When church membership is more like country club membership

When I became a member of this church (so I could work at my alma mater if I ever had the chance), the folks interviewing me seemed very anxious to tell me that they didn't have any expectations that I would serve within the church just because I was a member.  Most people spent their time supporting ministries outside of the church, and that was just fine with the church, they assured me anxiously, like they thought I would leave if I was actually expected to DO SOMETHING (in addition to all the work I had to do to get to that point).  They sold it like a benefit to get a candidate to take a job when there was another comparable offer being made elsewhere.  It made me pretty uncomfortable, to be honest.  What church lets people join and says, "We don't expect you to take your membership seriously or, like, do anything biblical or anything"?

After I expressed my frustration about this recently, a friend who has had lots of struggles with church people said maybe the church wasn't where my ministry would be.  I had pretty much reached that conclusion myself.  I've got two really attractive options I've been looking at for a while.  I made one last try at my church, and apparently there are no orphans, widows, or single parent families (which frankly seems to be the modern equivalent) in my church who need my gifts.  You know what?  That's a lie.  I call shenanigans.  I know there are people who could use my help, my gifts, my talents.  I just have no way of connecting with them, and the church leadership apparently does not consider them a priority.  (No lie, the leadership decided that they wanted to put all their efforts and money into nuclear family ministries, so tough noogies for singles, couples with no children, poor people, single-parent families, and everyone else outside of that particular group.)

Is it really so wild for me to feel like my church should be doing things for the orphans and widows who attend?  Like actively seeking out the members and knowing them and knowing their needs and doing something to help since the Bible is pretty clear about our responsibilities to these groups of people in our midst as the church.  I mean, is it really outrageous to think it should be standard for a church to do biblically commanded things like take care of their orphans and widows?  Or am I being silly and stubborn and unrealistic by demanding this happen in/through the church when I could just as easily go to a place where these needs are addressed by civil bodies?

I want to do the right thing, but it seems like my church just isn't interested.  Obviously, this means I'm in the wrong church.  (I'm looking for other options.)  I'm just so disappointed that these fallible humans have failed me again.  : )  Is this like the fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, or is that really too cynical?  I know we are strangers and pilgrims not of this world, people just passing through, but it hurts when the church only intensifies that feeling.

Maybe I just need to think of it as getting side-tracked on a quest and needing to get back out on the road in search of other opportunities.  Maybe that can keep me going for a while.

Responding to "public" sin

So a quote about how people erroneously confuse goodness with niceness got me thinking.  And then I started wondering about how this fake niceness can exist alongside the ranty rage that characterizes the politics of morality these days.  How can we have both?

This sort of thing is hard to find biblical examples for, I guess.  Some things (as Paul pointed out in Corinthians) are just clearly morally wrong and need to be addressed by the church more publicly (I think it was someone having an affair with his mother-in-law or something in that particular example).  But I thought the Bible was pretty clear that sin is something that concerns the body of Christ and needs to be addressed within the body. 

I tried to think of public examples, but, you know, the internet wasn't really around in biblical times, so there's really no direct parallel.  The closest I could get were Jesus' displays of anger in the Temple and the way He wouldn't hold back when confronted out in town by certain religious elite of the time. And that wasn't really close at all because that was still within the confines of the "religious" world.

Do you have any examples, ideas, or opinions about this idea?  (How) Ought we to respond to "public" sin as individuals?  Is it worth expending energy, or should we be using that energy more within the local body?  Paul strongly indicated that our responsibility as a member of the body is to judge sin within the body, but he did seem to think there were times to publicly take a stand when sin in the church was getting out of hand.  Is generally staying out of the public discourse really the wiser path, though?  Or does it lead to even more dire consequences than people thinking the body of Christ is made up of unreasonable, hateful jerks?

I've contemplated before whether the opposite of love (strong positive emotion) is really hate (strong negative emotion) or is actually apathy (the absence of emotion).  I find myself wondering about it again.  There's a lot of emotion swirling.  Is it better for it to be misplaced emotion than none at all?  Better to try to care for the world and fail at doing it or to just give up and not care at all?

My head hurts.  What about yours?  Any insights or other questions to throw in?

No need to be meaner

Thinking about how we conflate ethical or just conduct (goodness) and polite conduct (niceness), I said that sometimes the culture of fake niceness bothered me in the church.  This strikes me as particularly funny because it almost makes it sound like I want people to be meaner in the church.  Really, I don't.  Especially not in these politically combustible times when there is a whole lot of screaming and what appears to be hatred directed toward and away from people who go to church on Sunday.

Recently, a friend of mine posted something on Facebook that was pretty counter Evangelical culture, and someone just ripped into him in the most unreasonable and destructive way possible.  Regardless of who was right or wrong or who I agreed with on basic principle or didn't, I was horrified to watch once child of God treat another child of God like that.  There was rage and contempt and anger and fear nearly bordering on hate and not really any sign of thoughtfulness, reason, or, well, love on the part of the attacker, while the attacked remained calm and reasonable and tried to redirect the posts towards the actual issue/argument at hand.

I tried to defuse the situation, but I ended up getting slapped, as well.  Stepping back away from the cloud of acrimony and letting the hurt subside a bit, I can now more clearly recognize that there was genuine concern and even anguish, but it was applied in the most unproductive way possible in the most unproductive place possible. 

