Can we just drop the F-bomb?

Why do some Christians choose to be so easily offended when they know they live in a fallen world full of sin and are part of a family made up of believers who are all sinful people?  I re-shared something on Facebook the other day.  It was pretty funny for the video game-knowledgeable, general nerd crowd.  Apparently, the group that posted it had the F-word in its name.  Someone I am "Friends" with on Facebook freaked out about that and sent me a text at 5 in the morning and also sent an email freaking out about it and telling how offensive it was that this word existed on my Timeline.  I took a couple of days to respond because I couldn't trust myself not to be a jerk about it. 

It brought back to mind this pre-occupation with appearances many Christians have.  Don't smoke, don't drink at all, don't swear, don't show how you really feel, don't hang out with folks who do these things because that makes you guilty by association.  I guess they wouldn't approve of Jesus since he was referred to as a friend of sinners because he had a reputation for hanging out with people the religious elite considered bad.

Keep up appearances; stay in these lines, and you are one of us.  That is not the law of Christ/the law of love.  It's kind of the opposite, really.  Then there's the whole Don't Cause a Brother to Stumble and the way we really blow that one out of context . . .  Can we really just drop this preoccupation with being offended by real life happening around us?  Or is that a dangerous line of apathy to cross?

To be honest, I was irked mostly because these are tough issues, and I don't really want to deal with them right now.  Again.  Especially when I'm not really at my best.  (See next paragraph.)

I'm in increasing pain and in a corresponding increasingly bad mood.  I'm glad I took the time to respond in a way that didn't dump my general frustrations on this person, but I'm also disappointed at this reminder that sometimes we're so busy judging others about useless things that we can seem really tedious and not the loving, thoughtful people we're commanded to be.  I can't possibly have this conversation with this person right now because I'm too easily riled up when I've had so little sleep and so much pain.

When I'm this hurt and likely to lash out, maybe I should just avoid all social media altogether.  My poor judgment seems likely to be less exhausting and less offensive to people's delicate sensibilities.  Like I said, I'm not a nice person to be around right now.

The whole situation made me more tired.  I forget sometimes that some Christians: 

• live in enclaves of evangelical Christians and only have social contact with other believers. (Some statistics indicate that most new Christians have no more non-Christian friends within 2 years of getting saved.)
• don't hear this word every day through the walls of their old, cheap apartment building. 
• are bothered enough by this word that they will take action on behalf of the other people it might possibly offend.
• are not mostly numb to it after spending time abroad. 
• have no friends who say it. (This can mean all sorts of things.)
• are sheltered and safe enough that they care more about a bad word forwarded peripherally on Facebook than a million other things they could and should be more concerned about as Christians.

On another note, Facebook says, "[TMIA] likes To Cause a Brother to Stumble" because I liked Addie's excellent post on this phrase.  Oh, Facebook, you little troublemaker.  What did I ever do to you?

lost and found

"The Bible is not a road-map that shows you exactly which route to choose, exactly which turns to take. When we pretend it is, we cheapen the hard beauty of it." 

"The goal of this thing is not getting there safe, getting there quick, taking the simplest route. It’s not really getting there at all, because, if we are moving in the love of Christ, then we are already there. Each leg of this journey is its own destination." 

"The beauty of all this lostness lies in the fact that we are never really lost, not to him who sees us. Not to him who knows every stone of this, every tree and building, every dark alley, every resting place."

- Addie Zierman

Amen.

Less Like Falling in Love

"Evangelical teenagers were coming to describe the Christian life as falling in love with Jesus and experiencing the "thrills" and "happiness" of a romantic relationship with him. Perhaps because they believed so strongly in a personal relationship with Jesus as the center of Christianity, they didn't question what might be lost when that relationship was equated with an erotic, emotional attraction to a teen idol." - Thomas E. Bergler

You know, this is really interesting to consider.  My small group just finished reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and in chapter 18, Miller talks about the problems with the fact that the dominant metaphors we often use to describe other kinds of love in the church are economic metaphors.  In the very next chapters, however, he didn't have a problem with using the evangelical American church's dominant metaphor for relating to Christ: romantic love.

As one who has an outsider's view of romantic love, I have really found this metaphor and its consequences disturbing, especially in the church.  God's love, as depicted in the Bible, is so much more than a crush, puppy love, passion, or even the best romantic relationship ever.  Why would we want to reduce it to something so much smaller?  There is no one metaphor that can contain God's love in the Bible because it's that big.  He's God, after all.

On top of that, it seems like if we-the-Evangelical-US-church are doing this to try to make Jesus (and Christianity and the church) more attractive to others, this is the wrong tactic.  People outside the church are aware of the limitations of romantic love (despite also seeming to glorify and idealize it as the ultimate kind of love available to humans), so why would they be interested in a temporary, often emotion-based relationship with an unknown quantity they can't see, let alone have sex with?

Are you uneasy with this metaphor?  Do you have any thoughts about this or what metaphors might be better to emphasize?

Gifts/Opportunities

"Be aware that celibacy is a state totally opposed to all biological, social and emotional needs built into men and women by God."

Woohoo!

The opportunities this gift bring make me think of another quote I read recently.

"And I realized that I have always felt like an outsider, even within my own family.  As long as you can hold on to that feeling without it eating you alive, it can open the door to the world of misfits and rejects.  Most people, though, waste no time slamming that door shut and locking every bolt."

- Russell Banks
in "Pariahs in America: A Conversation with Russell Banks"
in Salmagundi Spring-Summer 2009

It seems true.  Most people think what they really want is to be normal, and they pursue that goal of fitting in to the detriment of their natural gifts, closing down many opportunities they might otherwise have.  Why sacrifice the great things only you can do, the things God longs to do through you, merely to be perceived as normal?


Am I merely showing how gleefully abnormal I am by thinking this way?

What if I don't want to?

According to the marketing copy on an extremely popular Christian self-help book, all women have a God-given longing to be loved, taken care of, and treated like princesses; they want a man to provide these things for them, and that's good and natural, so they get married. 

But what if it's not like that?  What if it's not absolute?  How does such an absolute statement affect people for whom it's not true?

Mostly, it just irritates me, to be honest.  I have no idea how it affects anyone else who it shuts out for whatever reasons. 

I suppose that since I love words and meanings, I just get a bit hot under the collar about absolutes that aren't true, especially when they're flung around by people who are invested in absolute truth.

I'm sure it's true that many women have these innate desires.  I guess I'm just not sure why we can't say it that way instead of insisting that something is true of all women.  Am I splitting hairs?  Just being surly and rebellious because I like defying absolutes?  I don't know.  Maybe.

Or maybe I'm just being honest about the power words have to hurt even (especially) if they're not true.  What this book seems to be telling me is that there is something wrong with me if this absolute does not apply to me.  I've been wondering if there was something wrong with me for years; I don't really need any encouragement to feel left out. 

I'm just glad I had already figured out what's "wrong" with me before I saw this book.  I guess those with the gift of celibacy will always be outside, in a way, and that is a blessing that sometimes feels like a curse.  I wonder what I can do to help the next generation of kids growing up feeling ostracized by the spiritual gift of celibacy to help them not overcompensate like I think a lot of them do.

Any thoughts?