed with, but which did not represent the overall intent of Keller or Rishmawy. I share my story and opinions not to reject either Keller’s or Rishmawy’s beliefs, but to offer some points of disagreement that I feel are worthy of consideration. I pray that these words will carry the humility they should, and for the places where that humility is lacking, I sincerely apologize. -Micah

I remember what doubt feels like.

The terrifying silence crushing me when I tried to pray. The voices haunting my mind with a thousand questions every waking moment. The nagging fear that my entire spirituality was as all-in bet on a worthless hand, a house of cards about to collapse. I remember praying “Dear God, if you still exist…” It was only a few years ago, and I remember it all too well.

That’s why I must so strongly disagree with the ideas put forward by Timothy Keller in “Who Are You Sleeping With?”

Yesterday Derek Rishmawy wrote about his conversation with Keller, discussing the relationship between sex, doubt, and revival. In this blog post, Rishmawy detailed Keller’s assertion that ”one of the biggest obstacles to repentance for revival in the Church is the basic fact that almost all singles outside the Church and a majority inside the Church are sleeping with each other.” He suggests that ”many college students and young adults don’t want to turn to God… because He has opinions on sex we find restrictive.” According to Rishmawy, “the Bible unsurprisingly starts to become a lot more ‘doubtful’ for [students] once they’d had sex.” He concludes: “Only when Christians are courageous (and wise) enough to deal with our sex issues will we see …revival.”

Timothy Keller

Timothy Keller (image via Patheos)

Let me begin by saying that I have tremendous respect for Keller; his book The Reason for God provided a glimpse of hope for me during one of my darkest seasons of doubt. However, I believe that his thinking on this topic is deeply flawed. As one who has wrestled with doubt during my college years, I find his narrative inaccurate. And I feel that his conclusion only perpetuates the very problem he is attempting to address.

At the heart of Keller’s argument is the idea that our seasons of doubt are motivated by a desire to escape the authority of God because we enjoy illicit sex too much.

He equates “questions about evolution or philosophy” with a “troubled conscience”. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you my own story. In my own story, nothing could be further from the truth.

My dark season of doubt and questioning came during our first year of marriage. My wife and I had waited until marriage to have sex. We were living in love and purity. I was regularly attending church, giving, serving. I was in Bible college. I didn’t have a troubled conscience; I wasn’t trying to justify sin.

And yet, doubt.

I often hear suggestions similar to Keller’s – that questions are an attempt to justify sin, that doubts are an attempt to escape the moral law of God. Let me suggest a different narrative.

As I’ve said before, we are an entire generation with the broken pieces of our religion scattered on the floor around us. Raised in Christianity, we are attempting to make this faith our own.

Doubt is an essential part of that journey.

Looking back, I recognize my darkest moments of doubt as a turning point in my Christian faith. My temporary agnosticism was a religious deconstruction that has allowed faith take root deep in my heart. I don’t think my experience is unique. As I’ve talked with many of my generation who were raised in Christianity, I’ve found this journey to be something we overwhelmingly share.

This engaging/questioning/deconstructing/rebuilding process defines us.

And it’s not because we’re trying to justify sin. It’s because we’re trying to follow God. It’s hard to follow what you don’t really know; at some point, we need to examine everything we’ve been told since we were children and decide whether or not to make it our own. Doubt doesn’t necessarily indicate a heart far from God. It can be the most difficult season for a heart that is seeking God, but also the beginning of finding Him.

For most of my life, my “Christianity” was a religion of consequence avoidance and sin management.

I “got saved” because I didn’t want to go to hell, and then spent years attempting to “not sin” so that I could “please God”. I had no larger narrative for why I should avoid sin, other than that I owed this to God. Sure, I knew all about how it was “a relationship, not a religion” and how “we are saved by grace, not by works”, but my religion was essentially focused on morality. Do what’s right; don’t sin. A few promises of rewards in heaven, and a few assurances that “God’s way is best.” But altogether, it was rather arbitrary.

In this religious system, I spent most of my teenage years trying desperately to please God. 

I regularly heard sermons about how to “be on fire for Christ” or “be used of God”. Always, it was the same thing: Read your Bible more. Pray more. Stop sinning. Do more. Try harder. (Sometimes, I was even the one preaching these sermons.)

Reading Keller’s words on revival, it was liking hearing those sermons again.

I know this is not what Keller believes or teaches, but that subtle current seems present in this particular line of thinking. To be fair, he says that Christians must present sex “within a God-intended framework that imbues it with meaning and value”. I couldn’t agree more. However, he also suggests that we must “deal with our sex issues” before we see revival in our generation. This is backwards. Healthy sexuality grows naturally from healthy spirituality, not vice versa. If we must overcome sin before we can turn to God, where is the power to overcome sin? This was my perpetual conundrum during those years of attempting to please God.

It was an impossible cycle, and I was trapped. 

As a teenager, I literally thought I could chart my “spiritual health” on a line graph, with my only data point being how many times per day I snuck an eager glance at the lingerie section of a J.C. Penney catalog. I believed that the sum total of my relationship with God could be measured by my ability to control my sexual urges. Of course, this was a ludicrously flawed approach to spirituality.

If young people today are hesitant to turn to God, it’s not because “His opinions on sex are restrictive”. It’s because they think that following God is primarily about morality, about “not having sex”. It’s because they see Christianity as a list of beliefs to accept and sins to avoid. It’s because, despite all the right teaching and doctrine, it’s so often just about “trying harder”.

Morality should never be the goal of our spirituality, but rather the result. 

Through the power of the Gospel, Jesus sets us free from sexual bondage. He heals our brokenness and invites us to live as citizens of His Kingdom. This is the beginning of revival. This is a compelling narrative. This is something worth believing in.

Technically, Keller was right; my deepest season of doubt was shortly after I started having sex. I was newly married, and a junior at college. But it wasn’t the sex that inspired my doubt. It was coming face to face with the deep questions of my heart and searching hard for answers.

Looking back, I’m so grateful for that year when I prayed without knowing if anyone was listening. I realize now that I was never far from God. But it wasn’t my own moral efforts that brought me close to Him again. It was a desperate prayer, whispered in scattered moments, scrawled on my hand so I couldn’t forget:

“I believe. Help my unbelief.”

 [ Image: B. Werk ]

Update: Please take a moment to read this clarifying comment on the original post.

Related: Is Doubt an STD? (by Rachel Held Evans)

If you’ve struggled with doubt, would you be so kind as to leave a comment with a bit of your story? 

07 May 00:09

What Would Jesus... Blog?

by noreply@blogger.com (Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary)

A couple of weeks ago, I invited my friend to write for my blog because I knew she would give us something amazing and challenging and I knew she would do it beautifully. But when her bio popped up in my inbox, I have to admit, my heart sank - because I knew that for some people the biggest challenge in Jenna's piece would not be her words, but her life. I knew that for some finding the Truth in her work would be impossible.