Later I was told that the person who made all the hurtful comments was a very learned man with many degrees and a lot of knowledge about theology.  Maybe this person was trying from a place of knowledge and deep conviction to speak the truth in love, but he was frankly speaking the language of unreasonable hatred and couldn't even understand that this way of handling the situation was a new kind of wrong he was bringing in and committing against the brother he believed had wronged him.  (Or the world or whoever it was he thought had been wronged and needed defending because, well, just keep reading.)

I was also told the wife of the man said that he didn't think the Bible verses I brought up applied to the situation because my referenced verses were when Jesus was talking about how we should respond when a brother sins against us, and that's not what was happening in this case.

I had a few thoughts about that.

1. In this particular case, lots of the rantings were very much obvious accusations of sins committed against the ranter (at least in his own mind).  
2. What exactly does it mean to sin against a person?  In the past, I've wondered about this idea because, really, how frequently does someone in my local body of Christ sin against me?  Not very frequently.  (It helps to be antisocial and not really have relationships with people, certainly.)  If this is how we are supposed to keep each other on the right path as members of the body of Christ, it seems kind of . . .  I'm not sure inefficient is the right word.  Hands-off?  Maybe we're not understanding this idea of sinning against a person right.  Maybe it's broader?  Maybe it's indicating that whenever one of our family members in Christ sins and we see it?  Is it that someone does something that offends us morally?  What is sin against a person?
3. What is our responsibility when a brother doesn't sin against us (in the way I initially interpreted it) but publicly makes a stand/does something we believe is wrong?  Since the sin is committed in a public forum, should it be addressed in the same public space?  Or is it not our place to address it publicly? And should this be limited only to believers?  What does the internet do to the body of Christ?  How are they related?  (How) Should they relate?

Any thoughts?

Kind of the last straw . . .

I was helping with a project at my church to make finger puppets for orphans in Eastern Europe.  The group members going told us they'd recently found out that the orphanages they would be visiting will actually have kids up to age 15.  After that they get kicked out into the street to join gangs, end up in prostitution, or maybe get low paying work and live in poverty for the rest of their lives.

(From bits and pieces of other things the trip participants said, it sounds like the churches our group will visit don't actually interact with the orphanages unless American short-term missions trip people are coming.  They know the Americans like this visiting orphans thing, so they do it because we're their guests.  There is no mentorship program, not financial help, no ongoing relationship between the church and the orphanages.) 

The craft was planned before the group knew their audience would be broader than the under 10-ish set.  We made lion finger puppets out of felt because the orphans will be told the story of Daniel in the lion's den.  The storyteller will end the story by saying, "Whenever you're in trouble, you can call out to God, and He will rescue you!"

I was stunned.  I was not sure whether I wanted to weep or leave.  The audacity of relatively rich foreigners traveling to another country to wave their ignorance around while telling that untrue platitude to kids--especially girls who will likely grow up to be raped or sell themselves to strangers or gang members to survive--makes me rage.  These kids have it hard enough.  Why lie about this?  Maybe the kids old enough to know what their futures likely hold won't care; maybe they're already too cynical to buy this falseness; maybe the little ones will forget by the time reality smacks them hard.  (How sad that I'm actually praying for that.)

What we should be saying to these kids is the real, true good news of the gospel, things like "you are never alone (God is with you)" and "you are loved (God suffered and died for you)" and "this broken world is not all there is for you (God offers hope and redemption and grace)."  The church should be working with them on an ongoing basis, showing them the truth and love of God.

I have decided to go visit a church that I've heard is good at being a family and serving others even if it's a bit mushy on doctrine.  If they're living out the faith in service to Christ and others, I can probably stomach some mushy doctrine.  This last episode at my church makes my stomach hurt bitterly enough that mush sounds almost tasty.

Challenging Horizons and Stuff, Part II

So people might be watching me, and they might potentially do what I do without thinking it is sin--even if they think it's wrong--just because I'm doing it, and that would mean they are sinning.  (If you missed Part I, be sure to read that first.)  How am I supposed to live with that in mind?

Should I stop doing anything that might cause anyone to stumble?  No more art museums, no more science fiction and fantasy, no more theater, no more anime or manga, no more Monty Python, no more gay friends, no more poetry, no more drinking (root beer because alcohol smells gross and is expensive) at bars with classmates after a reading, no more music, no more MPR, no more movies, no more trousers . . . ? 

It gets ridiculous fast. If I'm not allowed to engage with anything or anyone for fear of it causing someone else to sin, then I really need to go to a monastery.  In fact, we all do.  Except there will be people there, and people are sinful and . . .  Solitary confinement for life seems the only way to go.

My contention that if someone thinks something is wrong, s/he should voice that they are not comfortable with it and then not participate is shot down by those who are or know those who are incapable of such standing up for their beliefs/personal convictions.  I respect people who take that stand and say, "This is not appropriate for me.  I'll see you later."  I've seen it happen, and I've told people who did it how much I respect them whether I personally find the thing they object to sinful or not. I think it's maybe part of being salt and light if it's done right.

