On Writing (More)
“To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—this is indeed a gift from God.”
“If God gives you something that you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”
Last week, I started dreaming about a new writing project. This would be THE project. The One that would challenge and push me. The One that would require an honesty and determination that I’m not sure I possess. The One that captures everything I love in life. But when I began to share it with my husband, he raised both hands to stop me.
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Wha—“
“You heard me. I don’t want to hear about it. I want you to write it. You write it and then I’ll read it.”
It’s not that my husband is unsupportive of my writing; he’s so supportive, in fact, that he refuses to listen to me talk about writing. With every conversation, he knows that the likelihood I will actually write decreases exponentially . I know this too, and so last week, I also made my 12-year-old daughter swear that she would not let me share ideas with her, either. She has my full permission to instruct me to SHUT YOUR MOUTH, MOTHER when I sidle up to her to tell her about my latest, greatest project.
And so in the spirit of the New Year, I’m publicly resolving to talk less and write more.
It’s not about producing more content so much as taking writing seriously. Over the last five years, I’ve watched (often incredulously) as writing has morphed from hobby to part-time work to vocation. I’ve known for a while that I needed to shift my approach to writing—to act as if it were truly vocation—but I’ve found plenty of excuses not to, counting on the off chance that if I didn’t own it as vocation then I wouldn’t be responsible for it.
But to riff off Miss O'Connor, our callings don't change according to our ability to stomach them. If God has given me something to do, then I'd better get doing it.
No Comment The first step I’m taking toward talking less and writing more is to remove the comment section from the blog. Common wisdom says that a comment section helps build platform because it drives traffic and forms community. Not-so-common wisdom says that the comment section inhibits my writing because I feel responsible to respond to praise, questions, and critique. This is not a statement about the quality or quantity of comments at SAL, but the very likely possibility that I could write a 700 word essay only to expend 1500 words in the comment section.
By removing the comment section, I’m also clarifying what’s happening here. Instead of seeing this blog as a common meeting space, I see it as a workspace --a space where I craft ideas to send out into other spaces. My goal is not for you to discuss ideas here but for you to discuss them with the people you actually live, work, and worship with—your pastor, your wife, your friend.
I don’t want to build a community around my writing; I want my writing to help you build your community.
Having said this, I believe there is value in online community. I have benefited from new ideas and the comfort of knowing that I am not alone in my concerns and joys. But online interaction can very quickly become a closed circuit, especially when the writing begins to support the community that has grown up around… the writing… which now must support the community… which has grown…
I don’t want this for my writing and I don’t want it for my readers. Instead, I want my writing to support the work that’s happening in our real lives, not draw you (or me) further away from it. There may be a day when the comment section won't draw me away, but I'm not there yet.
Social Media Dis-engagement In order to write more, I’m also taking steps to limit my social media engagement. This too flies of the face of current wisdom about How to Become Successful Online (in Ninety Days or Your Money Back).
The problem with social media is that it is primarily about being… social. It rewards extroverts and those who know how to work a room. It rewards public presence and being personally accessible—or worse, for crafting an image of accessibility, for giving readers the impression that you're personally invested in them. In short, social media rewards you for inviting more and more people into your private life.
Which is the exact opposite of what it takes to write well.
Writers serve readers best, not by hanging out in the public square, but by hiding themselves away to actually… write. For some of us, this hiding away is no sacrifice; for others, it is a discipline, an act of self-control rooted in faith and obedience. Writing well requires space for reflection in a “room of one’s own." But in our digital world, that room is often packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of friends and followers.
Beyond simply being a distraction, I’ve also found that social media can actually undermine my motivation to write. For me, writing has always been about working through ideas. Questions pop into my head (yes, they really do *pop* in--most of the time uninvited) and I use the process of writing to resolve them. But as I write, I'm also cutting a path for readers to follow so that they can work through the ideas themselves. Social media allows me to resolve a question without actually having to write about it—or at least write in a way that readers can follow.
Here’s what happens: I’ll read an interesting article or someone will pose a question. My brain immediately starts turning so I respond with a comment or tweet. Someone else engages. We dialogue and 700 words later, the question is resolved; unfortunately, my need to write about it is also resolved. Because the answer is obvious now (to me at least), I don’t feel the need to develop it any further or guide others along the same mental process. And so I don’t write.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost more books to Facebook threads and Twitter rants than the Alexandrians lost to fire.
Five years ago, I started this blog as a way to keep myself accountable to write. Today I’m returning to it for the same reason. I understand that being a writer in the digital age means having a social media presence; I also understand that shaping ideas requires community. But I don’t believe God has called me to be a social media magnate. He has called me to write.
And often the work of writing is simply that: work. Work that happens word by word, line by line in quiet consistency. It’s no more glamorous than laying brick or filing medical charts. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. But like laying brick and filing medical charts, writing is good, steady, faith-filled work. And when God has given you the opportunity and ability to do good work, what possible justification could you have for not doing it?
On the Making of Lists
Mma Ramotswe liked to make lists, and, like all people who make lists, she was inclined to take an optimistic view of their contents. So lists of things achieved--cases closed, and so on--tended to include matters that were almost, but not quite finished, and lists of things to be done by noon embraced tasks that might well not be performed until four o'clock in the afternoon or possibly even noon the following day. This did not involve self-deception... well, perhaps it did, but how can anyone manage to negotiate their way through life's complexities without at least a smidgen of self-deception here and there?
Some of these lists were written down on scraps of paper and on a whiteboard on the kitchen wall in Zebra Drive. The whiteboard... hosted lists for other members of the family, the idea being that everybody should look at it in the morning to see what they had to do later that day. So there might be a note reminding Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to telephone the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company to renew the household insurance; or a reminder to Motholeli to take ten pula to school for her new mathematics textbook; or one to Puso to put his football socks in the wash. Sometimes there where lists for hersels--of household supplies running low (washing-up liquid, butter, the hot Mozambique peri-peri sauce that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni liked to put on his roast chicken); or lists of people she had to telephone (her aunt in Mahalapye, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's cousin in Muan--the one who needed the cataract operation--Mma Potokwane about meeting for tea when she next came to town). Lists, she thought, are the stories of our lives; they give a picture of who we are and what we do every day.
—From Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 2016)
On this week's episode of Persuasion, my co-host Erin Straza and I talk about the lists that tell the stories of our lives. With 2017 right around the corner, the impulse to plan and sort and list is nigh irrepressible. But which lists and how? Which system will be "the one" to revolutionize your coming year? We tackle everything from personalized planners to the popular bullet journaling technique to my tendency to menu "plan" after the fact.
Listen in here:
Further Thoughts on the Shape of Women's Ministry
This week, Kate Shellnutt of Christianity Today published a piece that examines the shape of women's ministry in the white evangelical church. The article comes in the wake of the controversy surrounding popular speaker and author Jen Hatmaker's public support of gay marriage. In response to her new position, LifeWay will no longer sell Hatmaker's books and products.
While I don't agree with Hatmaker's position, I also don't think folks are necessarily seeing the big picture. Hatmaker is not one individual who suddenly and unexpectedly went rogue. She represents the larger shape of evangelical women's ministry that is very often detached from the established Church. Erin Straza and I tackled this question in a recent Persuasion podcast in which we argue that much of women's spiritual formation has been outsourced to the marketplace. We shouldn't be surprised when it's shaped by influences other than the Church.
Kate's article at CT taps several leaders in ministry and tries to set the larger frame for what's happening, particularly among white evangelical women. For example, while most pastors have probably never heard of Hatmaker, she has a FB following larger than John Piper, Tim Keller, or Gary Chapman. Kate reached out to me for her article and I asked her if I could publish more of our email exchange here:
Kate: What do you see as some of the pros and cons of having so much momentum around women’s ministry at a national level?
Hannah: Positively, I think we need to recognize that the Spirit of God is at work. Because the digital age has changed how ideas spread, women (who have historically existed in the margins of theological conversation) have an opportunity to add to the conversation without ever leaving their desks. In the past, a lack of infrastructure would have held them back; but today, women who are gifted to teach, lead, or encourage have opportunity to actualize these gifts in a public way.
The advantage, of course, is that the Church at large can benefit from these gifted women. They become a channel of the Holy Spirit’s power and blessing as they fulfill their calling for the good of the Church and the glory of God. One practical affect is that new topics come up for discussion and application—topics that male leaders simply wouldn’t know to address or can’t address. Female leaders are also uniquely positioned to apply the teachings of the Church to the needs of half her members.
On the other hand, because so many female spiritual leaders are operating in parachurch contexts, their ministries have the potential to lose the doctrinal and structural accountability that the established Church provides. The digital age may free women from the gendered constraints of traditional ministry, but this means that they also have the potential to become free agents.
Consider how few female evangelical leaders are visibly attached to an institution such as a church, seminary, or non-profit that did not grow up around their personality. Name a male leader like Rick Warren and you immediately think of Saddleback Church. Say Beth Moore or Ann Voskamp or Jen Hatmaker and most of us will draw a blank about which local church these women affiliate with. This is not to say that they aren't connected, but their local church isn't a visible or central a component to their public ministry.