Jenna wrote about our very own forefathers, the plight of the enslaved Israelites, the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, and the God we find in the middle of it all; God with us, intimate and close... She wrote to us with words and stories straight out of The Bible, and still, still, after some people read her brief bio, they were unable to appreciate the Truth in her written work, unable to grasp how Jesus could fit into a message from a Jew. Or worse, a gay Jew.

Some were offended that I would allow, let alone invite, my beloved friend to share this little space on the web. They were livid. One even wrote to let me know she was taking her ball and going home. “I'm unfollowing”, she said. And then she explained that she had enjoyed this blog over the years, but sharing my internet home with a gay Jew was just too much. She's outta here. And then she dropped  this bomb of internet hilarity:

Does Jesus love those living in sin? yes! Did Jesus spend time with sinners? yes! Would Jesus invite an unrepentant sinner to post on His blog? no.”

Honestly? I burst out laughing at the thought of Blogger Jesus gazing at his laptop at noon in his pajamas, sipping cold coffee, checking stats, linking his post on Facebook... Hilarious, right?!... But I still had to ask myself, What would Jesus blog? And Who would Jesus let guest post?

I wondered about the Jesus who walks us down the road, from Jerusalem to Jericho, past the Priest and the Levite and draws us into the path of the heathen Samaritan from whom we learn a valuable lesson. I pondered the Jesus who hand picked a posse of twelve sinners; guys who continually competed for power and attention, who questioned and doubted and so often misunderstood. I wondered about the Jesus who asked the man who would ultimately betray him to join him at the table. Would Jesus invite an unrepentant sinner to kiss him on the cheek and lead him to slaughter?

*shrugs* ...Perhaps we'll never know.

Fine. I'm sorry. I get sarcastic when I'm fired up.

But Jesus, the story teller, shows us over and over how to look at the world with different eyes. So when you ask me if I can reconcile the message of my gay Jewish friend with my own faith in Jesus, the answer is – Yes. And it's not hard.

I view everything through the filter of my Faith. I see the whole world and everything in it through the lens of Christianity. I am, lest there be a doubter among you, a Christian. As a follower of Christ, and as a believer in a triune God, I simply find Jesus present. And that's a gift because His presence makes me unafraid to engage the world, unafraid to ask questions, unafraid to answer them, unafraid to pass the wine and break bread with the those who some would slander and burn. Unafraid because “in him we live and move andhave our being”.  (⬅ See what I did there?)

Here's a shocker: I have deep and meaningful relationships with all kinds of people. I have atheist friends, and Jewish friends, Buddhist, Muslim, agnostic friends. I love them all. I also have gay friends and straight friends, and a few in the middle, and I have married friends and single friends and friends with kids and without. (For the record, I normally refer to them as simply “my friends”. No more. No less. Likewise, and gratefully, I have never been introduced by any of them as “the straight Christian”.) These people enrich my life and challenge me to know why I believe what I believe. My friends enrich my Faith. And I love them for that. Every last one of them is welcome at my table, around my children, into my inner-circle, and ~ you guessed it ~ on my blog.

But don't be disappointed if you don't find me lobbing verses of scripture at them like live grenades. In my experience, I've come to find that people don't generally respond well to being bombarded with Bible Napalm. And, if you're that guy? Stop it! I know you're well-meaning, but you just sound like a dick... When my friends and I discuss the differences in our Faith, we do it respectfully, gently, gracefully. We speak with Love for one another. It takes us far...

Conversations with Jenna are a highlight for me, I so often find God in them. So when she sent me her piece on being stuck in “the middle”, I couldn't wait to share it. I believed it would be beneficial to you. I believed you could be Blessed by it, and indeed many of you were. But some of you let her bio
clog your filter, rendering you blind. You were unable to see the beauty of God to be found in her words because of your own lack of vision. And I wonder how it is that you make your way in the world, afraid to find meaning outside of Christiandom. Have you not been moved by Ghandi? Not inspired by Whitman? Do you not find beauty in the work of Tchaikovsky or Handel? Does Elie Wiesel not just break your heart for the things of God? 

Unfollow if you must. I'm cool with that. But I can't help but feel like you're the one who's missing out. 


.....          .....         .....

Even now, I dread that some of you will try to turn this post into a “gay debate”. Someone will miss the point because someone always does. It's exhausting. Please try to understand what we're talking about before you comment. And keep in mind that my friends are probably reading these comments - so be respectful, or you'll be deleted. 

I'm asking. 

What do you think? What Would Jesus Blog?

07 May 00:07

Guest Post: The Ever Changing Faces of God

by Dianna Anderson

Dani is an obsessive geek, skeptical feminist, graphic designer and struggling writer over at crooked neighbor, crooked heart.
___________________________________

Trigger warning: self harm, sexual assault

"I did it to myself. Mea culpa, mea culpa."

I would rock back and forth, muttering those words to myself, scratching my arms and legs until they almost bled, eyes squeezed shut to keep out the images I'd just emblazoned into my mind.

You're a girl, I scolded myself. Girls aren't supposed to want sex. You're nothing but a filthy whore. You're robbing your husband; you'll have nothing to give him. You're disgusting and vile and worthless. Only evil women have desires like this.

You see, believing that my highest calling was to be a wife and mother, it occurred to me that I was ill-prepared for the physical intimacy that marriage entails. Since I was told that frequent good sex was something I owed my husband, and since sex is generally a taboo subject in conservative Christianity, I did what I thought was the most reasonable thing for me to do. I decided to learn about sex from the privacy of the internet so I would be prepared when I got married.

What started as an educational exercise, however, turned into something I thought was a fight for my eternal soul.

I begged God to take away my desires. I begged, pleaded, screamed, wracked my body with temporary scars and shaking sobs. And yet they remained. I hated myself. I thought this must be my thorn in the flesh, and in some moments I even hated God for making me this way if there was no release.

And God was someone who would first make me a sexual being, then condemn me for it. He gave me desires and needs without the means to fulfill them or the decency to end my suffering.

_______________________________________

"Your...hair...smells...good," he breathed into my ear. I'd stopped struggling — he was surprisingly strong for someone wheelchair-bound. My breast throbbed with pain as his grip tightened, my back twisted oddly as I was being pulled halfway painfully into his lap. His guardian and our professor sat across the room, talking, oblivious.

It took a long time for them to notice. Even then, my teacher did nothing — my attacker’s guardian was my salvation. As he was being pried off of my body finger by finger, he stretched to kiss me. "I don't want this to be my first kiss!" my brain screamed as I tried to twist away. He managed to plant a kiss on my jaw anyway. It occurred to me that perhaps this was God's punishment for my sexual desire — that my sexual desire made me a sexual object to be consumed against my will.

The next class, my teacher caught up with me. "So, he has wandering hands, huh? He apparently has a way with the ladies."

I was horrified. Shaken. Enraged. Confused. Terrified.

He saw...and did nothing.

And I couldn’t shake the image of God as that teacher, watching silently from across the room, doing nothing.

_______________________________________

I had just begun dating my husband, and I was quickly becoming terrified at his level of commitment to me. I tried to push him away as hard as I possibly could with the only thing I knew would surely be repugnant enough to open his eyes. I launched attack after attack, explaining how unlovable I was, how dirty I was, how worthless I was.