When people make a big, public deal about it and deny the challenging, learning, and growing that could have belonged to others sans sin, I get angry and sad.  Why do others have to get dragged down to the lowest common denominator?  Just because it is your struggle does not mean it is everyone's struggle.  Just because it is sin to you does not mean it is sin to everyone.  This sounds postmodern, but it's biblical.

The arts always get a lot of flak for this, especially in conservative Christian circles.  Often the assumption seems to be that all artists are liberals (unless they're propaganda artists or PR folks).  Some artists are about pushing boundaries and making people uncomfortable and trying to force them to think in unfamiliar ways; that's certainly true.  But really, what is so inherently wrong with wrestling critically with ideas?

I look back on who I was in college and how (yes) liberal I must appear now.  I remember how I used to organize and sponsor these critical thinking and engagement forums where the honors student organization would partner with another organization and bring speakers from different perspectives on an issue to campus and invite students to listen and bring questions (faith and politics, faith and Harry Potter, ect.).  One of these events was a failure in terms of turnout because our location kept getting moved around and then we were forced to change the date at the last minute due to scheduling problems with the rooms, and the new date was right before a break or midterms/finals or something.  That was the forum on faith and art. 

One professor and a working actor he knew were all we could get in terms of speakers, and only a handful of students showed up.  Technically it was a failure, but it was incredibly valuable to me.  I spent a lot of time talking to that actor.  One thing I still remember is how he said that if a role came up that he liked and thought said something important, he wouldn't care if that role was a homosexual one, and that blew my mind.  I still lived in a subculture where the underlying assumption seemed to be that depiction = endorsement, and the fact that a thinking Christian could believe otherwise had never come over my horizon. 

I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with that depiction = endorsement equation because if this assumption were true, it meant that, as an artist, it wouldn't be okay for me to wrestle with important ideas and questions or have characters who were realistic.  And I wanted to challenge people (including myself) to think critically no matter what I did.

One of my writing professors said my work at the time was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals.  I think that's still true.  But since I'm not writing for the liberals or conservatives, it doesn't really matter to me. 

I guess I'll end this ramble with a paraphrase of the words of a wise man (found in Matthew 15 and Mark 7): What you take in isn't what makes you unclean; it's what you do with it, how you act on it.  As a teacher and a writer, I encourage people (including me) to think about the hard stuff and then do right things, so that what we do matches what we say we believe.  Good luck with that.

Any thoughts on the whole depiction = endorsement thing or how you practically deal with the catering to the weaker brother out of love or any of the other myriad topics brought up here? : )

Challenging Horizons and Stuff, Part I

"It seems as well that students are hearing from the media and their parents about the supposed liberal indoctrination going on in the academy, and they are thus more likely to view unfamiliar topics and somewhat uncomfortable feelings not as signs that they are being challenged to learn and expand their horizons but as the intrusion of ideology in the classroom."- tsylvain

I came across this comment about an article.  It stopped me and made me think even more than the article did.  I remember this one kid at my conservative Christian college who pitched a fit every time our honors art history class watched a movie about art that showed paintings of nudes or discussed nude sculptures.  He complained so strenuously about the book we were required to read for one portion of that class that the professor was told he couldn't have us read that book. 

The book in question was The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson.  It was about how brilliant and revolutionary thinkers often lived lives full of personal depravity and immorality, and if actions are motivated by beliefs, what do the actions of their lives say about what they really believed?  I think one of the lessons in question was supposed to be that we can't dismiss great ideas just because flawed people came up with/promoted them, but we also have to be careful that we don't get caught up in charisma and ideas with no substance.  The idea behind reading the book was probably to encourage critical thinking so we wouldn't grow up to be anti-intellectuals who dismiss good arguments due to distracting but simple ad hominem and straw man attacks. 

I don't know for sure what the point of the assignment was because we never got to read or discuss the book with our professor.  The reason this student complained so stridently about the book was because it took great pains to clearly depict the depravity in question, and the student thought it was liberal indoctrination, and he wasn't going to put up with it.  At least I think that was it; they didn't really tell us, so I only know what I heard.

Another student told me that maybe lust was an area this student really struggled with, and he just had to get out of any situation where he might be encouraged to lust or think about things that would encourage lust.  If so, that's fair.  If you struggle with a sin to the point where even getting close to it seriously messes you up, then of course you should avoid any similar situations.  But just because something causes you to stumble/leads you toward sin does not mean the same is true for everyone else. 

Romans 14 gets into this in verses 12-23.  I find it easier to sling around verse 14 (which says that if you think something is a sin, then you shouldn't do it because if you do it believing it is a sin, then to you it is a sin) than to figure out how to apply the rest of the verses about catering to the weaker brother.  This is complicated stuff, made more complicated by living in a community made up of people at different places in life with different struggles. 

Frankly, what makes this whole concept/dynamic hard for me to understand is the fact that I have never been much of a herd animal; giving in to peer pressure was never a problem.  Half the time I was so oblivious that I didn't even know it was there, so the idea that people might do something they think is wrong just because others are is kind of a foreign concept to me.  Why would someone do that? 

But while I'm living in verse 14, maybe others watching me are stumbling over my behavior because to them it is sin, but they are following me, so they do it.  I would like to think this is not true because I am antisocial by nature; I do not have many close friends who could watch my behavior in the first place, but the possibility exists.

