To evangelical moms concerned about their children liking IFLS's posts:

Maybe we think

that the truth 

or quality or humor

or heart of the thought

are more important than

whether a swear word

is present.  Maybe we

would like to think that

our friends have similar

mature views and that

our parents do, too,

because if people are

shallow enough to judge

us based on the presence

of swearing on our

Facebook feeds (it might

indicate we are friends

of sinners, after all), then

maybe their opinions

on the subject shouldn't

matter at all to us.

She Must and Shall Go Free, Part 3

I went to see Derek Webb perform a 10th Anniversary concert for his first solo album.  Here are some notes.  (Part 3)

After the request and new song time, it's back to SMASGF.

7 Awake My Soul
I always think of this one as "No One Is Good Enough."  Webb is starting to have increasing trouble with short high notes (his voice must be really getting tired/strained), but I'm amazed by how complex a sound two guitars can produce.

8 Saint and Sinner
People start getting clappy, which surprises me.  A lot.  Not sure why they picked this song to try, but God bless 'em, they tried.   Anyway, we're all complex moral beings, and just because we're saved doesn't mean our relationships with others only involve our sanctified parts.  We have to accept the saint and the sinner in each other. 

"I'm not a half a man./ A saint and a sinner/ is what I am."

9 Beloved
This song always gets me a little choked up.  He sings it with such sad, understanding warmth about the ways we enslave ourselves. 

"And now you would rather be/ a slave again than free from the law." 
"And don't you ever let anyone tell you/ that there's anything that you need/ but Me."

10 Crooked Deep Down
It's one of the most chipper songs about total depravity you will ever encounter.  Webb says it's one of the oldest songs, one he played with Caedmon's Call but never recorded.  He says it was "a song I wrote about Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Manson, and Me."  He also confides that he's glad he didn't try to record it before he meet Meeks, who brings an excellent, almost hillbilly sensibility to the song.  Pretty much all of the lyrics are funny and thought-provoking.

"My life looks good, I do confess./ You can ask anyone./ Just don't ask my real good friends/ 'cause they will lie to you./ Or, worse, they'll tell the truth."
"Good Lord, I am crooked deep down;/ everyone is crooked deep down."

11 The Church
The final song is one that's painful for me to listen to.  When I was really feeling pushed away from my white, upper middle class, suburban church and its lack of concern for the things God says he cares for in His word, when I was really feeling like I didn't want to be around his people--because most of the ones at my church service were all broken and desperately refusing to do anything but desperately hide their brokenness behind fake smiles and casual relationships--this song gently but very firmly reminded me that I am not able to have a relationship with him without them.  We are all the church, all his bride in all our broken, jagged-edged body.  If we love God, we must love the people He loves, and He loves His bride so much we really can't even comprehend it.  This truth didn't make it any easier to attend services on Sunday, but it made it harder for me to just give up completely.  God knows how bad church people are, really, and He still tells us to love them the way he loves us, despite how bad we individually are.  I cry whenever I hear this song because it is so lovely and thoughtful and true, and it is a struggle for me that hasn't gone away.

"'Cause I haven't come for only you,/ but for my people to pursue./  And you cannot care for me with no regard for her./ If you love me, you will love the Church./"

It's later than I expected.  As much as I would like to take him up on his offer to talk after the concert, to ask the questions about the things I'm not sure I understand, I instead get up stiffly and walk off into the cold night, carefully not slipping on the patchy ice, thinking about too many things, and humming quietly.

She Must and Shall Go Free, Part 2

I went to see Derek Webb perform a 10th Anniversary concert for his first solo album.  Here are some notes.  (Part 2)

Kenny Meeks plays 4 songs, and they are all different, but there is something blues-y and wistful and full of longing and soothing at the same time about his work.  Real Long Day was about the day his oldest daughter got married.  Shining as Stars took its inspiration from Philippians 2.  We're Gonna' Rise, "written and recorded in the way of old time street parades," actually got some heads bobbing and some off-beat clapping for a bit, which is really saying a lot from people in this undemonstrative state.