He batted it all aside with kindness. He spoke life and truth into my wilderness of self-hatred. He didn't see me as a project. He didn't see me as a collection of moral failures. He didn't even see me as an object for his pleasure. He saw me as a person, full of inherent worth. He saw me. And he loved me.

It took a long time to accept his love. But when I did, all I could think was, "This...this must be what Jesus is like. This is what people mean when they talk about a God of love. I haven't seen it before. This is grace, this is peace, this is hope, this is love. I understand now."

He was the first person for whom love did not include shaming or controlling me.

And God started to become someone I could love, trust, and believe in.

_______________________________________

That is...until we had sex.

"Your relationship is ungodly," my friends told me. "If he was the one God wanted for you, he wouldn't have tempted you to sin like this. The fact that you gave in to it shows you're not ready for a relationship, let alone marriage."

And I was confused, so confused. Would God really want to take away the one person who most convinced me of His goodness, simply because we made love? People kept telling me how sex before marriage could never be about love — it could only be about sinful lust and defying the work and word of God. But my experience was completely the opposite. Having sex with him had been the most loving, healing thing I had experienced in my life. And yet it was evil?

And God was someone for whom good and evil could be arbitrarily defined, no matter the consequences to His followers.

_______________________________________

"You do have some polycystic ovaries."

My breath caught in my chest and I stared at her, not quite ready to understand what she was saying. "You mean...you mean I have PCOS?" I somehow managed to keep my voice steady.

She didn't quite meet my gaze. "Yes. We'll continue with your birth control, and when you're ready to talk about having kids, come in and we'll see if you can."

I felt dizzy. My mind flitted back to a sermon that a trusted mentor once gave about Hannah and Elkanah. He posited that Hannah should have been content with Elkanah's love and not continued to ask God for children. That when women were barren in the Bible, it was God that had closed their wombs and they should unquestioningly accept God's judgment in their lives.

And God’s judgment seemed clear. He was holding all of my sins against me, and I was found lacking.

_______________________________________

After years of squelching doubts and emotions and fears, I finally began talking.

I began to tentatively share my questions, my problems, my fears with a small but growing group of people. They told me about a God who really doesn't hold past sins over our heads to beat us with. They told me about a God who understands fear, anger, pain, and doesn't shame or punish for those feelings but instead listens, loves, cherishes, and comforts. They told me about a God who isn't abusive, who isn't capricious, who isn't cruel. I hardly dared to believe them.

But there it was, that seed of hope.

And God became someone I really felt I could wrestle with, because He might really want to engage my heart and mind, no matter what that meant. Even if it meant waiting until I was ready.

_______________________________________

"My friend called me, wanted me to come over to see him at his house. I hung up the phone, and walked to the front door, and stopped. God wouldn't let me leave."

My head was pounding with a migraine that made lights blindingly bright, sounds unbearably loud, and made my stomach lurch. The preacher’s voice droned on, each rise and fall of his tone piercing my head. I held onto my husband for dear life, my only physical stronghold in an environment that made me taste fear.

"The Holy Spirit finally released me, and I walked over to my friend’s house to find people sitting on the front porch, crying. He just shot himself." My stomach lurched again, and I felt my husband stiffen beside me. "He'd been sitting in his room by the window with his gun, waiting for me. God worked salvation in my life that day. If I'd arrived any earlier, he could have shot me."

By the time the closing prayer had been uttered, I was being steered to our car — I was shaking uncontrollably from pain and rage, afraid I would be sick or pass out.

But as we drove away from the church building, my head eased, then stopped hurting altogether. My stomach calmed. Lights became normal, sounds became bearable.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks, how emotionally and physically toxic that environment was.

I looked at my husband and said, "I think this is our last Sunday."

His jaw was set grimly. "I wholeheartedly agree."

And for one day, I was convinced that God was not the monster that this man was preaching. I didn't know what He was exactly, but I knew more than I knew anything that He was not someone who would sacrifice life like that.

_______________________________________

Now? I struggle daily with my view of God. I suppose it's only natural, considering the many faces He has had in my life. I'm still sorting through them all. Some days, I don't even think He has a face. Some days, I don't think He exists — or exists in a form that isn't pure evil. 

But the struggling is worth it. Because it's finally allowed. I've seen goodness and kindness in people that makes God seem so near. I've seen interpretations of Scripture that seem like they can override the way I was taught to read and understand the Bible. I catch glimpses of a God who isn't a narcissistic sociopathic monster, and those glimpses are enough to keep me searching.

And so now, God is a mystery. But I am resting in that mystery, in the in-between of the faith of my childhood and the faith of my adulthood, waiting.

And I think He's okay with that.

07 May 00:04

Abuse & The Church Wrap-Up: The Stories We Didn’t Tell (and a list of resources)

by Rachel Held Evans

(Note: Look for Sunday Superlatives later this evening!)

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

- Matthew 11:28

As we come to the end of our weeklong series, “Into the Light: A Series on Abuse and the Church,” I feel weary and heavy-laden, in need of rest. I am struck by a special longing for Easter, which, believe it or not, is just around the corner.

I am also struck with a feeling of incompleteness. We covered a lot of ground this week, and we told a lot of stories, but there are still many stories we didn’t tell—stories of human trafficking and sex slavery, stories of men abused by women, stories of redemption and reconciliation, stories of abuse on the mission field. Each story is unique, and each story is sacred. And so I hope the series has inspired you treat your own story, and the stories of others, as such. May we all be inspired to speak with more truth, more conviction, more care, and more bravery about this difficult topic, so that our awareness doesn’t end here, but continues to grow, until the day when all things are reconciled to the source of love, and the story of abuse is only a memory.

I’ll conclude the series with a list of resources and links to posts from others this week. Please feel free to add to the list in the comment section.

Into the Light: A Series on Abuse and the Church

Series Introduction

The Scar of Sexual Abuse by Mary DeMuth

No More Silence: An Interview with Boz Tchividjian of G.R.A.C.E.

"Today's Journey": Thoughts on Healing from Grace Biskie

Proper Treatment for Sexual Abuse: 7 Questions to Consider

"God is Love" by Sarah Moon

Dianna Anderson on Rape Culture and Victim Blaming

"Don't Talk About It": Reflections on Spiritual Abuse by Kristen Rosser

Out of the Shadows: Getting Help Inside and Outside the Church

"They tried to 'fix' me with fists and cricket bats"

The abusive teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl

Spiritual Abuse Awareness Synchroblog

Day 1 Link-Up

Day 2 Link-Up

Day 3 Link-Up

The Rebel Diaries

Additional Resources / Domestic Violence

National Domestic Abuse Hotline - 1−800−799−SAFE(7233)

Signs of Abuse and Abusive Relationships

Abuse Counseling & Treatment

Peace and Safety in the Christian Home

Quivering Daughters

CBE - Abuse Resources

Seven Reasons Women Stay in Abusive Relationships and How to Defeat Each One of Them”  

Restored: Ending Violence Against Women

The Rave Project

Project Dinah

Leslie Vernick 

Faith and Freedom 

Not This Girl

Abuse/Dating Violence Statistics 

RainnOrg: Statistics 

Additional Resources / Abuse in a Christian Environment 

G.R.A.C.E.