How shall I then live?  (Look for more on that in part II.)

Yes, once again trying to decide important things, part III

Well, now that I've had a positive performance review at work, I have more to think about.  I mean, when I say that I focus on the job I have now, I don't mean in a corporate ladder climbing sort of way.  I have no interest in that. 

It's funny to think back.  When I graduated from college, I would have been the go-getter whose work-life balance was way out of whack.  I would have been interested in everything and tried to do too much and kind of been a know-it-all out of sheer curiosity. 

That is not what I want or need or can do now, so I spent the first year trying to make sure to set managements' bar of expectations low for me.  I didn't want them to expect more from me than I was capable of giving, so I used my slacker voice, dressed really casually, made sure they knew about my disability and diminished capacities. 

And they still liked what I did (even if I was slow at it or got sick at bad times), which makes me happy.  After years of ridiculous and pointless and terrible (below my expectations) reviews at RetailEstablishment, it felt nice to get a raise (even a "small" one) and kind feedback from peers and managers.

But. 

I can't throw teaching over the side of the boat based on a good performance review.  My first two reviews at RetailEstablishment were good before they started bringing in terribly incompetent managers, changing their policies to be more misguided and inefficient, and generally making increasingly terrible management decisions.  These are things that could happen at any business, including my current employers.  I have to remember my new policy of keeping my expectations low, remembering my increasing limitations, not taking on too much and grinding myself down. 

What will I do if I give up on teaching now and find myself 5 or 10 years down the road hating my job and unable to get back into teaching because I don't have any recent experience?  But what will I do if I try to do too much now (teaching and full time work) and resent teaching for all it's taken away from me in 5 or 10 years?

Any suggestions of angles I'm not considering?

Yes, once again trying to decide important things, part II

The promised expansion of the choices.  Again, if you can think of other options that I am missing, let me know.  : ) 

Option 1: Focus on the job and life I have now.  Stop looking for teaching jobs, researching teaching, and teaching a class or two every year.  Read more, write more, be in a choir, be less exhausted, find a new church, find some more volunteer work with a church.

Option 2: Focus on the job I may get in the future.  Sing less.  Be more exhausted.  Read less.  Write less.  Try to get published.  Keep researching and teaching.  Build up enough experience and/or publications over the next ten years that I might be able to get a teaching job once I have my loans paid off.  Work a couple jobs some of the time.  Have less time to do volunteer work and in my church. 

Don't worry, I think I'll hold off on making any momentous decisions until after my performance review at work and maybe late spring when I'll have absorbed so much sunlight, I can't possibly be the least bit SADD (if I even am now, which I doubt).

3 random quotes that made me think

1. "It may seem circular, but such is the nature of the gospel. God loves us because he loves us. It doesn't get any simpler, or more profound, than that."

2. "Just because the issue is morally complex doesn't mean there aren't answers. It does mean, however, that there are limits to what we can say with certainty."

3. "Giving money to the poor is part of what God has ontologically made the very structure of the universe. That is, the universe operates by a principle of charity. That God loves the world. That God loves the poor. We're to love the world and love the poor, and if we do such we will benefit from acting in a way in which God himself acts."

Any thoughts?

Is asexuality getting popular? (No, really.)

I have discovered that I apparently have a label.  There are even graphics one can post to proclaim one's proud membership to this group.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Maybe now that they've taken my term, I'll have to switch to another.  I'd hate to be painted guilty by association. 

One might wonder how that would happen.  Well, you see, apparently, this category is part of a new term people are trying to popularize.  Back when I was in college, the GLBT acronym was thought to span the spectrum (outside of straight folks, who don't count because they're in the majority I guess).  Now there's this new-fangled one I ran across while reading up on a controversy in the Young Adult novel world: QUILTBAG.

(I would hereby like to suggest that this acronym be made plural to include straight folks in the name of the diversity the folks who came up with the term claim to value.)

"Nurul says: September 13, 2011 at 10:19 am

"Ooh, is that A in your QUILTBAG stands for asexual? Because if yes then thank goodness, someone remembers us! It seems like the world refuses to acknowledge that we exist."

And have a Facebook group to prove it.  So what are other folks in this strange group like?  Feel free to check out some of their sites.

"S.O. says: September 13, 2011 at 2:36 pm

"there’s a few discussion communities on this topic:
http://group-x.dreamwidth.org/
http://asexual-fandom.dreamwidth.org/
http://asexuality.dreamwidth.org/"

So I'm part of an acronym that also contains labels for behaviors I do not condone.  What's a Christian girl to do?

I sometimes joke that the only thing worse than Christian young adults telling their parents that they're homosexual seems to be telling their parents that they're asexual.  In our culture (even in the church), being asexual is a kind of perversion reserved for the crazies and/or the most holy (monks, mystics, martyrs, and suchlike).  Mad people wired for self-sacrifice or self-destruction.  It's threatening to believers and non-believers alike for someone to look and say, "You know, this game you all play so intently holds no interest for me, so I'm just going to go do something else with my time and energy."

I'm not sure what I think about being in a QUILTBAG category.  In the church, we're taught that this lack of sexual desire is a spiritual gift, but spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to the Church to help us serve others, so where do a bunch of "secular" asexuals leave my theology?

