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!
Mattie Chatham, My Kind of Woman
Someone once asked me where I got my vision for womanhood, and I honestly (if not curiously) told him that it had come from times and places I'd never been. It came from wherever good women worked alongside good men civilizing the land, caring for their families, and loving their neighbors. It came from all the true daughters of Eve that have existed in history, literature, and life.
Women like Abigail Adams, Hannah More, Mary Slessor, Amy Carmichael, and Ma Ingalls. Women like Lizzie Bennett, Anne Shirley, Caddie Woodlawn, and Katharine Mary Flannigan. Women like my grandmothers and great-grandmothers. And yet, until my friend asked me that question, I'd never realized how much these Eves had shaped my understanding of what it meant to be a woman--how they modeled what it meant to be fully alive, participating in God's great work.
This week, I found another name to add to my list: Mattie Chatham from Wendell Berry's novel Jayber Crow. She isn't the central character of the book, but it isn't a stretch to say that she is its heroine. Bound in marriage to an unreasonable and foolish man, Mattie displays the kind of maturity that separates the women from the girls. The kind of maturity that makes me want to be a better woman myself.
...Mattie Chatham never looked like a woman who was put upon and divided in her loyalties and having a hard time; she didn't look as though she would have welcomed sympathy, or as thought she needed it. She was not her parents' child for nothing. She was going about her life, taking her pleasures as she found them, suffering what was hers to suffer, doing what she had to do. She had no air of self-pity or complaint. And this could only have been because, in her own heart, she was not pitying herself or complaining. It was as though her very difficulties had confirmed her sense of herself and her capabilities.
I knew Mattie Chatham a long time, and I never knew her to falsify or misrepresent herself. Whatever she gave you--a look, a question, an answer--was honest. She didn't tell you everything she knew or thought. She never made reference even by silence to anything she suffered. But in herself she was present. She was present in her dealings with other people. She was right there. She was, to my eye, a good mother who liked and enjoyed her children, leaving them free within limits that both she and they understood...
Mattie Chatham, as time went on and the older women [of the church] became less able, had a way of being involved and seeing to things. Her way was quiet and unobtrusive--and effective; she got things done. She was never bossy (as, for instance, Mrs. Pauline Gibbs always was) but was just simply and quietly kind. She certainly made nothing special of me. But when she asked me to do something, she asked clearly knowing that she was putting me to trouble. She would say, "Jayber, would you mind?" And she always thanked me. She was considerate. That was one of the reasons I remained aware of her...
She had come into her beauty. This was not the beauty of her youth and freshness, of which she had had a plenty. The beauty that I am speaking of now was that of a woman who has come into knowledge and into strength and who, knowing her hardships, trusts her strength and goes about her work even with a kind of happiness, serene somehow, and secure. It was a beauty she would always have. (pp.189-191)
The Worth of a Soul
Long lay the world in sin and error pining/'Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth…
Despite the coming holiday season, the news from around the country has been pretty devastating. Racial tensions, riots, torture, abuse of power, and more. Even if you avoid the major media outlets, you’ll still find yourself confronting the brokenness on social media. Headlines of stories never even read split friends and families along the fault line of “your interpretation” and “mine.”
For a world that is preparing to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, this is hardly the way to go about it.
We know, of course, the solution to it all. At least, the more enlightened among us do. The answer is that we must see each other as image bearers; we must respect everyone—male, female, black, white, friend, enemy, born, or unborn—as made in God’s image and deserving of our love because God Himself loves them.
But as so often happens, theological jargon and daily life don’t connect easily. Even as we use the correct language and construct proper paradigms, too many of us still don’t know exactly what we’re talking about. “Made in God’s Image” becomes nothing more than a label affixed to a person, like a tag telling you that your sweater has been “Made in the USA.” Proclaiming that someone is “made in God’s image” has no meaning unless you understand who God is, who we are as human beings, and what this daily requires of us.
I was thinking about this when I ran across a lovely bit from Alexander McCall Smith in his book Sunshine on Scotland Street. One of the protagonists, Angus Lordie, a middle-aged portrait painter, is hosting a party when he has a moment of awareness. He looks out over his guests and for the first time, sees them for what they are: souls.
The small crowd… became not just a collection of people conversing with one another at a party, but an infinitely precious band of souls. Souls, thought Angus; that is just the right word. And he remembered reading something that had made a deep impression on him—a small thing, in one view of it, but a very major thing in another. He had read that in the language used for radio communication at sea, the number of people on board was always expressed in terms of souls. “We have ten souls on board,” a sailor might say when asking for assistance from a passing ship. Ten souls. Not ten people. Not ten passengers. Not ten customers. Ten souls.