"When the Child Abuser Has a Bible" by Victor Veith and Boz Tchividjian

Abuse in the Church DVD Curriculum 

"Saving Bathsheba" by Rachel Marie Stone 

Suffer the Children: Developing Effective Church Policies on Child Maltreatment

"Fear in Fanda" - Sexual Abuse at a Missionary Boarding School

Diane Langberg on Sexual Abuse Within Christian Organizations 

"Sexual Abuse on the Mission Field"

Quivering Daughters

"10 Ways to Spot Spiritual Abuse" and "What to Do if You Are in a Spiritual Abusive Situation” by Mary DeMuth

Top 10 Signs of a Spiritually Abusive Church – Part 1Part 2 by Elizabeth Esther  

“Tips for Recovering from a Spiritually Abusive Church” and “Tips for “Moving On” from an abusive church experience” by Elizabeth Esther

Wellspring Retreat & Resource Center

Boundaries: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life by Cloud and Townsend

The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse: Recognizing and Escaping Spiritual Manipulation and False Spiritual Authority Within the Church by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen

Additional Resources / Sexual Abuse  

Thin Places by Mary DeMuth

The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Child Sexual Abuse by Dan B. Allender

Diane Langberg on The Spiritual Impact of Abuse

Child Sexual Abuse: Startling Statistics

Additional Resources/ Counseling & Therapy

Global Trauma Recovery Institute

The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology

Phil Monroe

Dan Allender

Diane Langberg

"3 Signs of Repentance Every Church Leader Should Know" by Dr. Philip Monroe

"What Forgiveness Isn't" by Denise George

Additional Resources / Child Abuse

Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline

"Blow the Whistle on Child Abuse"

Child Welfare Information Gateway

G.R.A.C.E. 

Suffer the Children: Developing Effective Church Policies on Child Maltreatment

Elizabeth Esther on Michael and Debi Pearl

A Silence of Mockingbirdsby Karen Spears Zacharias

Court Appointed Special Advocates

Additional Resources / Bullying

The Bully Project (The documentary film, “Bully,” is especially eye-opening)

StopBullying.Gov

Understanding Bullying” – Psychology Today

Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy by Emily Bazelon

It Gets Better Project

***

This is obviously an incomplete list. So please feel free to use the comment section to help me fill in the gaps with your own favorite resources on abuse

07 May 00:04

The abusive teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl

by Rachel Held Evans

This is the tenth post of our weeklong series, Into the Light: A Series on Abuse and the Church, which features the stories of abuse survivors, along with insights from professional counselors, legal experts, and church leaders about how to better prepare Christians to prevent and respond to abuse.  Through the course of the series, we will be discussing child abuse, spiritual abuse, sexual violence and abuse,  domestic violence, and bullying. Check out the previous posts here

Before we conclude the series tomorrow morning with a list of resources and some final thoughts, I wanted to share a previous post of mine in which I issue a warning about the abusive teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl. I think it's important to speak bluntly and directly about this because the Pearl books remain inexplicably popular within many evangelical churches, but their teachings are incredibly damaging. So if your church is considering doing a study around Debi Pearl's Created to Be His Helpmeet or any of the Pearls' "No Greater Joy" material, please consider passing this post along to the leadership.

***

Lydia Schatz was seven years old when her parents beat her to death with a quarter-inch plastic  tubing for apparently mispronouncing a word. The couple, who were later prosecuted, claimed to be following the “biblical” parenting techniques advocated by Michael and Debi Pearl.

Lydia is one of three children whose death has been linked to the teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl. 

Through their “No Greater Joy Ministries,” Michael and Debi Pearl teach a method of child discipline that centers around “breaking a child’s will.” The Pearls advocate using switches on babies and young as six months, and spanking older children with belts and plumbing tubes. Their book, To Train Up a Child has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and, under the guise of “biblical discipline,” encourages parents to beat their children into submission, withhold food, and hose them down outside when they soil themselves. 

Here’s a quote from to give you an idea of their approach: 

Never reward delayed obedience by reversing the sentence. And, unless all else fails, don’t drag him to the place of cleansing. Part of his training is to come submissively. However, if you are just beginning to institute training on an already rebellious child, who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.

The Pearls’ teachings have been linked to the deaths of Sean Paddock, Lydia Schatz, and Hana Grace-Rose Williams. 

My dear friend, and brave woman of valor, Elizabeth Esther has written extensively about the Pearls' abusive tactics. 

But it’s not just children who suffer from “No Greater Joys” ministries. When I was conducting research for A Year of Biblical Womanhood, I read Debi Pearl’s popular book, Created to Be His Helpmeet…which I threw across the room a total of seven times. 

The writing is awful, the biblical exegesis deplorable, but what troubles me the most is that the book reads like a manual for developing abused wife syndrome. Citing New Testament passages that instruct wives to submit to their husbands, Pearl advocates a system in which godly wives live as complete subordinates to their husbands, with no “equal rights.” 

At one point, Pearl encourages a young mother whose husband routinely beat her and threatened to kill her with a kitchen knife to stop “blabbing about his sins” and win him back by showing him more respect

Sudden aggressive outbursts are part of what it means to be a man, according to Pearl. “The wisest way to handle the aggressive husband is by not taking personal offense,” she advises. “Avoid provoking him.” 

In an appendix at the end of the book, Michael Pearl weighs in and writes: 

“Has your husband reviled you and threatened you? You are exhorted to respond as Jesus did. When he was reviled and threatened, he suffered by committing himself to a higher judge who is righteous. You must commit yourself to the one who placed you under your husband’s command. Your husband will answer to God, and you must answer to God for how you respond to your husband, even when he causes you to suffer.Just as we are to obey government in every ordinance, and servants are to obey their masters, even the ones who are abusive and surly, ‘likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands’…You can freely call your husband ‘lord’ when you know that you are addressing the one who put him in charge and asked you to suffer at your husband’s hands just as our Lord suffered at the hands of unjust authorities…When you endure evil and railing without returning it, you receive a blessing, not just as a martyr, but as one who worships God.”  

It seems the Pearls believe that a wife should submit to her husband, even if it means her death…and presumably, the death of her children. 

[The narrative of the "enduring wife" shows up in other Christian literature in more subtle ways. I wish I'd had the time to write more about this. Perhaps at a later time.]

This is wrong. I cannot state it strongly enough: No act of abuse is justified by God, and no one is called to endure abuse out of a commitment to the Bible or to Jesus.

Why bring this to your attention? Because the Pearls are inexplicably popular in certain Christian circles, and abuse in the name of God must be spoken against.

If your church is considering using books by the Pearls as part of its curriculum, please say something. If you see friends or family employing their tactics, confront them. This is not simply a matter of different parenting methods or relationship styles—like Sears vs. Ezzo, or cloth diapers vs. disposable diapers, or complementarianism vs. egalitarianism—it’s a matter of abuse. 