Being distanced from ecclesiastical institutions also means women’s ministry inadvertently becomes shaped by market forces. Nationally known female spiritual leaders are by-and-large entrepreneurs and most often, out of necessity. Because women struggle to find space in the established Church, they end up creating their own institutions, whether as collectives or around themselves. The latter is both fed by and feeds evangelical celebrity culture.
This entrepreneurial dynamic also affects the shape and philosophy of women’s ministry, even if only inadvertently. When a woman has to create her own position and then maintain that position apart from the contribution (both financial and spiritual) of a larger institution, her target demographic can disproportionately affect the shape of her ministry. This is true of many entrepreneurial endeavors, not simply women’s ministry; but if the majority of female leaders are operating in the marketplace (as opposed to the institutional Church), women’s ministry as a whole can reach a point of critical mass where an audience-centric philosophy creates wider expectations about style, topics, and content.
Practically speaking, this broader culture locks both leaders and followers into a matrix built on audience consumption of the personal spirituality of the celebrity. The “product” is not robust spiritual formation so much as spirituality mediated through the experience and passions of the tribal leader. Of course, not all nationally known female leaders and ministries operate this way, but building “tribe” is a significant emphasis for many.
Kate: Also, the tweet from you that stood out most to me was about how female leaders don’t need to “show their work” theologically. Could you expand on that? What is the role you see theology playing? And why shouldn’t we be tempted to write off these women as overly inspirational or shallow? Hannah: I believe that market forces are unduly shaping women’s ministry. And part of what the market wants is simple, practical spirituality. In a robust learning environment, a teacher works to create a curriculum and syllabus that suits the needs (not the wants) of the learner. But teachers operating in the marketplace must always consider what the market can bear. They themselves aren’t necessarily a-theological (although some may be), but they may feel a tension to craft their teaching in a way that minimizes theological book work in favor of inspiration, lifestyle advice, or practical mission.
The problem is that if lay women don’t see their teachers modeling theological investigation or healthy engagement with the Scripture, they won’t be able to develop these abilities themselves. They won’t even know they need to develop them. It’s like learning to cook from a recipe that calls for pre-packaged ingredients like “cake mix” vs. a recipe that calls for flour, sugar, dry milk, baking soda, and salt. The shortcuts may seem helpful at the moment, but have we really learned to cook? Have we grown in our spiritual understanding?
I do not believe that all female leaders must have an M.Div. or theology degree to teach or lead. I don't have one myself. But we do need to raise the expectation for what passes for spiritual formation. In an article in the Washington Post last year, Karen E. Yates reflects on the last two decades of women’s involvement in Christian publishing and notes that “women today are publishing at an incredible rate without the title of pastor, without a seminary degree and without a traditional pulpit.”
If nothing else, this should get our attention. Not because women aren’t capable of the higher thinking associated with formal teaching ministry, but because of the very real possibility that half the Church is being trained in mission by people with a limited number of tools in their toolkits. As a woman, this also concerns me because a haphazard approach to theology could reinforce prejudices against women teachers. In some ways, we have to be better and more faithful than our male counterparts in order to overcome entrenched biases.
This doesn’t mean we should write off women leaders as uneducated, un-theological, or shallow. You do not gain the following necessary to be a nationally known leader without a great deal of gifting, self-education, and hard work. What women leaders often are, however, is isolated. Isolated from the very Church they are seeking to build. If Paul is correct that the Church is “the pillar and ground of truth,” the way forward is not to shame female leaders for using their gifts without theological credentials. The way forward is for the Church to identify and support gifted women, partnering with them via theological training and commissioned ministry positions.
If you don’t want women breaking down the doors, simply open them for them.
When God Surprises You
This Tuesday, my book Humble Roots finally released. Several weeks ago, I'd made a plea for help in spreading the word; this plea was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and support from around the country and around the world. And yesterday, one day after release, Humble Roots, with its message of finding rest through humility, topped Amazon's Inspiration & Spirituality category
I found myself needing to sit down a lot yesterday.
But this experience also reminded me of a section in Humble Roots. In chapter 9, I tell the story of a handful of green beans carelessly tossed into a pile of dirt late one summer. A month earlier, my husband had tried to cultivate these same green beans in our garden but to no avail. He planted, he tended, he watered, he staked. But after several weeks, all he had to show for his efforts was a lush vine with no fruit. A couple of weeks later, however, my son found the bag of leftover beans and "planted" them in the dirt next to our recently constructed patio. The beans sprouted, blossomed, and produced more fruit than my husband's carefully tended ones did.
Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled... But part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will be fulfilled in ways that we cannot imagine. Because we can't know the future, we also don't know when He will choose to bless us with abundance...
The fact that success can come without our efforts is testimony, yet again, to God's surpassing power and goodness. God delights to use small, out-of-the-way, unexpected means to showcase His glory... So, what if God can grow beans in a pile of unattended dirt? What if God can bring about good things without us? What if grace is true?
I never expected Humble Roots to rank so well one day after release. But I'm learning that God often does the unexpected. And sometimes the unexpected means calling us to places of leadership and influence that we did not seek. But even here, humility guides us because humility reminds us that this--all of this--was never about us in the first place.
I've often seen women struggle when their influence grows--whether it's in a church, community, or even in the home. Sociologists tell us that women often lack the confidence to assume leadership; and so when they're put in places of influence, they can doubt their own abilities, withdraw, and self-sabotage. (On the other hand, men--as a general category--do not seem to struggle with confidence in their own abilities.) I know this lack of confidence to be true in my own life. When I'm put in front of people or receive public praise, all I want to do is close up shop and hide, preferring abdication over the need to meet expectations about future growth. But as much as humility reminds us that God is the one who makes our work flourish, humility also frees us to flourish in the midst of that work. Humility frees us to become men and women of influence.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to write a short post for womensministry.net, a site devoted to supporting and encouraging women who are called to serve in position of influence in the church. I wrote about how humility is the very thing that makes our leadership effective. Instead of leading us away from growing influence, humility frees us to step into God's call on our lives by freeing us from preoccupation with ourselves. Specifically,
1. Humility rescues us from the need to make a name for ourselves.
2. Humility frees us from the paralysis of criticism.
3. Humility gives us the confidence to obey God's call.
You can read the whole article there, but ironically enough, this was the very article that I needed to (re)read yesterday. In the midst of all the excitement and busyness of Launch Week, I'm learning to take my own medicine and remember that this isn't about me.
Praise Jesus and thank heavens, none of this is about me.
Humble Roots
Join Launch Team
Hello, my name is Hannah and I need help.
There I said it.
The woman who happily assumes responsibility after responsibility. The woman who loves doing it all. The woman who stays up late and gets up early worrying about how she's going to get it all done. The woman who so prided herself in her usefulness that God decided she needed to write a book about humility.
This woman has finally reached a place where she can ask for help.
On October 4th, my second book Humble Rootswill release to the general public. But between now and then, I need a group of folks who are willing to read it and tell others about it. I need a group of folks who can help amplify the message of finding peace through humility.
If you're anything like me, you're probably up to your neck in good work--family, church, community service. But if you're anything like me, you're also probably exhausted. Worn thin by the sheer weight of trying to do more and be more than God intends for you.
In Matthew 11, Jesus invites people like us to find rest in Him. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened" He calls, "and I will give you rest."
But this rest doesn't come by throwing off good things, having tighter schedules, or simply learning to say "No." This rest comes through humility. It comes by learning limitation and dependence.
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me," Jesus continues, "for I am gentle and humblein heart. And you will find rest for your souls."
Too often, the desire to do good work can mask a deeper pride. We busy ourselves with good things, not simply to fill the need, but because we need to be needed. We need to know that we are important, to know that our lives matter. And so to quiet our fears and stroke our egos, we try to save everyone and everybody from everything.
But we are not God. And when we try to be, we end up stretched, worn thin. While we're busy saving the world, we're losing our own souls.
So let me say it once again: I need your help.
In the past, I might have tried to launch a book on my own. To do enough work behind the scenes to make up the difference of having to humble myself and ask for help. But today, I know better.
If you'd be willing to receive an advance copy of Humble Roots, read it, and commit to to sharing it over the next few weeks, please go to this form. There, you will find more details about how you can help. More than anything though, I want you to join me on this journey to rest, to walking the path of humility.
I want you to come with me, through field and forest, to discover how the natural world declares the glory of God and reminds us of our limitations. I want you to learn how honey and blackberries and wild grapes teach us dependence. I want you to believe that the One who cares for the lilies of the field will care for you too. I want you to know the peace of wild things.
So will you come? Will you join me?
Beauty Will Save the World
In hard times, beauty is among the first things we abandon; in hard times, beauty is among the things we need most.