It was... the idea that each of us, even the least of us, has a rich hinterland of value behind us: the lives we have led, the thoughts we have had, the love we have given and received—the little things of our lives that may not mean much to others unless and until they are granted the insight that Angus was suddenly vouchsafed; that insight that brings love into the heart, sudden, singing, exalting love. To see another soul was to acknowledge the magnificent, epic course that life is for each of us, and to experience sympathy for the other in his or her negotiation of that course. It was quite different form seeing others simply as people. The word soul had a big job to do, and it was the only word that could do it.
That “hinterland of value” that each of us possess is what we’re trying to communicate when we say that we are “made in God’s image.” But McCall Smith’s point is that this value only reveals itself when we acknowledge “the lives that we have led, the thoughts we have had, [and] the love we have given and received.” Proclaiming that someone is made in God’s image is pointless unless we acknowledge the “magnificent, epic course that life is for each of us, and experience sympathy for the other in his or her negotiation of that course.”
This requires a bit of imagination. It requires putting yourself in someone else’s place and learning about their experience. It requires listening to them as they tell us what it is like to “be” them. It also requires dropping categorical thinking. We are not truly engaging people as image bearers if we insist on speaking of them as “crowds” or “enemies” or “fetuses.” We are not these things; we are souls.
Those of us who believe in the direct act of God to make people in His own image must be the first to shift the conversation. It is not enough to acknowledge people as people, to slap a label on them as “Made in God's Image.” We must see them as souls, as great expansive, eternally valuable souls. Until we do, we will never be able to love them the way that God, with His own great, expansive, eternal Soul, loves us.
Home, Sweet, Home
Two weeks ago, my kids headed off to school. One week later they were back home, sick with the first round of school-bourne illnesses. I got the call from the school nurse around 11:30. My eight-year-old son had a fever—slight—but just enough to send him home. By bedtime, the rest of us were beginning to show signs too. Unfortunately, it was the kind of sickness that was just bad enough to make you miserable but not bad enough to knock you out completely. The kind where you can’t muster enough energy to go about your normal routine but you’ve still got enough energy to bicker and fight. The kind that brings out the worst in you—irritability, whining, helplessness.
And that was just me.
As difficult as last week was, I found that it reminded me of the importance of home. Stripped of the externals--the housekeeping, the pinterest projects, the car pools–the purpose of home became clearer; the fundamental purpose of the home is to teach us how to live in relationship with God and with each other. Every day, as we interact with our spouses, parents, children, aunts, and cousins, we are learning the basics of how to interact with other human beings. So when my family is at our worst; when we are not loving or kind or patient; when we have “one of those” weeks, I remember exactly what I am fighting for.
In philosophy, there is a concept called “moral proximity.” Moral proximity says that we owe our greatest responsibility to those closest to us. So when the Scripture says you are to “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” it is teaching you both how to love and who to love. You are to love whom ever God has providentially placed in your life. The genius of Home is that it teaches you how to do this by putting you in close (difficult, irritating) quarters with people who are committed to loving you as well.
Because here’s the rub: Loving people close to you, loving your neighbor, is often more difficult than loving those at a distance. It is easier to love those whose quirks you don’t have to live with, whose Legos weren’t left all over the family room floor (again), who don’t take your hard work for granted. Learning to love those close to you means learning to love in the face of frustration. For my children, this means figuring out how to love their siblings who irritate them and learning to love mommy and daddy who tell them to do things they don’t like.
When the young lawyer asked “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered with the story of the Good Samaritan, a parable about moral proximity. In it, both the priest and the Levite fail to show true love because they fail to love the person right in front of them. But the opposite is also true. If today, we learn to love our closest neighbor, the people in our own homes, chances are we’ll be able to love another neighbor when we pass him in the road.
Trust me, our family has our share of bickering and meanness. This last week proved it. But every time I find myself refereeing, every time I get overwhelmed by the work, the sheer work of discipline and correction, I think about my kids’ futures. I remember that the boy who dismisses his mother and sister today will likely dismiss his wife some day too. The girl who pouts and whines to get her way will likely grow up to be a woman who manipulates others in her workplace and church.
But.