 There can be no more beatings, no more deaths…especially not in the name of Christ. 

***

Be sure to check out Elizabeth Esther's blog for more on this topic. See also "Why Not Train a Child?" and Libby Anne's excellent series on "Created to Be His Helpmeet." And check out my thoughts on submission in context as part of our Mutuality series. 

Tomorrow morning we will wrap up the series with a list of resources and some final thoughts. 

07 May 00:03

Sex.

by noreply@blogger.com (Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary)

My youngest son is about to turn 13, so for the next 9 months, until my oldest turns 20 (holy ape balls!), I will be Mom to three teenage boys.

That means our dinner table feels like a locker room... if locker rooms were full of nerds. The conversation tumbles easily from Xbox to music to girls to MineCraft to push ups to girls to movies to farts to money to girls to YouTube, and then back again, in an endless loop, so that over the course of one meal we come around to the subject of “girls” at least 9 times.

At least.

Girl talk inevitably leads to sex talk. And, let me tell you, if there is one thing these guys like to talk about more than girls? It's sex. So we talk about sex. Kind of a lot. And since (as far as I know) none of my children have gone and gotten married, we're mostly talking about sex of the pre-marital sort; y'know, Virginity and stuff. The Big “V”. The Sacred Gift. The Golden Ticket.... These chats are exactly as awkward as you imagine.

Obviously, my children know that I had sex before marriage because I had a kid before marriage, so there's really no getting around it. That same kid towers over me now; a full two years older than I was when his own fluttering heartbeat wound itself into mine. These days, I look at him and I think, “He can't even keep his own room clean - how the hell did I manage an infant and a full time job at that age?!”

So, yeah, I was an unwed teenage mother. Classy, I know.

But oh, it gets worse, because before I invented MTV's Teen Mom, I was a little bit of a ho-bag. Yup. I willingly did regretful things with my body, and I allowed myself to be used in regretful ways by some regretfully sleazy douchebags, perverts, and (in retrospect) probably pedophiles. Gross, I know.

I believed that sex was the best thing I had to offer the world. It was the only thing about me worth loving. And I learned, too young, that I could leverage sex to get what I wanted. My female parts had become my greatest asset. 

Then I found my way into the Church, 19 with a baby on my hip, and while I lingered on the outskirts of the Christian bubble, guess what I learned... I learned I was right! Apparently, even God was super concerned with my vagina, and where it had been, and what it had touched. Apparently, my genitals were like a portal that led straight to my soul. I had been muddied - and everybody knows that once you muck up clean water, you can't unmuck it.

It took me a lot of years and a lot of conversations with God (and with people who know more about God than me) to understand that everything I believed about my own sexuality was built on two huge lies.

The first comes from our culture, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage isn't a big deal.

The second is from the Church, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage is the biggest deal of all the deals ever.

One allowed me to give it away freely, convinced I would carry no burden. The other forced me to carry a spirit crushing load.

Both are complete crap.

Sex matters. It's the most vulnerable thing you'll ever do with another human being. Commitment breeds intimacy, and intimacy is what makes sex freaking amazing. I'm not gonna lie, you can have hot sex outside of a committed relationship – but mostly it's gonna be like... clumsy... and goopy... and ew. The better you know your partner, the better your sex will be. So basically what I'm saying is that wedding night sex is kinda “Meh.”, and five years sex is all “Yes!”, but 18 years sex is like “WOAH!!!” So go ahead and wait. Wait and enjoy the waiting, and then bask in all those learning experiences with your most trusted friend.

But.

If you've already gone down that path, you knocked boots, you got 'er done, you did the nasty.... and now you're not sure, or maybe you feel dirty and you're rocking the walk-of-shame-face day in and day out, you need to hear this -- I mean it, you really need to hear this...

You've had sex outside of marriage? *gasp* So what! You are so much more than your sexuality. And the God of the Universe, the one who turns whores into heroes, and drunks into prophets, and liars and murderers into leaders and kings - that God? He made peace with you and me and our promiscuous, pathetic attempts at love a long, long time ago. He gave you a Redeemer. Shame is no longer your burden. 
...

Do I want my boys to wait? Absolutely. And they know it! But I refuse to tie their value as a human being to their junk like a shiny red balloon.

I want them to know that sex is sacred. And I want them to believe that it matters. I hope they will esteem the bodies of the girls in their lives, as they hold their own bodies to the same high standard.

But I also want them to understand that the kind of sexual purity the Bible calls us to doesn't begin or end with Virginity - It's way bigger than that. It's way more significant. And it's way harder to hold on to. 

… ….. ….

To wait, or not to wait? That is the question...

07 May 00:01

To the girl who feels guilty for sleeping with someone.

by / / / / lauren nicole / / / /

Preface: I am writing this because during my years as an unmarried woman having sex, I felt that everything written, spoken, or preached to me was solely to persuade me to stop having sex. I desperately wished someone would have abandoned the topic in order to speak to me where I was at, without their desperate attempts to end sex in my life. Even when most had good motives, I needed someone to write a letter to me, Lauren, and not to The Not-A-Virgin-Anymore. This evening, I rallied my past and my present, and wrote the words I craved for years and years.

Hello, lovely.

Before we begin, would you get a little piece of paper? Please?

Write out your full name.

You are this particular woman. You cannot escape it. Do you know this?

You will never be another. You cannot escape it. Do you know this?

Tomorrow, the day after, and all the days: You are this woman.

And thank goodness, because you are the only person who deserves to make the most of everything you have experienced this far. 

And thank goodness, because you have within you a capacity for Love that you would not believe even if you were told.*

* * *

I want to say that I see you. I am you. I was you, a long time ago. I will be you. We are.

Love sees you. Love knows you. Love adores you.

Goodness, hate, closeness, abandonment, purity, brokenness, wholeness, confusion, clarity, trying so hard, and given up. He looks at you and sees nothing but the infant girl that was born into this magnificent world, this middle ground, this holding place. This universe in which we only see in part.

You are three years old. You are five. You are seven. You are standing in the grass, in the backyard, by the impatiens, by the trees. You laugh at the wind, you smile for a camera, because It Is. Because You Are. You know nothing, except how to Be.

Joy, infinite, as it was created to be. Innocence, eternal. Embedded permanently into every cell of your being as your shoulders caved and your back broke as you wept that you needed Something, Someone – and Love promised to be there. Innocence, eternal.

Do you know that this is what you are? Do you know that this is who you are? Do you know that you are white as snow, pure as gold, spotless as your baby teeth in the family videos splashed across your mother’s TV that you will never again sit in front of because she no longer sees you the way that Love does?

Do you know that condemnation, loneliness, hatred, failure, and Innocence Lost are only lies you have thrust upon yourself**, and words that Friends and Church and Family have pelted at the sky in a way that has fractured your heart as they have rained upon you and everyone around you?

Do you know that you are still Joy, infinite; Innocence, eternal; The Name Of Your Heart, written upon His hand?