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, David Brooks recounts how Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist, used photography to change the nation’s view of slavery. Renowned as a statesman and activist, Douglass was also something of an artist, carefully selecting his posture, dress, and demeanor to communicate his intrinsic humanity. Near the end of the piece, Brooks confesses
I don't understand why artists want to get involved in partisanship and legislation. The real power lies in the ability to recode the mental maps people project into the world.
Brooks may not understand the temptation, but I do.
When the world is falling to pieces around you, beauty can seem trivial. When the world is falling to pieces around you, it’s so much easier to embrace utilitarianism. Why arrange flowers to set on the table underneath the window where the sunbeam falls when all flesh is grass and the grass withers and the flower fades?
In the span of seven months, this year has brought us terror and death and anger and division and violence. These may not be the worst of times, but they are, by no measure, the best. And in times like these, it’s tempting to bypass beauty and settle for whatever gets the job done. Go directly to the punch. Take the shortest route. Cut to the chase. And then, once your work is done, Cinderella, you can think about going to the ball. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can sit down to read a novel. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can write a song.
But what if the work is never done? What if the work can never be done without beauty?
A few weeks ago, I listened to a 2015 interview with Sonia Manzano, best known to millions of children and their parents as "Maria" from Sesame Street. Sonia assumed her alter ego in 1971 and spent the next 44 years showing us a community who lived and loved together, who fought and forgave each other. But that world was not the world Sonia knew as a child. Growing up, Sonia’s world was plagued by domestic violence and poverty.
And in those dark times, beauty became a refuge.
“I found a lot of comfort on television when I was a kid,” Manzano writes. “So I think it's interesting that I ended up on a show that offered a bit of comfort to children who lived in the inner city… Here was a moment, an hour, where there's order, where there's humor, where there's love in a place that looks like your home.”
Award-winning children’s illustrator Jerry Pinkney, echoes a similar thought:
Our work is to create books that act as wide-open doors—books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.
But beauty is not simply about creating an escape from present difficulties. The work of beauty is to create a vision of the world as it was meant to be. It is a way to see past the present darkness to a future beyond. To the tired, beauty promises rest. To the oppressed, it offers freedom. To the fearful, it whispers “Hope.”
“Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture makers,” Frederick Douglass writes, “and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements.”
What poets and prophets and reformers offer us is a vision of the world set right. This is why beauty is so powerful and why human beings have always made art, in even the most difficult times and most hardscrabble places. The Appalachian mamaw, fingers bent and eyes straining, thrusts her needle through bits of scrap, quilting together utility and beauty. The island child, malnourished and broken by disease, still gathers bits and bobs to fashion a toy.
This is human heart searching for its home. Searching for safety. Searching for the world as it should be. For in the beginning, it was good; and in the end, it will be good again.
I write this as an act of confession. A confession of what I know to be true; a confession what I fail to do. In the turmoil of 2016, I find myself abandoning beauty in favor of the utilitarian. I find myself focusing on the immediate, preferring argumentation to persuasion. They say talk is cheap and I believe them because talk is easy. It’s easy to pontificate. It’s easy to argue. It’s easy to analyze.
It’s so much harder to hope. It’s so much harder to believe. It’s so much harder to keep faith. It’s so much harder to create.
So hard, in fact, that pursuit of beauty requires Divine intervention. To live beautifully, to live full of love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness and meekness, means being filled with God himself.
And so, as with every other Divine filling, beauty begins with humility. Beauty begins when we repent of our failure to see the world beyond this present darkness. Beauty begins when repent of our failure to see the Power who is greater than evil. Beauty begins when we repent of our lack of faith, and yes, even our lack of imagination.
St. Augustine, that confessing saint, once wrote of God: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.”
One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we can recognize the Beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we work to create beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we offer hope to those who themselves struggle to believe. Because this is what every artist knows: Show. Don’t tell.
Do not simply tell us what is wrong; show us what is right. Do not simply tell us what we must understand; show us how to understand it at a level deeper than words. Do not simply tell us what the world is; show us what it should be.
Show us beauty Show us kindness Show us courage Show us faith Show us conviction Show us love
In these hard times, we must not abandon the work of beauty. We must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to celebrate it—the quiet moments, the simple pleasures, the secret joys--even as the world falls to pieces around us. But we must do more than this. In these hard times, we must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to create beauty. We must discipline ourselves to rebuild the world even as it falls to pieces around us.
So go. Set the table with the good dishes. Pick the wildflowers that will tomorrow die. Compose a song you already know by heart. Write that novel and build that better mousetrap. And in so doing, remind us all of what the world can and must and one day will be.
Hillbilly Elegy
Many of you know that I live in the mountains of western Virginia. We're hardworking bunch, knit together by family, shared sense of community, and a particular love for this region. Here, my kids go to local schools, and my husband pastors a small church at a bend of a long country road. A graveyard sits on the right and a cow pasture on the left. A small stream runs through the pasture and is home to minnows, tadpoles, lizards, and crawdads.
But not everything is idyllic. Like many other communities, we're increasingly affected by income disparity, drug use, & the breakdown of the nuclear family, Travel just a bit farther west and you'll hit the coal fields of southern WV and eastern KY. The challenges these folks face make ours seem like child's play. It's hard to understand the challenges of rural life because outsiders tend to idealize it (Mayberry) or mock it (Beverly Hillbillies). What we don't do is take a careful look at the complexities of it.
In the recently released, Hillbilly Elegy, author J.D. Vance chronicles the story of "his people"--from growing up an Ohio factory town to returning to his ancestral home in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Vance's childhood was marked by family chaos and underachievement. It was a childhood and family that he loves deeply nonetheless. But Vance doesn't mince words: he honors the humanity of these self-described "hillbillies" at the same time he calls them to own their potential.
One of the most enlightening aspects of the book is Vance's take on how religion plays out in working class communities. There's often a deep-seated sense of faith or belief in God, but for the most part, the rural poor are detached from local churches. Vance wonders out loud how much this is their own fault and how much it is the fault of church. I've wondered the same thing myself. Many times.
Are our church's even accessible to folks outside a certain demographic? And if they aren't, how can we change that?
Here's my longer review of the book and a podcast in which I argue that it will be among the most influential books of 2016.
Of Refugees and Christian Duties
Last week, I posted a reflection on the Syrian refugee crisis. It quickly became on of my most shared pieces--as well as one of my most controversial. To be honest, this surprised me; but it also reminded me of the importance of healthy dialogue. In that vein, I've asked my friend, Eve Marie Barner Gleason to offer perspective on how Christians must navigate the calling to be faithful citizens of their earthly countries and as well as citizens of Heaven.
As a director with Care Net, a network of crisis pregnancy centers offering alternatives to abortion, Eve faces this dilemma everyday--how do we promote Christian values within the framework of a highly bureaucratic and often, less than transparent, government? How can we tackle tough questions without resorting to either pragmatism or sentimentality? How do we pursue truly Christian solutions in both policy and practice?
If you are like me, the Syrian refugee crisis has dominated your news feed. In the days since the Paris bombings, I’ve actually learned a lot through the debate on blogs, social media and between friends. But these debates haven’t impacted me as deeply as the stories of people suffering in a region torn apart by war: 200,000 killed, roughly 11 million displaced, 60 percent of the population unemployed.
The arguments themselves can be overwhelming. Here is a brief summary of comments from my news feed alone (I offer these as examples of the debate; I haven’t independently verified all the statements cited as facts in these comments):
Christians should be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. Just because we care about displaced Syrians, doesn’t mean we should bring them all here. Wouldn’t refugees be better off nearer their homeland than adjusting to a new culture after such trauma? Maybe we should try to make them a safe space in the Middle East.
Jesus would welcome displaced people, so Christians should be filled with compassion and even willing to risk our own comfort and safety to love and share Christ with those who are suffering. Anything else is selfish and xenophobic. Even if some terrorists slipped through, shouldn’t we trust God’s protection instead of being fearful, cowardly, and hateful?
Refugees have committed acts of terrorism, including Bosnian immigrants charged with conspiring to fund terrorism.
Syrian refugees from the current war have not committed acts of terrorism.
Our screening process is woefully inadequate. ISIS is smart enough to train a terrorist posing as a refugee to defeat any screening measure we can come up with. And it only takes a fraction of a % to slip through screening and cause mayhem.
It already takes 2-3 years to enter the U.S. as a legal refugee. The process includes a background check and detailed personal interviews. In fact, the screening may be too strict, leaving refugees languishing in squalid camps vulnerable to the influence of terrorist recruiters. Besides, terrorists have easier ways to get to the US: across our southern border or with a student or tourist visa.
Since January, only 30 (1.6 percent of) Syrians who arrived on American were Christian, compared to 1,833 Muslims (97.8 percent).
Christians only make up 10% of the population in Syria. Very few now live in ISIS controlled areas of Syria because if they didn’t leave, they have likely been killed or enslaved already. This makes it hard to know how many Christians are even applying for refugee status.
We should prevent Muslims entering this country as refugees. Islamic faith condones violence and atrocities so we can never trust them.