Your thoughts?

Grace and consistency

.
So, wow, unexpected article I thought I'd share with you.  Here are some of my favorite bits. 

"First, Christian institutions should be clear about the behavioral standards they expect from employees, students, and members, and then enforce them—consistently, but judiciously. There are legal reasons for this. If Christian institutions expect society to let them make religious belief and practice a factor in their employment practices, they need to provide clear and consistent accounts of their standards. "

"Consistency and clarity are essential. Consistency means not singling out those with same-sex orientation. The same standard should apply to all. Wheaton College's Community Covenant is a good model. It says, "[F]ollowers of Jesus Christ will … uphold chastity among the unmarried (1 Cor. 6:18) and the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman (Heb. 13:4) … Scripture condemns … all … sexual relations outside the bounds of marriage between a man and woman." Those standards do not make a special case of homosexuality. To deviate from God's ideal is to deviate from God's ideal."

"Grace does not always, everywhere, and immediately mean wiping the slate clean."

"Grace can be tough, but it always aims at the redemption of the offender."

This is a set of topics that has been on my mind for a few years.  When I realized that there were few examples of correct church discipline, a real inconsistency in the Christian community about moral failures in leadership, and a real double standard about sexual sin in the church, I started thinking.  I'm still thinking.  What are your thoughts?  Your experience with these issues in your church?
.

Church/Business

A friend in need of a steady job applied for a seemingly providentially open music position in his church, but the church, like most modern US churches, decided to form a search committee to look for the best qualified candidate (in theory both inside and outside the church).  The search committee (as they most always do) ended up hiring one of these outside people  who is now moving here.  They just have to pray she works out.  They don't really know if she will because, you see, she's not an active member of their church body, and they've never lived alongside her.  Apparently it's an acceptable risk.  As a result, an active member of their church body who was equipped for that ministry is now once again trying to find a job to help support his family.

Some churches do this because they want to be taken seriously.  They want to show that they are seeking high quality.  They don't want to be tied just to their own small talent pools.  They want to bring in new blood and not just stagnate with the people they have on hand.  They want to be like businesses, more or less. 

I guess they don't know that this strategy often doesn't work in businesses either.  Many businesses say they promote internally, but most who say that still hire externally.  When they do, they hire people who take a ton of time to train up to speed when a competent, tested candidate already exists inside the business.  There's a lot of irritation and frustration in these situations, as there often are when upper management dictates policies that work poorly on the front lines.

What I can't understand is why the local church wants to act like a business anyway.  We're supposed to be a body of believers with a common purpose.  The Holy Spirit equips us all for ministry to each other and to the world.  I guess it just seems odd to me that we're so unwilling to trust that the Holy Spirit equips each church body to sustain itself.

It's not that I think local churches should never allow "outsiders" in.  However, don't you think the Holy Spirit brings in/provides who is needed to support the local body from within the local body itself?  Shouldn't the church look within to find who they can train and equip for necessary ministries?  If there is no one, then it would make sense to look out in the wider body. 

When we start acting like a business first, we lose sight of the fact that we are supposed to be first of all a community, a family of believers made up of many members who all function as a whole.  When we take matters into our own hands, it's like we don't trust God to get it right.  We end up leaving our own in need out in the cold when we had it within our power to help them by letting them use their gifts to benefit the body as a whole.  Isn't that what the church should be?  Why should we quench their use of that spiritual gift in our quest for "legitimacy" and "being taken seriously" by the world.  Is that right?  Is that where our focus should be?

Hulk Smashing, rage, and radio DJs

"You are more than the choices that you've made;
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes;
You are more than the problems you create . . ."

The lyrics come from a powerful, new Tenth Avenue North song.  "Remade" is thought-provoking and gentle and tough at the same time.  It's about and for believers who've screwed up and destroyed their lives and feel worthless and hopeless because of their sins and consequences.

On New Year's Day, my least favorite DJ at the local Christian radio station dedicated a song to "All those lonely single people out there since the holidays can be tough on people who don't have family around them and who are wondering if they will ever find a loving person to share their lives with."  It was "Remade." 

I got mad.  Like the Hulk gets mad.  I think I actually saw black for a second there.  I was seriously enraged on behalf of those who shouldn't be tarred with that particular brush simply for not dating or being married to anyone at the moment.

I could not believe anyone could possibly be so callous as to imply what she was implying.  I just couldn't.  I know that DJ is shallow and thoughtless and ditzy, and that's her DJ shtick, but is it really possible to be so insensitive as to not realize what you're telling people when you connect their singleness with a song about the consequences of terrible, sinful choices destroying lives such that believers can't get all those mistakes out of their minds to the point where their focus on their sinful, bad choices is destroying their relationship with God?  Seriously?

That's it.  I'm reading Singled Out: Why Celibacy Needs to be Reinvented in the Modern Church post haste.  Maybe I'll send the DJ a copy of it with a nice note thanking her for making whoever listened to that either livid, miserable, or more misinformed. 

Happy New Year to you, too, Ms. DJ.  If I never listen to you again, that would make my new year much happier.  On the positive side, thanks for giving me that extra push to read a book that will be sure to make me think.


So, do you think I'm overreacting?  Am I overlooking something here?  Do you agree that singleness (with celibacy) is a sinful choice?