These are things I forgot. These are things that broke over me in the shower, in my bed, in his bed, in our bed, on my walks, in my mirror, in my pages, in their pews, in my home, in my breathing and numbness and depression and even in my laughter, my happiness, my beauty.

These are things that I put aside as I sang that Love is here and Love still remains, that He is my Father and I am His daughter. These are things that I left at the church door, and clothed myself with again as soon as I left How Great Thou Art. These are things that I remembered and remembered well but only so long as I did not, could not face that which we have named That One Thing.

And so I fall into a thousand pieces alone, and with you, Girl who feels guilty and confused and angry at the hypocrisy and the expectation and the Great Ache.

And so I remember the nights I felt it was wrong, the mornings I felt it was nothing at all; always backwards for me and never anyone else. But grief, it comes with the night, and joy, it comes in the morning. Maybe this is a great truth that the Lover has given us in all things, not just his own.

* * *

I write to you, past-present-and-future Self, and to you, girl-I-do-not-know-by-name-but-can-see-from-here: I write to you because I wish that someone had written to me. 

I wish that someone had just stop, stop, STOPPED for one moment and seen me as a person with a heart, a mind, with intelligence, with thoughts and feelings and with damned good reasons – and not as the statistical young white Evangelical female who was raised right and fell out of virginity, left to sit silent in her bracket until she picked up the Purity Ring once again and joined the ranks of Did It Wrong But Am Back To Right Again.

I wish that someone had let up on me for just once, because I know all of these things they tell me. I fear everything they scare me with. I think about all the revelations-that-keep-you-from-sexual immorality before you preach them to me. I know what you believe, what I believe, but I am Woman and so help me God I am not A Belief.

Maybe we chose It because We Are Now and we are scared that later may never come. Maybe we chose It because we knew the risks and we rolled the dice in favor of passion, love, comfort, and warmth. Maybe we chose It because we were terrified of the dark nights and even darker mornings. Maybe we chose It because They told us not to. Maybe we chose It because It knocked on our door and embraced us and promised to never let us go and It arrived in feelings and waves, and not in conscious decisions like we always thought It would. Maybe we chose It because It was and is everything we want, and do you know, it will be okay even then – even then when we are in that place? Maybe we chose It because we felt there was no better option. Maybe we did not choose It at all; some of us do not have the luxury of choice in a world where Men can thrust our decisions upon us as they pin our hands behind the arch of our back and repeat the words we’d heard from another man so very long ago.

Maybe we still do not know, and now we see the ghosted image of who we were, reflected back at us as we sit in ice cream parlor window seats and write in hopes of finally understanding.

Maybe the mothers and fathers and preachers and friends and everyone around us want to love us, protect us, but their words sound like things much more dangerous than the hand on your leg and the kiss on your chest. Darling, I know. I know.

* * *

I write the words I wish had appeared long ago, on a piece of paper on my kitchen table:

You are still you. I swear to you, you are.

Your future has not been ruined.

Your value remains.

Opportunity has not been lost.

These things sink deeper than your skin, yes, but God has sealed your heart in His Name and the great mystery is that we are made Untouchable by Grace.

You are not damaged.

Your wholeness comes not in Right-ness but in Love given to you by your Maker, and learning how to see yourself as He does.

You are capable of making any decision you wish to make today, or tomorrow.

It is okay if you cannot make the change you wish you could today.

It is okay to not be strong.

It is okay that you are confused.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ***, and this more than includes That One Thing.

You will give birth to a resiliency that shines brighter than the sun.

The heart is a muscle and it operates like one; these things strengthen you. You have not given your heart away and lost your ability to take it back. Women have survived and risen up despite brutality, gang rape, famines, the Holocaust, assault, torture, barrenness, and divorce: You will not be destroyed or permanently handicapped by a severed romance or loss of virginity.

You will marry a man that turns your past into a shadow, and your old self into a whisper that sings praises of redemption. Your bad decisions, your good-decisions-gone-wrong, your I’m-not-sure decisions will all swell into a wave of Peace as you realize that the man who truly Loves you has just taken an oath before God to see you as a new creation and he rejoices in the strength you have derived from Every Day You Have Ever Lived.

You are still you. Put it on a post-it and stare it down daily.

Forgiveness and understanding do not come only after you gather the healing and courage and strength to leave; they arrived and attached themselves to you the day you first asked them to. And they will stay with you every waking moment. You will find more strength in that fact alone than you ever will find within yourself.

God has not forsaken you and refused to return until you forsake That One Thing.**** It is in the deepest moments of questioning that you will hear Him, again and again, and get to know Him more than any other time in your life. Do not miss out on them simply because you think He has nothing to say until you can Heal Yourself or Change Your Ways. It is in our weakness that his strength is perfected.

* * *

And so, here is everything I wish had been said to me. Here we are. With our decisions to sleep with him, or to not sleep with him. With our desires to change, or our desires to stay the same.

For me, I wanted both.

But I only had the strength for him. For them. The one who asked nothing from me or of me, and who gave love and comfort and pleasure and rest. The one who held me when I cried and kept my body alive when I could not do it myself. The one who did not ask me to change, to become someone I was not, nor to face my weakness.

I understand. I believe that for some of us, this is necessary to our story. Sometimes it feels as though others chose the things that have become our story, and that is okay. Weakness, whether it be physical, emotional, or mental – it is something to be taken seriously, and speaks of our Great Need for one another.

I will tell you that one day, in a moment of extreme pain, I heard a whisper that flamed into a burning sensation in my chest. I heard it say, “I require nothing but weakness. We are still here, and we are still here together. I have written your name on the palm of my hand and I have called you in the darkness so that you would know it was I.”

I gave my weakness a chance. I gave his strength a chance. I fell, and fell often, as we all do. It was new for me, and I found a new Love.

I pray for you, as I do for myself, that we would continue to learn how to allow ourselves to be weak in order that we may find a Love that transcends everything we do know and everything we don’t.

But remember: no matter your weakness, or your strength, you are alive. And you are Joy, infinite; Innocence, eternal.

Do not leave their sides. They have not left yours.


* Look and watch– and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. Habakkuk 1:5
** I will remember their sins no more. Hebrews 8:12
*** Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:12
**** Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5

- Comments addressing or attempting to derive my position on “is sex a sin or not” will be moderated. Thank you for understanding. - 
07 May 00:00

Why Marriage as a Metaphor is a Failure

by Dianna Anderson

On Wednesday last week, I wrote that: “We, the church, are the Imago Dei. We, the people, are his banner carriers. And when one of us falls, someone else will carry the banner while others help the fallen.”

I’ve already explained a bit of what I mean when I talk about the image of God as that of community rather than individual corporeality. To me, the individualistic tendency to say that “I,” as an individual, created being, are “made in the image of God” unnecessarily truncates and separates us from a necessary understanding of what it means be made in the image of God. The verse from which we get the saying “made in the image of God,” indeed, is a corporate reality – “male and female, he created them.”