We should welcome Muslim refugees. Because they are fleeing horrific violence and atrocities being committed in the name of Islam, they understand the evils of extremism more than anyone.
ISIS wants us to take in refugees so there will be more Muslims, who even if they aren’t terrorists, will eventually be loyal to an established Islamic state and caliphate.
ISIS wants us to refuse to take in refugees so they can show the world how selfish and inhospitable we are, and so they can continue to rape, torture, and kill them.
And then there are pictures: A boy washed up on a beach, a bloodied grandfather, bombed out homes, grieving widows and widowers, children sleeping on the ground, orphans trying to protect their younger siblings.
How do Christians process so much suffering? How should American Christians think about displaced people and how many we should allow into our country? Long ago, St. Augustine spoke of believers as having dual citizenship in the city of God and our earthly countries. So, how should our roles as both citizens of heaven and citizens of the United States inform this issue?
Our Duties as American Citizens
American citizens are in a unique position. Not only will the leaders we elect make decisions about how many refugees to accept, from where, and with what restrictions, we can also influence our elected representatives through letters, phone calls, and social media.
Citizens in many countries have no duty except obedience (or civil disobedience if asked to violate their conscience). But it is our duty and privilege as American citizens to think deeply about public policy issues and to pray for and seek to influence those who make policy decisions.
On the complex issues surrounding refugee resettlement, it is important to remember that government does have a responsibility to protect the country. Romans 13:4 refers to civil authorities as God’s servants for the purpose of punishing evildoers. Citizens and leaders alike are called to be just and impartial by Scripture (Leviticus 19:15; Jeremiah 22:11-17; Deuteronomy 16:18-20).
Each elected official in the United Sates takes an oath of allegiance that includes a promise to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Because the duties of rulers involve justice, wisdom, and restraining evil, it is entirely appropriate for Christian citizens, policy makers, and Christian citizens who are also policy makers, to carefully examine the conditions under which refugees are resettled in the U.S., to identify where security vulnerabilities may exist, and whether the risks of resettling certain people within our borders are acceptable related to the intended outcome of justice and compassion.
Our Duties as followers of Jesus Christ
What about those Christians who are not policy makers (which is most of us)? We may not have a particularly large say in the resettlement of refugees from Syria or elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still have clear duties and privileges: to love our neighbor, to speak up for the defenseless, the foreigner, the stranger in our midst.
“Love your neighbor as yourself...” (Luke 12:33)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven . . .If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)
“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)
We remember that Jesus was a refugee in Egypt as his parents fled from Herod’s slaughter of innocents. So, we love our neighbor: our immigrant neighbor, our Muslim neighbor, our refugee neighbor, our unborn neighbor, our unpopular neighbor. And, yes, even those who hate us and would do us harm.
Such love must be intensely practical. We must start by praying for displaced Syrian people, but we must not stop there. We may post opinions about the refugee crisis, but opinions aren’t life-transforming love.
How do we love? If you have a refugee or an immigrant in your community, welcome them with respect and kindness, rather than suspicion or judgement. Listen to their stories, offer a meal or a cup of tea, or invite them to a community gathering.
And if you have been moved by the stories and pictures of those caught up in what has been called the “greatest ongoing humanitarian crisis”, resolve to show Christ’s love, whether from near or far. One way to help is to give as generously as you can to organizations who are already helping in Jesus’ name, such as Operation Mobilization, World Vision, or Samaritan’s Purse.
Together with her husband, Ryan, and their dog, Coco, Eve makes her home in Loudoun County, VA. She serves as Director of Center Best Practices at Care Net. Eve and Ryan seek to grow in grace in fellowship with other believers and service to their community. Eve would also like to thank Ashley Trim for her skillful editing of this post.
Not Afraid
I try not to be political. Don’t get me wrong: I have plenty of opinions about government policy and cultural issues; but for the most part, I try to keep them to myself--if only because online conversation is rarely productive. But occasionally, something will happen that moves me to speak. Things like the atrocities at Kermit Gosnell's abortion clinic or those in Syria and Iraq.
Today, we’re facing a similar cultural crisis. This time, however, the tables are turned. Instead of being “out there,” the dilemma is much closer to home: In the wake of the Paris attacks, I’ve seen a groundswell of anti-refugee rhetoric among Christians.
I'm not talking about nuanced conversations about the hard work of integrating refugees into western society. I'm not talking about the challenges to properly vet and approve those who have been waiting for 2-3 years for entrance. I'm not talking about the legitimate responsibility of the government to protect and provide for her citizens. I'm talking about the full-blown fear-mongering that links the terrorist attacks in Paris with all Syrian refugees.
Honestly, I’m not surprised when it comes from political campaigns. If the candidacy of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it’s that playing to our instinctive nativism is politically expedient. But what has surprised me are the memes and Facebook posts and xenophobia I’ve seen from Christians. Despite being people who are “strangers and pilgrims” ourselves; despite being people whose very faith rests on a middle-eastern man who had no place to lay his head, Christians have been among the most vocally opposed to accepting Syrian refugees.
But what's surprised me more than anything, I think, is how quickly we've thrown away our pro-life values.
Over the last several months, my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been flooded with videos documenting Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in infant body parts. We have been sickened. We have wept. We have become angry. As we should. The violence being perpetrated against the “least of these” is horrific and anti-God. So, in His name, we have rallied. We have called our senators and representatives. We have cheered when Congress finally set up hearings. We have shamed those who turn their backs and ignore the bloodshed.
But when similar atrocities are being perpetrated on human beings outside the womb, we are willing to turn our backs, shut the door, and “put it in God’s hands.”
I understand that we cannot solve every geo-political crisis. I understand that we may not choose to involve ourselves in a ground war in Syria. I understand moral proximity and the order of loves. I understand that refugees must undergo a strict process to enter this country, whether they are Syrian or not. But what I cannot understand is how easily we can turn a deaf ear to the wounded man lying on the road to Jerusalem just because of ethnicity. I cannot understand how quickly we’ll cross to the other side. I cannot understand how, like the young lawyer, we can justify our lack of compassion by asking “Who is my neighbor?”
Your neighbor is anyone who God brings into your life--Muslim, Christian, Syrian, French, or Iraqi. When someone is lying bruised and beaten beside the road and you’re taking that same road, he is your neighbor. Run to him. When someone knocks on your door legitimately seeking sanctuary, open it. And if we don’t, don’t be surprised if that same God doesn’t come down in judgment because we’ve failed to reflect his own hospitality. We may fear the possibility of a terrorist slipping through the cracks, but Jesus reminds us that we’d do better to fear Him who can throw both body and soul into hell.
Being pro-life is not about holding onto our rights, protecting ourselves, or insisting that a choice is legitimate simply because it is legal. This is the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement: Protect yourself first. Don’t risk your sense of security to provide a safe place for another human being.
Instead, being pro-life means having the faith to believe that the God who calls us to do difficult things is big enough to care for us in the midst of them. Being pro-life means being people of courage and self-sacrifice. Being pro-life means being people of hospitality.
So, friends, I’m asking you to display the same welcome that you would ask a pregnant teenager to show to her unborn baby. Instead of succumbing to fear, I’m asking you to open your hearts to the potential of new life. I'm asking you to model God's heart for the stranger and pilgrim. Who knows--He might just be using this refugee crisis to bring more people out of darkness into his marvelous light. It’s happening in Europe. It could happen here.
So let me go on record: Because God is both strong and loving, I am not afraid. I am pro-life. I am pro-immigrant. I am pro-refugee.
For a more extensive overview of the challenges of integrating refugees into western society, please read this piece by Alastair Roberts. Alastair clearly notes the difficulties, but also provides a thoroughly Christian framework about why and how we accept those difficulties as part of our Christian vocation. My hope is that we can silence the fear-mongering, roll up our sleeves, and get to work.
Learning to Speak Up
A little over four years ago, I started down a path that I thought would lead me on a relaxing Sunday afternoon stroll through the woods. Little did I know I was actually starting a hike through the mountains.
When I hit "publish" on the first post here at SAL, I had no ambitions or plan for what God might do with me. I knew that I needed to do something--that I needed to cultivate certain gifts and desires--but there was no plan. At least from my perspective. As the path has twisted and turned, I've simply taken the next step in front of me. Sometimes those steps opened onto breathtaking vistas where I could pause and marvel at all that God had done; sometimes they led me up increasingly steep and narrow paths that made me doubt the wisdom of having ever left the couch.
This year, one of those uphill climbs has been doing more traveling and speaking.
If you're a regularly follower of this blog, you've probably noticed that I've been a little... um... absent lately. But if I've been absent here, it's only because I've been present in many new places speaking and teaching on the truth of living as image bearers. And like most uphill climbs, it has been immensely rewarding--once I was able to pause long enough to catch my breath.