Singular Myths for a Friday Night

Found an interesting short piece on myths about being single.  Of course, single is not the same as celibate, but I think most people assume the same things are true of celibate people because we are usually single.  It's worth a read.

"Have you heard that single people are miserable and lonely and die alone in their empty apartments where they are eaten by their cats? That’s what I heard, too. So I set out to discover the truth of these matters. Guess what? It is not just the cat thing that’s a myth. All of those insulting claims about the lives of single people are wrong, wrong, wrong! Here’s a rundown of the myths I found while looking at the reality of being unattached today." 

- Dr. Bella DePaulo

This author wrote a book I was looking at purchasing a while back when I was really poor and not working two jobs.  It's still on my list, but I have a good one about reinventing celibacy in the church that is definitely ahead on the queue (which I might next be able to start seriously addressing in late December).

Some of the myths they discuss deal with happiness, solitude, isolation, longevity, self-centeredness, health, and finances.  It's hardly a well-supported dissertation, but it's food for thought.

If you pop over to read it, please pop back in and let me know which rebuttals you were most surprised about (and which ones you think were iffy).

Singley,
TMIA
:)

Christianity vs. Niceness, Part XY

Apologies for dropping out of sight (site?) yet again.  The online class that I'm teaching didn't actually get set up until the day before the class started, and I've been scrambling to read all the user guides and instructions and trying to stay ahead of the students' questions.  I am failing.  So imagine how annoying it was when the teacher handbooks made me irritated by once again equating niceness with Christianity.

I have no problem with an institution having policies about not stirring up trouble and such because they don't want to look bad, but I find myself angry when they say that the reason we have to suppress any dissent and avoid discussing things we disagree about and never acknowledge that things aren't perfect because we reflect Christ (and Christ was all about nice and the appearance of getting along). 

Obviously, the policies don't use these words; they use much more calm, neutral, infuriating language.  Let me say it right here: my God is Love, not niceness.  My God is a God of reality, not a god of appearance.  A God of Peace, not pretense.  My God is Truth, not whatever these handbooks are selling.

I guess I can see why people get turned off of institutional Christianity/religion.  Are we really so busy trying to protect ourselves and our reputations that we don't care how hollow it makes us?  I think maybe I'm glad to be teaching online classes because they lessen the chances of me saying something honest and angry and true and getting myself fired.  :)

I thank the Lord again that I got this job.

Am I overreacting?

The single temptress

So here's the situation.  A single woman on the staff at a church.  A new, married staff member.  (Both fans of geeky things like cartoons and science fiction.)  Two people geeking out, hanging out together.  (With other people present.)  Rumors starting in the church.  Gossip.  The pastor reprimanding the single woman for tempting the man.

Summary of the situation:

• The pastor (and all the gossip-mongers) investigating the facts to find out the truth? No.
• The pastor reprimanding the gossip-mongers? No.
• The pastor (and all the gossip-mongers) skipping straight to the accusations of impropriety? Yes.
• Reprimanding the female but not the male?  Yes.

Sigh.

Does anyone see problems here?  (So very many problems.)

First of all, gossip is a sin.  And it's rampant in (I don't hesitate to say this) every church.  Is it addressed or confronted by church leadership?  Seriously, have you ever heard of such a thing happening?  Does it need to be more seriously addressed?  Um, yes.  Yes, I think it does.  Will it be?  Let me be a cynic here and say I doubt it.  That's sad because gossip is so anti-Christian and destructive and pervasive.  On the whole, I think it's way worse than a bunch of people going out to see a movie or watch cartoons together.  So much worse.

Second, if you think one of your brothers or sisters is sinning, there are biblical ways to deal with that.  Basic summary: We confront out of love with a desire to restore fellowship.  There is a procedure/progression in the Bible for us to follow.  Gossip is pretty much the opposite of that loving, biblical process, no matter how much the gossiper claimes to be "concerned" about the people in question.  If you're a Christian, and you're concerned about a brother and(/or) sister, you talk to them, no one else, end of story.  END OF STORY.

Third, truth should be what matters.  Shouldn't it?  Or am I way off base here, and appearance (not reality) is what needs to matter in the church?  Really?

Fourth, are we so obsessed with sex that we see sexual impropriety in every relationship between people of differing genders?  And is it our job to talk that up?

Fifth, I'm hardly a feminist, but come on.  If there is any real tangoing going on, it takes two.  That's also kind of biblical, but since church leadership and gossip-mongers are ignoring biblical in this situation anyway, I suppose it's one of those in for a penny/pound deals.  For shame.

Family discussion when all the women in my family were together.  I defended the woman.  What's wrong with married men fellowshipping with single women (or single men with married women) so long as it isn't alone and behind closed doors?  Aren't single people allowed to fellowship with others of differing genders and marital statuses? 

My older, married sister's response: Her husband had a lot of single, female friends before he married her, and she didn't begrudge him time with them after she married him, but eventually, "He realized he needed to put his limited time and focus elsewhere [on her and his son], so he doesn't spend any time with them anymore."

So single people aren't allowed to spend any time with people of the opposite gender?  Are married Christian folks so spiritually/emotionally parched/narrow that they can't form relationships with single people?  Are all relationships between single and married people improper? 