It is important, when we discuss the image of God, to always place it within the corporate reality. Unfortunately, language is an insufficient reality to provide us with the metaphors that we need to understand this properly. Metaphors for the Trinity fall short and easily find their ways into heresies, so images of God tend to fall short as well.

I think the closest thing we get to a proper understanding of the image of God is Paul’s instructions about the Body of Christ (sidenote: it’s interesting to me that even in trying to move away from the image of God as a corporeal singularity, we use our corporeal reality as reference points).

Paul says:

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

I propose that these verses – moreso than the ‘your body is a temple’ or even the metaphors of marriages – are the lens through which we must look at both the role of the universal Church and of God’s actions within the world.* Many complementarians, as we’ve discussed, tend to use marriage as the primary metaphor for the relationship between the Church and Christ, asserting that the symbolism of a submissive wife and a leading husband are the key to understanding God.

That, to me, is an unnecessary limitation of metaphor and a truncation of the glorious diversity and beauty of the Body of Christ in which we participate. A wife, in of herself, cannot represent the Church. She is simply not enough as an individual (and the husband also is not nearly enough as an individual). We require all the various support systems and people playing their parts – as God has gifted them – to understand the fullness and richness that is the Body of Christ. By looking to marriage as a primary metaphor, we miss so much.

And yet, that is what we purposefully do when we talk, as John Piper does, about marriage as a primary metaphor for the relationship between God and his people. It makes the church homogenous – a singular person responding to another singular person. It misses all the diversity and grace and passion that the Church as a Body of diverse human beings is.

Look at it this way. CS Lewis talked about the diversity of persons that develop within friendships. Different friends bring different parts of ourselves out. When I hangout on G+ with friends on Sunday nights, I am a different person than I am with my coworkers on a Monday. This is not two-facedness or phoniness, as authenticity as a cultural value demands, but merely a function of how varying relationships work.

By using marriage as a metaphor, we necessarily flatten that diversity. We cannot talk of marriage as a primary metaphor because a wife is not just a wife. A wife (hopefully) has friends who support her in different ways than her husband does, and hopefully a husband likewise. Each of those people come together to make the wife who she is, and likewise for the husband.

I am, in many ways, an amalgamation of the influences my varying friendships and relationships through my life have had on me. I would not be myself without the community within which I exist, and I realize this most necessarily when I am trying to survive alone.

This is what the community of Christ and the image of God looks like – it is people bringing out the best in each other, in all our brokenness, working toward a common goal. It is people picking each other up, encouraging progress toward who we truly are. A faith lived alone is necessarily a faith lacking, just as a marriage attempted to live within a vacuum will be a necessarily lacking marriage. Rather than looking at the image of God as an individual persona – through looking to marriage as a primary metaphor – we must encourage each other to see the image of God in each and every relationship, replicating the relationships of love that exist within the Trinity.

This is what it means to be the Body of Christ – the push and pull and messiness of necessary, every day relationship, iron sharpening iron. The group of friends laughing at the table in the college cafeteria are, to me, a better metaphor for the image of God and the relationship of God to humanity than any marriage metaphor could possibly be.

_____________

*Please excuse the inexact philosophical language – for the time being, I’m functioning from the assumption that God is both inside and outside our stream of time, which may or may not be a ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. It’s too much of a rabbit hole to explicate here.

06 May 23:57

Why I Do Feel Like an Evangelical: Ten Themes of Evangelical Cultural History (Part II)

by Carson T. Clark

Preface

Allow me to be candid. As a regular critic of American evangelicalism myself, it has been my overwhelming experience that the vast majority of my fellow critics, in-house and elsewhere, are simply ignorant.11.This two-part series isn’t ontological in nature. I’m not exploring whether or not I am an evangelical Christian. As I’ve explored in many past blog entries, the answer to that is yes. What I’m exploring here is psychological in nature; I’m looking at my simultaneous feelings of alterity and affinity toward American evangelicalism’s culture. Theirs is usually a well-intentioned albeit ideologically laden, factually ignorant, and blatantly myopic perspective that exhibits a near absolute dearth of historical understanding. It’s often said that evangelicals haven’t and don’t care about social justice, for example. I couldn’t reasonably begin to disprove this accusation altogether, but it’s simplistic well beyond the point of being misleading. Such a criticism fails to take into account the critical role evangelicals played in such things as combating childhood illiteracy2.Much of their contemporary social activism is discredited because many disagree with its objectives, e.g. ending and/or limiting abortion. during the Industrial Revolution or ending the Transatlantic Slave Trade.2 In fact, I would suggest that many of the movement’s past and present virtues–at least virtues from a christian perspective–are forgotten, ignored, or minimized. Below are 10 such historical themes with coinciding figures who exemplified, or exemplify, them:33.I’m not taking the time to introduce each man and explain why I put them under each category, though. If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to do a little research.

  1. Social activism: William Wilberforce, Shane Claiborne
  2. Theological precision: Jonathan Edwards, N.T. Wright
  3. Ecumenical spirit: John Mott, J.I. Packer
  4. Missionary impulse: Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot
  5. Evangelistic passion: D.L. Moody, Billy Graham
  6. Entrepreneurial vitality: Francis Asbury, Harold Ockenga
  7. Intellectual rigor: B.B. Warfield, Mark Noll
  8. Transnational humility: George Whitefield, John Stott
  9. Convicted civility: John Wesley, Richard Mouw
  10. Spiritual wrestling: Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Philip Yancey44.By the way, don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible to be evangelical and Anglican at the same time. Quite accidentally this list contains no less than six evangelical Anglicans.

Like all people, evangelical Christians possess the paradoxical human nature of being made in God’s image yet being totally marred by the fall. Not unexpectedly, then, the institutions and culture they comprise reflects that tension. Trust me. I as much as anyone else have cause to be a fierce critic of its glaring imperfections.55.Blind spots, excesses, flaws, deficiencies, hypocrisies, etc. And quite often I am. Yet I’d be remiss to emphasize one side of that paradox to the exclusion of the other. I love evangelicalism. Each of the historical themes listed above66.And many others, for that matter. have seeped deep into the soil of my life; they’ve been and continue to be an instrumental part of my psychological, intellectual, relational, and spiritual formation. As often as I hate evangelical culture, and as much as its characteristics are foreign to not only who I am but also who I aspire to be, I cannot deny feeling this deep resonance with many of the movement’s ideals. Is it any wonder, then, that I often do feel like an evangelical?

Click here to read “Why I Don’t Feel Like an Evangelical: Four Characteristics of Evangelical Culture (Part I) .”