Despite the challenges--whether it's been covering my responsibilities at home or overcoming the strange panic that inevitably settles on me right before I leave--I've relished each opportunity. Hand me a mic and watch out. The truth of imago Dei is so large--so all of life encompassing--that I'm never at a loss for words even if it's sometimes hard to know exactly where to land. Whether we're talking about how being image bearers affects our approach to work or learning how the gospel is both the means and model of for our transformation, I feel like I could spend the rest of my life teasing out the daily realities of being made like Christ.
So that's exactly what I have and am doing. Traveling and speaking has allowed me to develop ideas that I didn't get to explore fully in Made for More. I've been able to dig more deeply into the relationship between the Creation Mandate and the Great Commission; to explore how the gospel informs and enables the process of Christlikeness; and to focus more specifically on a woman's calling in the home, church, and society. It's been wonderful.
This year has also taught me how to "speak up" through the chance to co-host a weekly podcast with Erin Straza. The goal of Persuasionis to provide a space where "fine ladies, rational minds, and the best kind of company" can gather to discuss ideas and issues. We noticed that there were a lot of Christian podcasts focused on"women's issues" and there were a lot of podcasts for women Bible teachers; but we wanted to do something different. We want to amplify women's voices and perspectives beyond the typical conversations--to apply Christian truth to the issues around us, whether it is doing chores, failed attempts at authenticity, or funeral traditions. After all "when you're a woman, all issues are women's issues."
So consider this your invitation. Whether you're cleaning house, wrapping presents for the coming holidays, or running errands, grab a pair of earbuds or download the file and listen along!
Leveling the Playing Field: Professional Sports and the Success of Women's Ministry
This weekend the Indiana Fever and the Minnesota Lynx will face off in the first game of the WNBA finals. Now, if you didn’t know the WNBA finals were happening this weekend, don’t worry; you’re in good company. By and large, women’s professional sports have failed to gain the attention that men’s team sports enjoy. And despite your brother-in-law’s assertions, the disconnect probably has little to do with women being less athletic or less interesting than men. Thank you, US Women’s National Soccer Team.
Famed sports’ commentator Frank Deford recently joined NPR’s Steve Inskeep to discuss why women’s professional sports get less attention then men's sports. His conclusion? Inertia. The media is used to covering sports a certain way, and the public is used to watching sports a certain way. So that even as Title IX invited girls and women into the world of sports, they are still limited by how far they can go.
As I listened, I couldn’t help but think of the parallels to women in the Church. Generally, I’ve been encouraged by how women are taking ownership of their faith and are teaching others to do the same. They love their families, are active in social justice, and committed to personal growth through the means of grace. At the same time, I do worry that this growth could be stalled if we don’t take a hard look at infrastructure.
Like sports’ fans, many of us are accustomed to church ministry happening a certain way. And unless we change this, women’s contributions to the Kingdom will end up mirroring what’s happened in professional sports. Yes, women will have opportunities, but they will continue to exist outside the mainstream. Simply having Christian women top the NYT’s best seller list doesn’t mean that Christian women are flourishing in the Church any more than the existence of the WNBA finals means that women are flourishing in professional sports.
So what can we do? Deford offers some valuable insights to how women’s sports can gain more visibility and credibility, and most of them relate to changes in infrastructure. As I listened, I realized that his insights could be equally valuable to us.
1. Tie it to money. In order to raise the profile of women’s professional sports, Deford recommends that league officials high tail it to Vegas and open betting lines. Without realizing it, Deford is echoing something that Christ himself taught: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So while I don’t recommend taking bets on who will lead your church's women’s ministry next year, I do think money is part of the equation. If we don’t invest our resources in equipping women, our hearts won’t be invested either. For a local congregation, this may mean budgeting to bring in a female speaker, hiring more women on staff, or helping women afford theological education. When resources are on the line, we're more likely to care about the final outcome. In other words, when we place a bet, we'll watch the game.
2. Link women’s efforts to men’s efforts. Another part of the WNBA’s trouble is that their season runs during the summer, with the playoffs hitting just as football season is opening. For many sports fans, this sends a subtle signal that the WNBA is not *really* basketball because it doesn’t happen during “basketball season.” Deford notes that women athletes who enjoy the most visibility are those who compete in tournaments alongside their male peers, such as in golf or tennis. Women and men don’t compete against each other, but they compete at the same time and place. So that in the public eye, women athletes have just as much credibility as the men do.
When it comes to local churches, it is very common for women’s ministry to be siloed from the main mission of the church. For many church leaders, the “women’s auxiliary” is precisely that—auxiliary to the day to day functioning of the church which is often led and conducted by men. This presents several dangers including sending the signal to the congregation that what the women are doing is not truly “ministry” in much the same way the public sees the WNBA as something less than “basketball.”
Because men are already established in places of visibility and influence in the Church, the surest way to promote women’s calling is to tie it to them and the central mission of the Church. When male leaders visibly work alongside female leaders, the congregation learns that female contributions are just as valuable and necessary as male.
3. Work as a team. The third thing Deford notes is that women’s sports will only gain visibility through team efforts. The success of women like Serena Williams or Lindsey Vonn does not mean that female athletes are meeting success across the board. Correspondingly, the success of a Beth Moore, Ann Voskamp, or Jen Hatmaker does not mean that women are flourishing or that their gifts are being used in local churches.
The reality is that most women working for the Kingdom are working in isolation. Part of this stems from an emphasis on home and family as a significant part of a woman’s calling. As an eleven-year veteran of the “domestic industry,” I can assure you that home can be a very lonely place. But beyond this, women leaders are simply not networked the way men are. Men in ministry often develop professional ties during their undergrad and seminary years and maintain them through professional conferences. Most of the women leaders I know came into their calling, not through academia, but through their passion and gifting. They are paraprofessionals and lack the professional support and network of other leaders.
Thankfully, the digital age offers women more opportunities to work as a team; but online interaction is not enough. Our most effective efforts happen in community, growing out of our work in local churches. Women leaders need to be invited onto the team of the church; they need to be present at staff meetings, prayer times, and leadership retreats. Otherwise, they will continue to serve in isolation and only a certain type of woman—those gifted with communication and extroverted personalities—will gain visibility and influence.
I’m sure that some will question the significance of women’s contributions to the Church much the same way some question the significance of women’s contributions to professional sports. But given the rampant sexuality, substance abuse, and violence that’s part of the ethos of professional sports, I can’t help but believe that we’d all be better with a stronger female presence. For me at least, I’d rather see women contributing to what’s happening on the field than on the sidelines as sex objects.
If you are a pastor or a women’s ministry leader, remember this: Women make up over half the human population and over 60% of your congregation. As presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina says, “We are not a special interest group.” Ultimately this isn’t a question of representation or fairness; it is a question of organizational effectiveness. When women are free to flourish—whether on the tennis court or in the Church—everybody wins.
Confession and Community
"Take one sleepy seaside town in England, add a pinch of intrigue, stir in a brooding Scottish detective and his engaging local sergeant, and you’ve got the makings of Broadchurch, a British crime drama whose first series was, according to its millions of viewers, basically perfect..."
Last month, our family headed out of town for a week of vacation. We're still figuring out how to do this "family vacation" thing out because neither my husband or I grew up with "family vacation" as an annual reality. Now, before my mother and mother-in-law private message me to take issue with this statement, let me clarify: Neither my husband or I grew up with a specific week built into our families' calendars that guaranteed time away. We always took family trips; we went to visit relatives or went camping, but the idea that you could set aside an entire week at the beach to simply do nothing was not part of our experience.
This is so much outside our experience, in fact, that I didn't realize that you actually have to book a house months, not weeks, in advance. So when we finally decided to plan a "family vacation," we ended up shut out of the area we wanted to visit. Enter grandparents to the rescue. Given our predicament, my husband's grandparents graciously allowed us to use their winter home to go on "family vacation." So we packed up the kids and drove 900 miles to southeast Florida... in August. Like I said, we're still learning the ins-and-outs of this "family vacation" thing.
Thankfully, there is one aspect of "family vacation" that we became experts at very quickly--the art of doing nothing. Sleeping late, lazy days, fast food, and lots of HGTV, board games, and beach reads. This year this included binge watching the second season of Broadchurch, a British crime drama that is just disturbing enough to be perfect. My husband and I had watched the previous season a couple months ago, so when I found season two at our county library, I threw caution (and late-fees to the wind) and packed it for vacation.
Now, when I say that we binge-watched those eight episodes, I mean exactly that. We have no defense, no excuse; we sat fixated for hours in front of the television; and each time, as the credits closed the episode, my husband and I would look at each other, neither wanting to be the one to suggest pushing play on the next episode, but both of us desperate to continue the story. So after two late (late) nights of watching TV well after the children were tucked in bed, I can officially tell you, "It was worth it."
While there are one or two elements that might be uncomfortable for Christians, Broadchurch delves into the human experience in ways I don't often see in pop culture. Life, death, truth, our need for community--it's all there in one small English village by the sea. If you've seen the series, you'll know what I mean. And if you've seen it, you might appreciate this piece I wrote recently for Christ and Pop Culture about how Broadchurch season 2 shows the importance of confession of sin. And this--the importance of confession--is a profoundly Christian idea. We must confess our sin in order to be reconciled to God and each other. Proof is not enough; evidence is not enough. The wrongdoer must own his wrongdoing and speak the truth about it. Without such confession, our relationships break down and we end up isolated from God and each other.