There are refreshments and restroom runs during the intermission, where they advertise gluten-free snacks and jokingly say they will also be serving extra gluten with a side of MSG and wonder if someone will get rich by finding a use for all that excess gluten.  I am in a place unfamiliar to me, a place where they ruin perfectly good water by putting cucumbers in it.  I do not belong here, or maybe I should say I don't fit in with the hipsters and the cool 30-somethings of the church.  That has never really bothered me.  I'm not here for them, I'm here for the music and to find out that Derek Webb is thoughtful and hopeful and not cynical. But cucumber-free water shouldn't be too much to ask for, should it?

The second half starts with requested songs.  There are several I want to hear (especially "This, Too, Shall Be Made Right"), but I can be quite the coward in group situations these days. 

A  I want a broken heart
This song is from his second (and apparently worst-selling album). 

"faith in the bank and money in my heart"
"the cattle on a thousand hills were not enough to pay my bills"

B  I repent
Also from his second album.  He agrees to it and then realizes he isn't sure he remembers it.  He refers to it as the anti-song to the one he ranted about last year.  Not sure what he means because Stockholm Syndrome was more than a year ago, and his most recent album was instrumental.

C Mockingbird
He calls this the thesis statement on his third record, and it is a powerful and slightly tongue-in-cheek song about cliches in the church.

"I'm like a mockingbird:/ I've got no new song to sing./  I'm like an amplifier:/ I just tell you what I've heard./ "

D Everything Will Change
This  is from his new album that has yet to be released (I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry, I Love You).  He talks a bit about his process as a lead up.  In his life, songs only show up for a reason, and he says that folks who have been following him from the beginning have heard every song he's ever written.  For this record, the songs that started showing up were about questions he wanted to ask the church and issues he sees in her now, 10 years after his first album about her.

He considers it a sister album, a later follow-up to the first album (the reason we are all here at this concert tonight).  He said earlier that he could still stand behind everything on his first album and that he considered this fact important.  He now adds, "If I agree completely with everything I said 10 years ago, there's something wrong with me."

And then he says some important things about cynicism.  He says that this song will "put to rest the idea that I'm providing proof texts for cynicism."  He defines cynicism as believing there's no way this thing is ever going to change, there is no hope, deal with it.  "If I really believe in a day when all sad things will become untrue, then there is nothing that my hope is wasted on."

He says, "Cynicism is the opposite of the telling of the story of the kingdom."  And this song tells the story of the Kingdom in a way that makes me think a bit about his Jesus autobiography song ("Lover") from earlier in this album. 

She Must and Shall Go Free, Part 1

I went to see Derek Webb perform a 10th Anniversary concert for his first solo album.  Here are some notes.  (Part 1)

The concert is in a tiny church repurposed as a concert venue with a stained glass taking up half the back wall, 3 shaded chandeliers, and 5 windows along the north wall with an interesting fish scale shimmery iridescence to them; great for diffusing the candle light from tables around the edges.  Two fans spin up high in the ridge line of the vaulted ceiling.  There are these huge, dark wooden sliding/folding doors block off the fellowship hall and make me curious.  Sara Groves and her husband own this venue, and they introduce Webb.

What he thinks people are coming to the show for: "He can talk about politics and vent about the church, and maybe he'll swear!"  He calls the songs on the album "songs without certainty."

The stage is small even though it pretty much takes up the entire short wall.  Even so, Webb seems small standing up there.  He's a tiny man, compact and fine-boned with his shaved head gleaming.  Kenny Meeks is with him, a tall, sort of rawboned and rangy looking fellow who plays bass now and did the same on the record (along with producing it and providing the background vocals back in the day).  This guy is kind of a legend in Christian music.  I feel like I may have seen him at Alive '88 or something years ago. 

They are making things up a little.  This is the first stop on the limited tour, and they've never actually practiced together.  You might not know this if they didn't tell everyone.  You wouldn't likely care whether you noticed or not.