06 May 23:57

Why I Don’t Feel Like an Evangelical: Four Characteristics of Evangelical Culture (Part I)

by Carson T. Clark

Preface1

In Reformed scholar Stephen J. Nichols’ 2008 book, Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ, he describes American Christianity’s uniquely malleable perception of Christ.1.This two-part series isn’t ontological in nature. I’m not exploring whether or not I am an evangelical Christian. As I’ve explored in many past blog entries, the answer to that is yes. What I’m exploring here is psychological in nature; I’m looking at my simultaneous feelings of alterity and affinity toward American evangelicalism’s culture. We’re continually recasting the biblical, first century, Jewish, incarnate, and resurrected Messiah in light of our own faddish expectations. As Nichols puts it, “Only in America would you find such books as Jesus, CEO or its sequel, Jesus in Blue Jeans.” Amidst the broad spectrum of American Christianity, he particularly focuses upon this tendency among his evangelical peers, which he suggests is a result of four widespread cultural impulses:

  1. Ahistoricism: “American evangelicals reflexively harbor a suspicions of tradition.2.Nichols continues, “This leaves American evangelicals more vulnerable than most when it comes to cultural pressures and influences. In the absence of tradition, we tend to make up a new one, one not tested by time and more or less constructed by individuals or by a limited community.” In fact, most tend toward being (rabidly) antitradition. Consequently, the past is overlooked as a significant source of direction.”2
  2. Biblicism: “American evangelicals, when they do dip into tradition, tend only to find Luther’s sola scriptura principle. The use of this principle not only denigrates tradition but also results in a naive hermeneutic and theology.”33.He continues, “The mistaken conclusion is that because American evangelicals hold firmly and prize sola scriptura, it naturally follows that all of the believes of American evangelicals naturally flow from the pages of Scripture.
  3. Foundationalism: “American evangelicals tend toward an objectivist or foundational epistemology. This is a particular way of understanding knowledge and how we come to accept certain things as knowledge. The objectivist or foundation approach posits that knowledge is fundamentally objective, even neutral.” 44.He continues, “[W]e have biases and presupposition and limited perspectives, all of which impact the way we acknowledge knowledge. [Yet m]uch of contemporary evangelicalism… operates under the assumption that we are neutral in the acquisition of knowledge.”
  4. Pietism: “American evangelicals are strongly influenced by pietism, which emphasizes personal religious experience and values devotion and practice over doctrine. For example, pietism leads us to say that imitating Christ is far better than having a right set of beliefs about who Christ is.”55.He continues, “Pietism leads to viewing Christ primarily from the lens of personal experience rather than the lenses of the Gospel pericopes or of theological formulation.”

If those are accurate descriptions of American evangelicalism’s culture–and in my experience they certainly are–that explains the latter half of my love-hate relationship with the movement. To say that I’m not a big fan of those characteristics is like saying Suge Knight isn’t a big fan of Puff Daddy or, for a younger generation, Ron Paul isn’t a big fan of Barack Obama. It’s not merely an issue of mild irritation but of profound disagreement. While I see commendable elements in each of those four characteristics, on the whole I’m principally opposed to each of them.66.At least in their forms as defined by Nichols. In fact, I would openly describe myself as a historically-oriented, tradition-honoring, post-foundationalist skeptic of pietism. Is it any wonder, then, that I often don’t feel like an evangelical?

Click here to read “Why I Do Feel Like an Evangelical: Ten Themes of Evangelical Cultural History (Part II) .”

06 May 23:56

约伯记中的上帝

by 诚之
约伯记中的上帝 - 诚之 - 守诚阁

诚之摘译自Any Place for the God of Job? - Reformation21 Blog

by Carl Trueman

约伯在整本书中都不知道他为何会受苦,但是我们知道这是上帝和控告者(撒但)之间的赌局,约伯的受苦其实真正的原因是因为他对上帝的敬虔,而这是撒但想要测验的。约伯在最后的论述(31章)中似乎已经落到忧郁症的地步,而这是非常合理的,毕竟他失去了一切。

当神最后出现在这个受了百般苦难的约伯面前时,竟然是在旋风中显现的,而不是以微小的声音临到。你如果查一查圣经中旋风这个字,看它出现的场景是什么样子,你大概会发现,那绝对不是一种很亲切、安祥的画面。此外,耶和华对他说的话,基本的意思就是要他像个男人,振作起来,虽然不是要他认罪悔改,但是也不是给他安慰,而是给他好好地上了一堂神的伟大与神的主权的神学课。而当约伯被说得哑口无言时,耶和华继续无情地对他施压,描述了两只可怕的怪兽,河马和鳄鱼。如果Robert Fyall是对的(我认为他是)【译按:应该是指这本书:Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job [New Studies in Biblical Theology] 提到的http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/1187/nm/,那么,鳄鱼就是暗指撒但;如此,就是只有在这里,上帝才给了约伯一点真正的帮助,因为祂把后台的布幕稍微拉开一点,让约伯了解到,他的受苦只是比他所可能想象到的宇宙更为复杂的宇宙的一部分而已。而不管我们的经验是怎么说的,耶和华对这个最复杂的宇宙有着最终极、最完全的掌控。

当我讲这段信息时,我强调一个事实,就是以今日世界的标准来说,甚至是以现代的牧养神学来说,耶和华怎么看都是个失败者。祂太唐突,太严厉,太缺乏同情心。特别是耶和华明知道约伯所受的苦不是因为他犯了什么罪或心里怀着恶念,这会更让人感到惊讶。约伯不必为他所受的苦负任何责任,这是约伯记整本书基本的前提。然而耶和华却在旋风中临到。这不是牧者该有的心肠吧,不是吗?

耶和华知道约伯的受苦不是约伯的错。因此,祂并没有告诉约伯省察自己,革除他的罪。另外,祂似乎对约伯没有表示任何的同情;祂在旋风中责备约伯,祂没有给他温柔鼓励的话,甚至一直到最后一章,直到约伯献祭,为他的朋友代求之后,上帝才恢复了约伯。我们也应该问,约伯被恢复的程度有多么完全?毕竟他失去的是十个孩子。是的,他又得了十个孩子。但是,孩子不是iPod,每个孩子都是独特的个体,是无可取代的。而且这些都和约伯自己的罪无关。


约伯记给我们的功课是很明显的:这是一个非常复杂、堕落和邪恶的世界;基督徒一定会受苦——嘿,我们最后都难逃一死,不管我们在其中有多么快活,所以,我们最好赶快适应这种观念;基督徒也会得忧郁症,正如他们也会得癌症和中风一样;而认为这些事情一定是信心不够,是我们个人的罪,和我们对生命的看法,或任何出于我们自己的原因,这样的观念是荒谬的,也是不合圣经的。如果你的教牧神学没有努力解决约伯记最后,在旋风中说话的神的问题,你的神学就是不足的;而你的讲道,若没有考虑到这些事情,就不是合乎圣经的讲道。我们也许可以再加上约伯记里一个重要的功课(这个功课也是诗篇所教导的):

如果你感到心情低沉、感到忧郁,不是什么了不起的事。忧郁会让人感到害怕,恐怖和黑暗。但是这件事未必是你犯了罪,就和癌症和中风未必是你犯了罪一样。最重要的是,这不表示你被上帝遗忘了,即使上帝似乎都总是在旋风中出现在你面前;而最后,这也不表示你不会与荣耀的复活有份,到那时,这个世界所有的劳苦都会如往事云烟,会被我们抛诸脑后。

原文载于:http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2013/02/any-place-for-the-god-of-job.php