From the piece:
Within the Church, the term “confession” has two usages. The first refers to the affirmation of a specific doctrine: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord…” So begins the Apostle’s Creed, one of the oldest and most foundational of Christian confessions. With such statements, we are able to create distinct communities based in a shared reality. Creeds and confessions don’t define reality, though. Instead, they form the bonds and boundaries of communities: If we have nothing else, at least we know the truth about these things.
Christians also use the word “confession” in a more familiar way: We confess our sins. Whether this happens within the confessional booth, an accountability group, or in the dock, when we confess our sins, we speak the truth about our actions. But often we mistake the confession of sin as an individual act. At its heart, confession—whether of faith or of a lack of faith—is about building community.
Evangelicals, who have traditionally emphasized the individual believer’s immediate relationship with God, tend to focus on the personal benefit of confession; “unconfessed sin,” as the thinking goes, will hinder your fellowship with God and strip you of your own sense of personal peace. Consequently, we’re encouraged to bring our sin into the light so that it won’t have a hold on us anymore. We’re also told that such transparency will allow others to be transparent with their own failings.
What we don’t always recognize, however, is that the confession of sin also serves a purpose similar to that of the confession of faith: It creates and maintains the bonds of community. When we confess the creeds, we speak together about the nature of God and his world. When we confess our sins, we align ourselves with a shared reality about what is right and what is wrong. We align ourselves with the truth that the community holds in common... Without shared truth, community is impossible.
One other note, there are some spoilers in the full piece so be warned--go binge watch season 1 and season 2 first.
Summer Daze
Chalk it up to the latent truancy that exists in parent and child alike, but I've been less than motivated these last few weeks. From the middle of May onward, I found myself slogging through the final projects, class picnics, and end-of-school year programs. I bought the ice cream, clapped for the perfect attendance awards, and sniffled through fifth-grade graduation. When the last bell rang, my kids weren't the only ones ready to be done.
No more lunches to pack...
No more homework to muddle through...
No more waking up in the middle of the night to remember what I forgot...
At least for the next 104 days or so.
I grew up in a teacher's home; in fact, it was a two-teacher home. Both my mother and father spent their days schooling future generations in the finer points of history and science. For our family, life existed in discreet increments of 9 weeks that gradually worked their way toward the ultimate goal of summer vacation. Dad often had to take odd jobs during his months off to make ends meet, but occasionally, every so often, there was a glorious summer when we had enough. He could stay with us, tend his garden, putter in his orchard, and simply enjoy working at home.
Of course, we still had responsibilities, even as children; but there was something marked about the sense of freedom we felt when school wrapped up. Instead of lesson planning and testing and grade books, our days were filled with berry picking, camping, ice cream, and lounging on the couch watching cartoons. We might go on vacation or travel to see relatives, but the joy of summer was directly tied to the fact that we didn't HAVE TO. Dewy June mornings evaporated into hot July afternoons which eventually gave way to the muggy nights of August. And all of them blissfully unscheduled.
At least, that's how I remember it.
Later in life, I learned that this wasn't exactly the norm. My sense of extended vacation was, in many ways, the result of both my childhood naivete and my parents unusual work schedules. Most of my friends didn't experience summer the way I did, especially if both their parents worked and they ended up at grandma's or in multiple sessions of day camp topped off with nightly VBS. In many ways, our family lived in a world apart, moving to our own rhythms, resisting outside forces. We did participate in church activities, offering up our service at Bible school or youth group camping trips, but for the most part, my parents felt no need to live their lives the way everyone else did.
For me, this meant that I carried some interesting expectations into adulthood, particularly that the world should slow down during the months of June, July, and August. In these times, you'd need only do the bare minimum outside your home. Certainly you must work. Those afternoons in front of the television often included snapping green beans, but somehow it was different. We were working for ourselves. We were investing in our own home and family. We weren't obligated to anyone else.
Eighteen summers of this will shape a person. So that even today, my heart seems to skip a few beats faster when June rolls around. June means freedom. June means family.
At dinner the other night, after a discussion of loose teeth, why ice doesn't sink, and the obligatory knock-knock joke, I leaned over to my husband.
"You do realize," I said, looking conspiratorially into those brown eyes that got us here in the first place, "you do realize that we are living in a Beverly Clearly novel."
A Beverly Clearly novel set smack-dab in the middle of summer.
I tell you all this to explain where I'll be for the next few months. The last bell has rung, and I'm taking the summer off. I might pop in now and again, but don't expect to see much of me. There may be some previously scheduled posts on FB or Twitter, and I might work up the effort to record a podcast or two, but for the most part, it's going to be quiet.
Somebody's got to teach these kids how summer's done.
Taste and See
You'd think after ten years, I'd have figured out a better way. You'd think that I'd have learned how to motivate, how to cajole, or how to simply avoid the conflict altogether But no. Ten years into this thing called parenting, dinner time can still be a battle.
Not every night, of course. The nights I serve up macaroni and cheese, chicken, or pizza, all is well and all manner of things shall be well. But the nights we're broadening our palate, the nights my husband and I enjoy a grown-up meal or attempt some exotic recipe, these nights devolve into protestations, stalling, and outright depression. I can never guarantee precisely how it will all go down--which food will be the stumbling block or which child will stumble--but I have noticed a pattern.
It begins with quiet resistance, moving the food around on the plate, sad looks, and barely uttered sighs. Perhaps all the other portions are consumed, leaving behind the one offending pile of vegetables or curry. My husband and I will have finished by this point. We will be ready to clear the table or have dessert, ready to move on. But instead, we stay. We stay for round two. We stay to encourage, to confront, and eventually to demand. We set timers, appeal to their sense of gratitude, and promise no other food until morning. Sometimes this works; sometimes they take us up on the offer.
After ten years, I should know better. Yet, each time, I continue to be surprised.
It's not that I'm unsympathetic. I understand their resistance to foods they don't like. I understand that we all have our own set of preferences. I understand that my husband doesn't like olives or carbonated drinks. But what I can't fathom is why my children resist foods they have never even tried. How can they know they don't like something if they've never even tasted it?
So while I'm willing to go through the process with them, go through the process we must. We insist that they taste. We insist that they try. We insist that they open themselves up to possibility.
It starts with a gathering of courage, putting a tiny bit on the spoon, hesitantly raising the spoon to the lips, closing the eyes, and tasting... And it. is. good. The eyes open; relief and surprise wash over the face. "It's good. No, mommy, I mean it's good. I'm not just saying that. I really like it."
After ten years, I should know better. I should know that my children are no different than the rest of us.
It is human nature to doubt. It is human nature to question. It is human nature to think the worst. Of course, I won't like that food. Of course, I won't like that change. Of course, I won't like what God is offering me. As I wrote recently at a colleague's blog: "We are helpless, flawed people and our inability to trust God is just one expression of this."
In some sense, we are all small children sitting at a banquet table with sorry looks and unuttered sighs, pushing the food of the gods around in circles on our plates.
But instead of demanding that we clean our plates; instead of setting timers and threatening no more provision, God simply invites us to "taste and see." He invites us to test him. To hesitantly raise the spoon to our lips, to close our eyes, to swallow.
I wonder if we expect more of each other than God himself expects of us. We want robust expressions of faith and confidence in God's plan. We want to see his children gobbling up the food that is put in front of them--whether it is a unforeseen trial or simply a change in life circumstances. We want to hear bold proclamations of faith that "all things work together for good."
But God knows better. He remembers our weakness. He knows we are but dust. And so, the perfect Father, opts to go through the process with us. Instead of demanding mature, perfect faith, he simply says, "Taste and see. Taste and see that I am good."
And so, slowly, hesitatingly, we obey. We open ourselves up to the possibility that his ways are beyond ours. We open ourselves up to the possibility that a good God might just give good gifts. We open ourselves up to the possibility that the Lord is indeed what he claims to be.
_______________________________________________________ ***You can read the full interview about faith and doubt here.
Pulling Together: Marriage, Ministry, and Calling
Yesterday, Bible teacher, Christian radio host, and conference speaker Nancy Leigh DeMoss announced that she will marry Robert Wolgemuth this coming fall. If you’re familiar with DeMoss’s ministry, “Revive Our Hearts,” you’ll understand the significance of this news. For years, DeMoss has been an advocate for Christian women to embrace the “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness” found in Christ, including the unique calling to home and motherhood. At the same time she has confidently and comfortably embraced her own singleness, believing it to be a gift that has allowed her to commit herself to ministry.
But as God does, just when we think we know the plan, He changes it. Recently, He has brought widowed Wolgemuth and DeMoss together in order “to continue serving Him wholeheartedly, trusting Him to make us even more spiritually fruitful together than we could be apart.”