1 Nobody Loves Me
"I'm really glad I have a record from 10 years ago that I can still sing all of today."
"I don't disagree with a word of it."

"The truth is never sexy/ So it's not an easy sell."
"So I'll do whatever it takes/to squeeze us into this wedding gown./  I'll say words that rattle your nerves/ words like sin and faith alone, now/"

"Lord knows I've got something to say about every one of these, but I'm going to try not to," he says.  And I think, "Are you kidding?!  That's what we're here for.  If we just wanted to hear the album, we could do that any time.  Talk a lot!"  But his voice is a little rough, and he needs a lot of water, so I'll understand if he has to talk less as the night goes on.

2 She Must and Shall Go Free
He says this is an orphaned hymn, one where no melody was ever written for the words, so they just used one of the 4 basic tunes.  He decided to give it a tune.

3 Take to the World
 It's based on an Episcopal benediction and is the third song on the album . . .  He points out he might arrange the album a little differently with his current knowledge.

"Take to the world this rare, relentless grace."
"Know you must become what you want to save/ 'Cause that's still the way that He takes to the world."

"If you know Caedmon's Call from the radio, you never heard any of my songs."
"When Kenny Meeks makes a mistake, it's called a new revelation."

4 Nothing (Without You)
The pews are going to make my hip limping sore tomorrow.
"Kenny plays one note better than I play 10."

5 Beloved
"The word 'Christian,' when applied to anything except a person, is a marketing term, a term used to lead consumers to the thing they want to consume.  It can't mean what they want it to mean."
"This song originally had about 12 verses" because he was trying to do a song about the life of Jesus.  He edited it down to 5 verses, in the end, and I want to hear the other 7, too.  "How do you edit the life of Jesus?" he asks rhetorically.

6 Wedding Dress
The first single he wrote for this first record (but at the time, he thought it was a Caedmon's Call song). 
"Once you write it, there's no going back."
"It is still an offensive song for me to sing. "
"It's based on some of the most offensive parts of the Bible, which are there to offend us."
"Ezekiel and Hosea are designed to make people uncomfortable."
"I knew there would be some blushing."
"If I got up to read Ezekiel 16, I could clear the room."
"The comfort I got was that the most offensive parts were from the Bible."
"This was the song that got the album banned."
"They have every right to censor what they sell.. . .  I'm comforted by the thought that the last thing to go would be the Bibles, so the offensive content is there in every store."

He talks about how some people write to him as if he is angry and bitter and cynical.  And I'm surprised by how very much I need for him to not be bitter or cynical.  And he's not.  Maybe it's just his stage persona, but I really needed it anyway.  He says that cynicism is what happens when you give up hope.  And he hasn't given up.  He still has hope.  He still believes we can be better than we are, and he still believes God loves us even when we aren't.

Family depression

The recent school shooting has brought mental illness and how families deal with it into spotlight once again.  The blame game has been played (the mother should have known, should have gotten her son help, the signs were there, etc.).  It's good to try to look for root causes to prevent future problems if at all possible, but her son was legally an adult.  And just because you want to help your adult children or adult siblings, doesn't guarantee that they get help, or that if they get help, they will be fixed by it.  The human mind is an unbelievably complex thing.

This is much on my mind as I watch and wonder if my sister is spiraling further into mental illness.  She is an adult, nearly 30, and she has suffered from depression (untreated) for years.  We have asked her if there is some reason for the way she treats my father (the kind of treatment one would expect from someone toward their rapist/abuser).  She has promised us that it's nothing like that.  He just sniffs, and she can't stand it.  That's all. 

Depression runs in my family.  (As Miles says, "We give it to each other.")  My mom has explained the briefest bit of her childhood struggles with it in her dysfunctional family.  She later sought treatment for anxiety and panic disorders, and her mental health has improved.

My sister has not sought treatment.  Instead, she has always had many excuses.  We are reaching the end of our patience for excuses. 

We, her loving family, are tired of watching her hurt us.  Some of us think she is fully in possession of her mental faculties and is choosing to act in cruel ways.  I think maybe this is related to OCD, depression, and maybe other mental health problems.  Either way, she needs help.