Is that what the kingdom of God is about?  I thought we were all supposed to relate to each other as family, as brothers and sisters in Christ.  I thought we were structured as a family because we need that kind of interaction between people of different genders/states/ages/etc.  Are single people barred from being part of the family?  (Is that biblical?  Is it healthy?)


"Don't you think that's unfair to the single people?" I asked my sister.

She had the grace to look embarrassed when she answered honestly, "Yes."

I don't NEED that interaction because I'm wired to get along fine without it, but other people do need it.  I don't think it's fair that they're excluded from it.  I've given up and just stopped making friends with/being friendly to men.  It's disappointing that I have to, but there don't seem to be any other options.  For a lot of other people, fellow heirs, brothers and sisters in Christ who need this family, there need to be more options.  For them, I want there to be more options.

Can you suggest any options?

Vocation/Ministry?

I read or heard somewhere that the goal of Christians is to use their jobs as platforms for ministry. The indication was that good Christians either "witness constantly" or find some other way to bludgeon co-workers over the head with their faith, as if they are not being good Christians unless everyone they work with knows they are Christians, whatever that means.

This irked me.

When I was reading Just Do Something: How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, etc., one of the early chapters mentioned asking what older generations think about younger generational obsessing about wanting to know where God wanted them to work so they wouldn't choose wrong and thus be living out of God's will for the rest of their lives. Long sentence (fun book). Anyway, older generations don't understand this obsession at all; work is what you do to stay alive, earn your keep, support your family, etc. It's not necessarily a spiritual life-calling. People who sit around doing nothing and saying they're waiting for God's will while living rent-free in the basement of their parents' houses are being lazy and kind of dumb.

Is this demand that others see work as ministry even biblical, or is it just more pop-culture Christianity baggage? I have enough to feel guilty about; I really don't need well-meaning legalists pouring on more because I'm not proselytizing in the workplace. Am I just being crabby because I've been leaning anti-"evangelicalism" lately?

Well, let's look at the Bible. Sure, some people in the New Testament were into full time ministry. They were supported by the charity and sacrifice of the average joes working 9-5 (or sunup-sundown or however things were back then). In the gospels, if I'm remembering right, Jesus didn't tell people to change jobs when they believed; He just told them to be faithful.

I think Paul swung that way, too. He told people to be diligent and work hard as unto the Lord and be fair and just and treat others well, etc. I guess when I read the New Testament, I get the impression that they didn't believe that "full-time ministry" was a "higher calling" or anything. We're all part of the team, and we all work to support ourselves and our families and each other, and we all contribute our gifts in the kingdom, is the sort of feeling I get from it.  How do you read it?

I remember this one time when Paul was visiting a church full of people who apparently thought he was just lazy since he was preaching and teaching and being an apostle all the time, so he made sure to work while he was visiting them (he was a tentmaker, as I recall). He didn't seem to consider that work beneath him. Work is work. You do it to the best of your abilities. It's not all hyper-spiritualized. That's the kind of impression I get from him.

So do you think work has to be a ministry? Is that what God requires of us?

Honest experience

I came across this post before the interview, back when I was prepping during my lunch hour at work and after I got home from work and whenever I had a spare minute.  When you're getting ready for a job interview, you always have to prepare for the questions about your weaknesses, mistakes, and difficulties, and you have to face those and figure out how they have benefited you.  Sometimes, you can really see God's hand at work, but only if you're looking.  Most of the time, you just want to look away from your mistakes, as if acknowledging them makes you weaker, as if working through them doesn't make you stronger.

      "The truth is, though, he could have all the faith in God he wanted, but if he really wanted confidence as a public speaker, he’d need some hours. God wasn’t going to grant him confidence. Even Moses had absolutely no confidence. And God even stopped the mans stutter. It was experience that gave Moses confidence.
      "The funny thing is, if you wanted to be a locksmith or a plumber or a cab driver, you’d never pray and ask God to magically give you the ability. That’s not how God designed life. But in those fuzzy areas of emotions, we suddenly believe God is going to act like a magician.
      . . . "The truth is, if you do the work and gain the experience, you’ll have more confidence because you’ll actually know what you’re doing, and you will have spent some great time with God."  - Donald Miller

I really didn't have a lot of confidence going into this interview.  I don't have the experience they want.  All my skills are rusty.  I'm crippled by pain physically and mentally.  I don't actually know if I have what it takes to do this job.  It will be a miracle if I get the job and an even bigger miracle if I can keep it.  But a job interview is no place to be honest, which is another reason I struggle with them.

I figure interviewers ask questions about your weaknesses and struggles because they genuinely want to know what it will be like to work with you, but that's the last thing you're supposed to tell them.  You're supposed to play judo games with their heads and make them think you're an impossibly positive polyanna.  It's lying.  It's acting a role.  It feels awful.  I'm really good at it.  I've always been able to fake confidence.  It comes from experience.

I would like to take this opportunity to hope that the interviewers are more honest with the job-seekers when replying to their questions because I would hate to go enthusiastically into a job only to find out they were putting a positive spin on everything the same way the job-seekers are supposed to.  Something seems wrong, there.  The people I interviewed with were pretty forthcoming and even-handed, which I appreciated.  I just wish I'd been able to return the favor. 