DeMoss continues:
I love this man dearly and look forward to becoming Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth. But my life mission has not changed. It will now be our life mission to magnify the Lord together… We envision a continued robust Revive Our Hearts ministry. Our longing is for even more women (and men) around the world to experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
And Wolgemuth adds:
My promise to our heavenly Shepherd, to Nancy, to her precious ministry family, and to the thousands around the world who love Nancy Leigh DeMoss, is that I will come alongside her and her ministry with my prayers, encouragement, and support.
And all God’s people said, “AMEN!” This is precisely how we should talk about married women and their calling to Christ’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, I don’t hear this language employed very often. Instead, I regularly hear Christian women being told to seek their callings through their husbands. Don’t get me wrong. I am fully convinced that a woman is called to minister to her husband and family. And I’ll be the first the trumpet the imago Dei-quality of a well-made peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich or a properly laundered (and folded) pair of boxer shorts. What I’m concerned about is how often we confuse our prepositions—how often we misunderstand the difference between through and to.
In I Corinthians 7, Paul makes it clear that husbands and wives must cultivate and care for each other. Of all the neighbors you are called to love, your spouse is the closest one. This means that being married will naturally limit your ability to pursue other callings in the Church. But Scripture also makes it clear that the call to marry is rooted in a larger call so that even as we enter it, we remember that marriage itself is not all-consuming. It is only part of how we serve the Lord with our whole hearts and lives. This is true for men. This is true for women.
It may sound like I’m stating the obvious. Don’t Christian women understand this? No, I’m afraid that some don’t. Some, in fact, believe that the calling to help their husbands trumps every other ministry calling or desire. Sometimes they believe this because of their own immaturity; and sometimes they believe it because this is what they have been explicitly told. The result is confusion and frustration as women wrestle with their own gifting and place in the Church. They either become weak and directionless, unable to serve apart from their husbands; or they become frustrated and manipulative as they attempt to live out their own passions and gifting through their husbands.
How do I know? I used to be one.
Early in our marriage, when my husband first entered professional ministry, I honestly believed that my calling in the Church would be fulfilled through him. So whatever he needed me to do to further “his” ministry, I did. But I also ended up crossing a lot of boundaries I shouldn’t have crossed. I invested myself too deeply in his career, attempted to do the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, and meddled in things that were not my concern—all in the name of “supporting” his calling.
What I was really doing was longing for a way to use my own gifting to serve the Church.
God was faithful despite my immaturity, and today I work beside my husband as a wife, mother, and active member of our local church. Out of the Holy Spirit’s gifting, I offer advice, counsel, and support as he needs it; but what he most certainly does not need is for me to confuse my calling with his. As I’ve found the freedom to develop my own gifts, God has led me to a place I never expected. Today, a significant part of my ministry happens independently of my husband’s. It happens through mothering and homemaking, to be sure, but it also happens through blog posts and articles just like this one.
The result? Today my husband and I are more fruitful for the Kingdom than we have ever been.
You may know that I live in the Blue Ridge of southwest Virginia. You may not know that this is railroad country. Our county and the surrounding area was built on rail and to this day, Norfolk-Southern is one of our largest employers. We also have a lot—A LOT—of mountains. So it’s not unusual to see two engines coupled together pulling a load of cars. With hills this big and loads this large, one engine simply can’t do the job alone.
In many ways, marriage is the same. Both men and women have the same basic calling: We are called to work for Christ’s Kingdom. We have to get the load up the mountain. But just like one engine can’t do it alone, neither can men nor women do it alone. “So God said that it is not good that man should be alone; I’ll give him a second engine to help him.” (That’s from the SWVA version of the Bible which also translates the plural of you as “ya’ll.”)
But here’s the thing: too often, we think of a woman as the coal car that fuels the man’s mission; in reality, she is a strong, second engine tasked with the same mission that he is. His engine may be out in front, and she may even be a different make and model, but make no mistake, they are both tasked with getting the load to the top of the mountain.
I am thrilled to see Nancy Leigh DeMoss and her fiancé confirm the work that God has called her to. I am thrilled that in God’s providence, He has brought them together to serve His Church as husband and wife. But mostly, I am thrilled that they will be able to model this for the rest of us. Because ultimately this is what a truly Christian marriage looks like—two people bound together by a mission greater than either one of them. two people bound together to love Christ and serve His people.
Frost Date
It's finally spring in our hills. Officially, it's been spring for over a month, but an Appalachian spring is not a spring you can trust, especially if you are a gardener. The mountains tease and tempt you, blossoming one moment and freezing the next. That's why "frost date" is so important. This is "the day of the year, based on these 30 year averages, that there is only a 10% chance that there will be a frost." Statistically speaking, this means that you should be safe to plant after this day. For us, it tends to fall at the end of April.
But every year, I watch grown men and women tempt this "frost date." For people staunchly opposed to all forms of gambling and avarice, the gardeners I know have a particular penchant toward risk. If you put out your seedlings early enough, and the weather holds, you might also be the first to put out home-grown tomatoes at a church supper. But if you presume too much upon spring, and put them out too soon, your tomatoes won't show up until August because you'll have to replant them after they die. (Of course, you could always do what one friend of our does--tend your plants in a greenhouse until they're nearly grown and then put them out already in bloom--but for the most part, this kind of behavior is frowned upon.)
I spent my childhood watching my father worry and wait until the frost date had finally passed. Today I watch my husband do the same; in fact, as I type, he is out in his garden finally putting out his broccoli and cabbages and tomatoes. He hasn't been this happy in months. Last year, I wrote a short poem about this angst-ridden season and remembered it just today--a day far enough past frost date to ensure that we will have tomatoes come July.
Frost Date
Spring comes to these hills on lilting steps of two forward, one back. The man who has known eighty lifts his hat and smooths down wisps of white. “You cannot trust these days; they’re as fickle as a woman.” But these days seduce old men (and young too) to sow their seeds of hope– a hope that is less than confidence– lest April make fools of them all.
A Forty-year Providence
When I first saw it, it was all jumbled up with grocery ads and direct mail fliers that urged me to consider the metaphysical significance of my current gutter system. But this piece of mail, this greeting-sized envelope postmarked from Long Island, NY, was less noisy, unassuming somehow. I recognized the handwriting as belonging to my husband’s grandmother—a carefully-formed script that she’d learned through hours of instruction in elementary school, back before the ubiquitous keyboards and touch screens that now dominate our lives.
The card, I assumed, would be a late birthday card with the requisite birthday check. I’d heard from my mother-in-law how sorry her own mother was about the delay and how they had had so many things happening and to look for it soon. But when I opened it, it wasn’t what I expected. The envelope did include a check, but instead of a birthday card, it was a “Get Well Soon” card. Inside the same script had written:
Hope this card is inappropriate and that your recovery is complete!! Oh, and by the way—Happy Birthday!!
Still, it was fitting. I had been sick a couple weeks earlier and so perhaps a belated “Get Well Soon” was as relevant as a belated “Happy Birthday.”
But the greeting was the only thing that surprised me. The paper itself was thicker than normal; the picture on front was slightly faded; and the entire card seemed aged. Tiny brown spots dotted the edges and the once-white surface had turned a creamy off-white. Curious, I inspected the card more closely, and sure enough, it was stamped “MCMLXXV.”
1975.
Four years before I had even been born.
Immediately, my head started to spin. I was holding a greeting card that had existed longer than I had. And yet, my name was on it, the envelope was addressed to me, and the postscript clearly contemporary. The card I had just taken out of my mailbox had been posted only days earlier but had been waiting forty years to fulfill its purpose—it had been waiting forty years to extend belated birthday/get-well-soon greetings to me. And suddenly I felt very small. I didn’t feel special. I didn’t feel important. I felt humbled.
Precisely how I should feel after an encounter with Providence.
God’s providence can be described as that inexplicable combination of His love and power working out the details of our lives. It is what undergirds our belief that all things truly do work for together for good and that God knows the plans he has for us. Without it, we are simply the products of fate; or worse, victims of the consequences of our own choices and the choices of those around us. God's providence a wonderful, necessary doctrine that gives purpose and meaning to our days. It is also one that is easily misunderstood.
The most common way that Christians presume upon Providence is by assuming that we are the center of it. Sometimes we talk as if the whole world--the universe--has been orchestrated to provide this one moment in our lives.
When the manufacturer made this card, God had YOUR name stamped on it.
When the retailer sold this card to a customer, it was God’s way of getting it to YOU.
When this card sat in a drawer for forty years, it’s because God was waiting for YOU to need it on just this particular day.
As nice as these sentiments are, they feel a little too cliché for me. Almost contrived. The reality is that this card did not “have” to end up in my mailbox.
It could have been lost behind a desk. It could have been sent to another person. It could have been thrown away.
In forty years, any number of things could have happened to it, and if I don’t recognize this, then God’s providence will mean little. If I don’t recognize that it took a literal Act. Of. God. to direct that card to me, I won’t appreciate it when it happens. But, on the other hand, when I realize that the odds were stack against me, suddenly, I’m overwhelmed by the power of God when it shows up in my mailbox.