I think a reason I lean towards mental illness is because I don't want to believe that she is capable of deciding to act with such cruely while mentally balanced.  I don't want her treatment of my father and her distancing from my mother and her decision to end her friendship with me to be possible if she is in full possession of her wits.  That would hurt too much.  I would rather have something to blame it on.  I have that luxury because I live several states away and am naturally someone who does not need the company and affection of others. 

My parents who live with her do not have that luxury.  They just have the hurt.  And it's eating at them, threatening their mental health.  It has to be stopped.  But how?  I'm praying.  But I can't help thinking there is no right answer.  Having a loved one with mental health issues is not a simple situation with a single right answer.

If you are ever tempted to point fingers and blame when you encounter a situation like this, well, maybe hold that thought.  Humans and human relationships and love in a fallen world are messy, and it's always easier to point from outside, especially after the fact, to try to make neat conclusions once all the chips have fallen.  But inside, it is sad and scary and messy.  Please remember that.  Be careful how you judge.

And please pray.  Because I don't really know how to right now.

Because I listen to the words (Part 27)

They started a new slogan at my Christian radio station a while back.  It irritated me in the way that these things usually do when I know they are created by nice people with good intentions who just don't think things all the way through.  The first day they were trying out this new slogan, the DJ jovially identified the station call letters and then went on to say, "where you don't have to worry because the lyrics are safe for the kids."

Now, I know what this means; I speak evangelical enough to know that this means there is no swearing or talk about sex.  I know this radio station prides itself on being family friendly, positive, uplifting, encouraging, etc.  (I know this because they say it approximately 100 times a day.)  The thing is, sometimes things that are positive and encouraging and safe for the kids due to the absence of swear words and sexytimes are things you still have to worry about because they're bad theology.

I mean, maybe it's not as embarrassing for your kids to publically sing the words to Citizen Way's "Should've Been Me" as, say, "Last Friday Night" by Katie Perry.  * (See Note below.)  But do you really want them unconsciously accepting the prosperity gospel nonsense "Should've Been Me" teaches?  The song as a whole is not necessarily theologically face-palm worthy; the exception is the verse where the singer talks about how he lives in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with nice friends and a good wife and lovely children and how he feels bad that he often forgets that this is what Jesus died for.  Upon mature reflection, I would like to believe that these lyrics are another example of people just not thinking it through (possibly because it's such a nice, bouncy song, and the rest of the message is good to think about), but . . .

My very first thought after I stopped being stunned and appalled was, "Really?  You think Jesus died for your middle class yuppie American dream comfort and happiness?  That's . . . wow.  Really?  How very sad."  Because my Jesus died to take away the sins of the world and bring abundant life to the suffering victims of attempted genocide in Africa and the terrified, frequently injured in drug battles folks in South and Central America and the persecuted and imprisoned people in the Middle East and Asia and all manner of other humans who do not live middle class yuppie American dream comfortable and happy lives.  He died to give us all the same thing: eternal life as adopted children of God and membership in a universal body of believers past and present.

The thing we all share is what Jesus died to give us, not the temporary comforts some of us have because the rain falls on the righteous and the wicked.

However, I can see why "where you don't have to worry because the lyrics are safe for the kids as long as you make sure they understand the lyrics and discuss any problematic theology with them to help them learn discernment" just doesn't roll off the tongue in quite the same simple, positive way.  So of course we have to go with the one that's easier to say.  (And then we wonder why people don't bother to try to listen to and understand Christians.)

I guess this should serve as a warning to those who don't already know that mindlessly consuming "Christian culture" doesn't necessarily have fewer pitfalls than consuming "secular culture."  Just different ones.  It's a reminder for those of us who are tired and weary and don't have the energy to deal with it.  Maybe we can turn our brains off once we get to heaven, but we've gotta' leave 'em switched on down here.  It's a fallen world, and there are lies everywhere, often cleverly and attractively disguised in wrapping paper of safety and comfort.