I wonder, if a miracle happens and I do get this job, if I'll be able to live up to their expectations of me.  The real, daily grind me is much less dazzling.  Turning on the full force of my personality like that is impossibly exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.  I can put on a great show for a short time.

Is that a form of trust in God or another way I'm lying to myself?

(Why) Can't Christians handle the truth?

I read a book series a while ago that brought the breathtaking power of grace home to me more than anything I could remember reading lately.  It's true I have a poor memory, but since one of the reasons I read is so that I can have those moments of insight again from different places, my shoddy memory is an asset.  If I wait a few years (or a few months), I can read it all again for the first time!  Sort of. 

The book series was chock-full of "adult content," some of it incredibly vile, making true claims about human depravity in practice: what it does to us, those around us, to our choices, and even to the world around us.  I had to be very careful when recommending it because its content was most certainly going to offend (because that was its purpose, to show what depravity looks like and then what grace looks like sparkling amidst the muck, and you can't talk about that stuff without offending people's sensibilities).  I was sad that a lot of Christians would never read these books (and have these insights in this way) because they would be so busy being offended by the depiction of truth that they would miss the truth itself.

It frustrated me that we have to sanitize everything for Christian consumption, as if acknowledging the truth of depravity made us more guilty or something.  I love how Donald Miller put it.  Here are some excerpts from yet another of his thought-provoking blog posts.

"You probably wouldn’t tell the story of Bill Clinton having an affair, Benny Hinn faking healings and getting a divorce or Ted Haggard talking macho and homophobic and then secretly sleeping with men and using drugs. I doubt you’d talk about powerful religious figures being involved in incest, either. But that’s exactly the sort of stories we find in scripture. And not only that, but these are principal characters through which Christ lineage and God’s redemptive message are passed down through."

"What I love about the Bible is it’s honesty. This is not a book in which authors tried to hide anything. If somebody got drunk and slept with their daughter, it’s in there. If the king of Israel had a man killed and slept with his wife, it’s in there. If somebody doubted God’s love, it’s right there in the book.  So why don’t Christian books read anything like the Bible? Can we handle the truth?"

Yeah, you should go read the whole post.  Then come back.  :)



What do you think?  Why is "Christian Literature" so restricted in what it can depict?  Should it be?  Is depicting the same thing as endorsing?  (If so, those Bible writers are in some hot water . . .)  Are Christians really incapable of handling the awful truth of a broken, fallen world full of fallen, broken people, consequences, bad choices, and misery?  Are there other sides to the debate you'd like to bring in?  What does love look at without flinching, and what should it turn its eyes away from?

Something important I figured out about why "evangelism" makes my skin crawl

I have always been uncomfortable with the way the evangelical church defines evangelism. They equate it to the Great Commission and indicate that real Christians are ready and willing to evangelize (do drive-by evangelism, hand out tracts at the drop of a hat, and preach at anyone who breathes and enters their radius). I've never been comfortable with that.

For a long time, I harbored guilt about my unease. Obviously I wasn't a real Christian if I didn't like participating in these activities. Along with making me uncomfortable, they seemed ineffective.

I didn't know how ineffective until I was reading The Unlikely Disciple, where the hardest chapter for me to read wasn't the one about masturbation or the one about homosexuality, but the one where the author signed up to do a spring break evangelism trip. I knew the chapter would be mortifyingly embarrassing to me as an evangelical (and it really was). I didn't want to read it, but I knew I couldn't skip it.  I stalled out at that point for two weeks.

Part of my discomfort came from knowing that this kind of "evangelism" was pointless. Even someone who does not relate to others normally knows that the tactics we teach to evanglize are not the most effective way to tell others about our faith and beliefs.  We are called to love God and our neighbors, and we do that best by having relationships with people and living out our love for God and them among them. However, I wasn't comfortable with the kind of "life-style evangelism" that didn't ever involve telling people why we do what we do and what we believe that motivates us to do what we do. (Another balance issue?!)

Recently, I figured out that the root of my unease with what evangelicals refer to as evangelism has to do with the meaning of words. Matthew 28:19-20 is called the Great Commission and is used by Evangelicals to describe their mandate to evangelize. Leaving aside concerns about whether Christ was speaking to that specific audience or a broader one (and assuming He was addressing a broader one including all believers), I am not satisfied that we are reading this verse right. My Bible doesn't say, "Go preach at people" or "Go tell them the gospel, get a prayer of confession, and mark them down as a statistic.  My Bible says, "Go therefore and make disciples . . .."

What we describe as evangelism seems to me to have less in common with biblical discipleship and more in common with historical practices like forced conversions, the Crusades, and the Inquisition. In the past, the church had political authority and power, and we could bludgeon people into doing our will. That's not very biblical, but we did it a lot. For a really long time. Power corrupts and all that.

I wonder if some of our mindsets about missions and evangelism today still reflect the distortions of past (colonialism, HRE stuff) instead of reflecting a more biblical focus. It wouldn't surprise me if this is a case of not knowing our history and continuing to repeat it ad nauseum.

So now I'm really curious about what it means to make disciples.  What does the Great Commission really tell us to do?  what does it mean to make disciples?  Any thoughts?