At the same time, if we don’t personalize the truth of God’s love, Providence becomes nothing more than a spiritual name for fate. A card ended up in my mailbox simply because God wanted it there and this fact has nothing to do with me. Unless of course, it does.
The beauty of Christianity is that it teaches us to embrace both the power of God and the love of God. The odds are indeed stacked against us; in the scope of time, we are small, insignificant beings. But even for our smallness, God loves us and does orchestrate events to care for us. Because if even a sparrow can’t fall without His notice, then a greeting card can’t find its way to my mailbox without it either.
In the end, we must embrace the paradox. We must embrace both His power (that card could have easily ended up somewhere else) and His love (that card ended up in my mailbox). And when we do—if providence has done her work—we’ll probably feel a bit like I did that afternoon when I found a 40-year-old greeting card sitting in my mailbox: Small and big at the same time.
Why I Stayed in the Church
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If you spend time in the Christian blogosphere, you'll know that there's been a lot of talk over the last few days about leaving and returning to the church. Most of the conversation has been sparked by uber-blogger Rachel Held Evans' newest release Searching for Sunday. In it, Evans recounts her journey of the last few years that has taken her out of the conservative church of her childhood to a being part of a church plant to full-on disillusionment to eventually returning to a mainline Episcopal church. Like others of the Millennial generation, Evans believes her process was, in part, instigated by the failures of the conservatism of her childhood. If you follow Evans' blog, you'll know that this is not a new theme for her. Or for other bloggers in her network. In fact, this disillusionment with the church is a major component of what has made Evans so successful--she voices what a lot of people are feeling. As you can image, this makes her pretty controversial or as the Washington Post called her recently, "the more polarizing woman in evangelicalism."
And yet.
And yet, I don't believe that Evans is the only voice for how the Millennial generation is engaging with the church. Nor do I believe that Millennials are leaving the church en masse . But I do believe we are wrestling. We are wrestling with the same questions that Evans is asking, even if some of us come to different answers. At least, I know I have and am.
Part of what I think might be happening is that those of us who are staying, despite (and sometimes because of) our doubts and frustrations, simply aren't speaking as loudly as Evans and others. I know I'm not. In many ways, I'm not speaking up because of how quickly the conversation turns messy and vitriolic, and quite frankly I spend enough time refereeing fights between my kids. I don't need more online.
Still, I wonder if I'm doing a disservice to my peers. What if I could offer good answers for our questions? Or at least, I could offer different answers than the ones we're hearing? Well, at that point, at least we'd have a choice. At least, we'd know that the only solution to our frustrations isn't to leave the church. We could stay. We could stay and be part of the change we want to see.
A few months after I'd started blogging here at SAL, I wrote a post entitled, "15 Reasons I Stayed in the Church." I thought now might be a good opportunity to rehearse those reasons. I re-read them this morning and they are just as true as when I first wrote them.
First a bit of background: my husband pastors a small country church in Virginia. We were both reared in conservativism and have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of ministry life. We've spent time overseas in mission work, struggled through a difficult pastorate (which we eventually left), and walked through a period of doubt where we questioned both our call to ministry and God's goodness. (It was during this time that I remember telling my husband we had to stay if only because we'd make very bad atheists--even if we didn't want to believe in God, we'd always have a chip on our shoulder and nothing's more irritating than a friend with issues. If we couldn't be happy atheists, it wasn't worth walking away.)
So when I offer these reasons for why we stayed in the church, I do so as a woman who has wrestled with the church's messiness--and my own. In the end, they may not answer your questions fully, but at least they'll be a place to start: Fifteen Reasons I Stayed in the Church
I believe that there is no such thing as Church (with a capital “C”) without church (with a lower case “c”)–as messy and as difficult as that may be.
I want to be the change in the world that I seek. And that means engaging the problems closest to me. Like in the next pew. Like in this pew. Like in my own seat.
I believe that reconciling nations and people starts at home. If I can’t work toward reconciliation in my own church, there is no way I will be able to accomplish it on a broader level anywhere else.
I’m not a militant separatist. I don’t believe that everybody has to think EXACTLY the way I do before I will worship with them. Even if they are more conservative than I am.
I don’t expect the church to be anything other than it is—a group of difficult, broken people plodding their way to glory. The kingdom of God is coming; it isn’t here yet.
I believe the church is bigger than political parties even if the people attending it don’t understand that. Even if the people who leave it don’t seem to understand that either.
I believe Jesus can and wants to redeem Pharisees as much as publicans.
I believe that by staying in the church I earn the right to speak about the problems I see. It’s the old adage that you can criticize your family but no one else can. By staying with “my family,” I can speak about our failures and the doubts I wrestle with.
I believe that 2000 years of church history holds a bit more weight than my personal experience.
I have Christian brothers and sisters who have been imprisoned and lost their lives for doing the very thing that I would be giving up.
I do not want to lose people I love and who love me and my family. And while there are times that conviction must trump relationships, these relationships act as a grid to help me determine whether my convictions are sufficient enough to risk losing these people from my life.
I need the church to regularly remind me about the things that I don’t like in the Scripture. Things like God’s anger and my sinfulness–things that if left to myself, I would conveniently ignore or rationalize.
I am not an island. My choice to leave church affects everyone else in the congregation. Remove one part from the whole and it is no longer the same entity.
I have children. And while I’ll be the first to admit that it’s dangerous to raise your children in a church that distorts the gospel, it’s also dangerous to raise them apart from church altogether. One way the gospel is expressed is in the loving covenant relationship that happens in the church – I want that to be part of the warp and weave of their experience. I want them to know that real commitment means taking the good with the bad.
Jesus hasn’t left the church. I don’t mean this in a sanctimonious way. I mean simply that after he threw out the money changers, Jesus continued to worship and sacrifice in the temple. His work is to purify and redeem, not to alienate or destroy.
I'll be honest with you, even as a pastor's wife, there are days that I struggle with being in a local church. There are also days I struggle with being in a marriage. All of us do. But these struggles don't necessarily mean that something is wrong. Sometimes they mean that something is very, very right. They might mean that God is using my church and my marriage to transform me in to His own image. And if He is doing that, then the worst thing I could do is try to get out of it.
Note: I want to make it clear that some church environments (and marriages) are abusive. Please do not read this post as supporting abusive religious contexts. I'm simply arguing for the validity of the church as a whole. Entrust yourself to the True Shepherd and He will guide you.
That Classic Twist
There are many reasons to love classic literature--the chance to escape to another time and place; the sheer feast of language and character; or perhaps, more pragmatically, the opportunity to multitask personal development with entertainment. But of all the things that keep me re-reading “the classics,” the most important is that they have such a direct connection my everyday life. They are (dare I say it?) so very relevant.
Part of what makes a work a “classic” is that it captures something about the human experience that remains true regardless of time and place. The story may be set in a backwater town of Judea, the hustle and bustle of London, or South Africa during apartheid, but the characters’ struggles are my struggles, their joys my joys. On the pages of literature, we see the truth about ourselves.
Classics also have an uncanny ability to predict the future. Every so often, you’ll stumble across a section of text so timely, so applicable that you have to look up for a moment to recover your sense of temporal balance. I’ve even found myself flipping to the front of a book in order to double check the original publication date. It’s not that the authors have some mystical, prophetic gift; it’s simply that they understand their own times well enough to predict the natural result of them.
I had one of these experiences this last week while reading Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. In its day, Madame Bovary was scandalous; a story of wanton love, an adulteress, and a church too ineffective to save her from herself. Flaubert was even brought to trial on grounds of corrupting public morality. But instead of promoting immorality, Madame Bovary is a profoundly moral piece of fiction that shows the consequences of an overly romanticized view of the world. Emma Bovary may be remembered for her adultery, but her main problem was her dissatisfaction with the mundane realities of life. Compared to the dream world she’d discovered in her novels, her doctor husband was too simple, lacked ambition, and would never be able to satisfy the longings of her own deeply-complicated, emotionally superior soul.
It is the perfect warning to a generation of women whose vision of marriage has been shaped by romantic comedies, reality dating shows, and the promise of “true love.”
But of all the things that Madame Bovary reminded me of—including the danger of disdaining the mundane—it’s those prophetic comments that kept me reading. At one point of the story, Emma’s husband Charles is deciding whether to support her request for music lessons. (In reality, she’d suggested the lessons as a guise to cover her weekly rendezvous with her lover.) Not knowing this, Bovary weighs the benefit of them and is finally convinced by these words from Homais, the local chemist:
One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madam to study, you are economizing on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau’s, still rather new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing. I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination.
And there you have it: Flaubert predicted homeschooling, attachment parenting, and the conversation about vaccinations. Forget mommy blogs; go read a classic.
John Updike's "Seven Stanzas at Easter"
Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.
From ‘Telephone Poles and Other Poems’ © 1961 by John Updike.