* (Or maybe you would.  Maybe hearing your child mindlessly chirp the sad, reduced, lie of prosperity gospel in public would embarrass you more and lead to some good conversations with your kids.  If so, way to be awesome!)

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?

Goodness, niceness, kindness, the meaning of words

Rachael says: "Here’s all I am saying: the conflation of ethical or just conduct (goodness), and polite conduct (niceness) is a big problem."
...
"This works because the primacy of nice in our culture creates a useful tool – to control people and to delegitimise their anger. A stark example of this is the stereotype of the desirably meek and passive woman, which is often held over women’s heads if we step out of line. How much easier is it to hold on to social and cultural power when you make a rule that people who ask for an end to their own oppression have to ask for it nicely, never showing anger or any emotion at being systematically disenfranchised? (A lot easier.)"
...
"So if you – the oppressed – hurt someone’s feelings, you’re just like the oppressor, right? Wrong. Oppression is not about hurt feelings. It is about the rights and opportunities that are not afforded to you because you belong to a certain group of people."

Food for thought.  I find this sometimes to be a problem in the church.  When we go on Sunday, we are supposed to wear our happy faces (at least a sociologist would likely observe this), and we are supposed to be nice to each other.  We are not to let our jagged edges or bleeding wounds show.  Best foot forward, and all that.  I am not sure this is particularly biblical because the Bible definitely talks more about loving each other and not really about being polite or nice to each other.

Being kind is commanded, yes, but kindness is another word that has been warped, and now people use it synonymously with "nice."  I actually struggled with this when I was reading manga or watching anime.  Characters would describe characters who were not polite or civil and generally not nice at all as being kind, and I would go, "Dwah?"  I would wonder, "Is this a Japanese thing I just don't understand?"  I eventually realized it was just that translators are more precise with words and their meanings and were simply using the word as it was meant to be used, and I wasn't used to that.  The manner may have been gruff, harsh, or impolite, but the intentions and actions showed a loving concern for others: kindness in its essence?

So do you ever struggle with the way culture (especially in the church) has equated goodness with niceness?  Any particular instances that left you frustrated or scratching your head?  Do you think it's really just basically about power, or is there more to it than that?  And why does the church seem to be buying into it?

Reexamining the Bible Literally

All these years later, I'm learning that understanding the literal meaning of the Bible is a more nuanced adventure than my college friends and I imagined. We'd been blithely unaware that there is more than one genre in the Bible, or that literary context profoundly matters to meaning. We didn't understand that when we read ancient Hebrew prose poems (like Genesis 1), wisdom literature (like Proverbs), or apocalyptic literature (like Revelation) as if they were science textbooks, we were actually obscuring their meaning.

For me, the most negative consequence of all that well-intentioned literalism was the conviction that Yahweh, having given us his straightforward Word, was completely comprehensible. This paradigm both diminished my perception of God and set up my faith for crisis when I discovered aspects of God that remain stubbornly shrouded in mystery.

If you'd told me back then that the language we have for God—even (especially) much of our biblical language—must be understood analogically, I would have prayed for you and backed away slowly. I wouldn't have understood that there are no words that can be applied to God exactly the same way they are applied to creaturely things, no language that can be used "univocally."

- Carolyn Arends

Yeah, this whole article is kind of amazing.  Please go check it out now.

I find this interesting because of the examples she uses and the way she talks about how we use words for God and humans that mean different things when we use them about God.  I suspect the descriptors of God as Father and Christ as Bridegroom fit in this category.

Have you ever had a very "literal" mindset toward the Bible?  If so, are you still there, or are you in a different place now?  Have you ever had a moment of insight about the meaning of a word used to describe God being different from the same word being used to describe a regular human being?  Or is this the first time you've really thought about it?

Forgiveness: Losing: The Screaming and the Silence

"That's what forgiveness sounds like: screaming and then silence." - Carl from Llamas with Hats [Google at your own risk; you have been warned, seriously.]

That's actually kind of what it felt like to me as I tried to control my anger at the federal Office of Worker's Compensation Programs.  It took me misunderstanding the new 10th Avenue North song to remind me again that if I don't forgive, I'm the one who loses out and that it really doesn't matter if they're sorry or not.  My duty is to forgive.

"Father, forgive them; they know not what they do."  - Jesus

A couple of years ago when I was feeling discouraged and helpless and frustrated after a failed appeal, I tried to experiment with this phrase as a way to remind myself to forgive, but I couldn't really do so because, honestly, it felt kind of sacrilegious.  To compare my situation with Christ's on the cross just seemed wrong on all kinds of levels.  The metaphor fell apart for me, and then I felt even more guilty.

When the new 10th Avenue North song "Losing" started getting airplay, I totally misinterpreted the snatches of it I heard.

"Father, give me grace to forgive them 'cause I feel like the one losing." -Tenth Avenue North "Losing"

When I don't let go of the bitterness, it feels like they're winning, like they're beating me, since they're on my mind more than they should be.  When I don't forgive, especially in this situation where the offender doesn't care at all about me or my feelings, I'm the one who is harmed, and I'm doing it to myself.  They're not hurt at all; they don't know or care or lose sleep.

And so this time, when I lost yet another appeal and had to read through a letter wherein the hearing representative sounded smug and triumphant, as though he were defeating the forces of evil with his not-quite-solidly-logical arguments rather than dooming a legitimately injured worker to ten more years of chronic pain (that's how long it will take me to pay off the debt I went into to get the master's degree that allowed me to get a job that can accommodate my disability; after that, maybe I'll be able to afford to continue the search for pain-relief), when I got the appeal letter riddled with incorrect information, assumptions, and slurs on my character, I really was able to let go in a way I hadn't before.  I was still a bad human being to be around for a bit, but even as I sat making notes about the things that were ridiculous, in case the lawyer cared, I really wasn't bitter in the personal way I have been before.

Maybe I've matured?  Maybe I've just given up on them ever caring.  Maybe I've just lowered my expectations sufficiently.  Whatever the reason, I have let go.  Forgiveness, while it doesn't feel like floating away on a cloud of joy, at least feels better than grudge-building and -bearing.  So thanks to not understanding the lyrics of a song, I have embraced the silence after the screaming.

Sigh . . .

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?

Good, Bad, Ugly (Love)

I am thinking about dating/marriage, specifically about that bad-good relationship.  It's that "good" girl loves the "bad" boy or the "good" boy loves the "bad" girl.  I've seen it happen before, and it's all over novels and movies.  Have you read Hosea?  These kinds of relationships are really hellish.

Anyway, it occurred to me that Hosea should make me pay attention more.  God had the prophet marry and be faithful to and try to redeem the kind of woman most people would call hopeless and beyond redemption.  He did this to show us what His relationship to us is like. 

I know, I know, in context, He's specifically addressing the nation of Israel at the time.  But we're told the church is His bride, and I think we're very much like the ridiculous beloved turning away from all the undeserved love given by the lover and pursuing things that are seriously bad for us in one way or another.  The general story seems to apply.

Really, these relationships are nightmarish, and they usually don't end well.  But God wants one with every person on this earth.  Just think about that. 

I mean, yes, He's infinite and all-powerful and such, but I can't even imagine surviving one relationship like Hosea's, and Hosea didn't have the burden of being all-knowing.  I mean, he didn't know everything his wife thought and felt, every sin she committed.  How much heartache and heartbreak can one person's love overcome?

That's how much He loves us.  Even though these relationships are heart-wrenching to go through, and even though most of them don't end with salvation and redemption, God loves us that much.

That love is not an emotion.  It can't be.

"Love one another as I have loved you."

And the hardest part is that this even this love does not conquer all because when beings with wills collide, there's no guarantee of a happy ending.  We can choose wrong over and over again until we're out of time, and then we pay the price.  Not everyone accepts grace and salvation.  Not every beloved chooses to respond to the lover and be changed.  But our response doesn't change His love for us, as shown by His actions.

"While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly."

It really makes me think.

What about you?