But children who learn to love today, children who see grace and kindness and peace modeled, children who are expected to offer grace and kindness and peace in return—these children will flourish. They will flourish because by learning to love the people closest to them they will also learn to love their neighbor as themselves. So that when they finally do fly away, when they leave the safety of home for broader society, the world be a better place because of them.
The Whole Woman
This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, and like most moms with young children, I completely forgot about it until my husband reminded me. The irony of Mother’s Day is that mothering is the kind of work you celebrate by actually doing it. And in the midst of laundry, prepping for a yard sale, and running kids to ball practice and piano lessons, the last thing I have time to do is to cultivate expectations of Hallmark moments, breakfast in bed, and keepsake necklaces.
Still there is a tension that surrounds mothering and I’ve recently read several good pieces that explore motherhood as it relates to the questions of work, calling, and gifting. In pieces at Her.meneutics, Sharon Hodde Miller asks whether we should talk of motherhood as a “calling” while Courtney Reissig explores the false construct between being a stay-at-home-mom and being a “working” mom. (In this Slate piece, Ester Bloom argues that we need to do away with the term “stay-at-home-mom” altogether and return to the more encompassing title of “homemaker.”)
But my favorite piece is Jen Pollock Michel’s review of Matt Perman’s new book on productivity, What’s Best Next? While Michel has good things to say about the book, she points out that it doesn’t address the very real work that it takes to manage a home and nurture a family. She writes, “When does Perman do his laundry? Make dinner or do the dishes? Where does he fit in carpool? And once his children are tucked into bed, who is packing the lunch boxes?”
Michel's point is this: productivity and work cannot be defined by an office or job description. All people work because all people—whether SAHMs or CEOs---are made in the image of a God who works. And because of this, the questions women ask about “work/life balance" are not really questions about womanhood or motherhood at all. At their core, these questions are about what it means to be image bearers. These are questions about what it means to live holistically in the image of a God who is wholeness Himself.
One of the lesser discussed attributes of God’s character is His simplicity--the truth that the various parts of His nature (even the three persons of the Trinity) exist in perfect union and peace. But God’s simplicity is more than a good “work/life balance.” In the purest sense, He cannot even be separated into parts. He is love; He is justice; He is peace. All at the same time.
The implication for us as image bearers is that we are made to live holistically as well. We simply cannot divide our existence into categories. There is no such thing as "work" vs. "home" vs. "gifting" vs. "motherhood." I am a wife, mother, writer, extrovert, saint, and sinner --all at the same time. In fact, we damage our own humanity when we try to separate them.
And yet, achieving simplicity is not a simple thing. Over the course of a single day, the responsibilities of life will pull us in a hundred different directions and if you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself asking,
- How am I supposed to pursue my gifting when the laundry hasn’t been done and my five-year-old had to borrow his older brother’s underpants (yet again)?
- How am I supposed to live “missionally” –to take a meal to my neighbor when my own family is eating very non-organic, nitrate-laden hot dogs tonight?
- How am I supposed live this multi-dimensional existence, to live in the image of an infinite God, when I am so very limited?
The thing that few of us acknowledge and that fewer of us want to embrace is that we are limited. We cannot reflect God’s simplicity on our own. We cannot achieve wholeness by simply being more or managing our time better. We must achieve wholeness through His wholeness.
In many ways, our limitations are the very things that God is using to draw us to Himself. Just like the opposing facets of a diamond work in coordination to refract light, God is using the different facets of our lives to display His glory. So that as we grow in dependence on Him, as each facet of life is aligned to His nature, we will begin to experience a bit of His wholeness.
Categories like calling and work and motherhood are not wrong; but they are limited. Alone they will never be large enough to contain creatures who bear the image of a infinite God. Alone, they will never be able to reflect the complexity and brilliance of His nature. Nothing but God Himself can do this. But as He becomes the unifying element of our existence—not simply our ability to multi-task or draw boundaries—His Light will suddenly come bursting forth in brilliant splendor.
And in this Light, we will finally see.
Little Golden Book of Theology
I’m entering a stage of life where my hands aren’t quite as full as they once were. Almost ten years into this adventure called “parenting,” I rarely deal with diapers and midnight feedings; but yesterday, when I watched a friend’s three-year-old and one-year-old for a bit, it all came rushing back.
The irony of small children is that they have absolutely no ability to entertain themselves and yet every ability to be destructive and bring harm to themselves. So during this season, parents learn to never look away. You learn to get down on the floor and build train tracks and play princess. You learn to put lesser things aside and grab a pile of books to read about Horton andLlama Llama and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Well, at least, that’s what we did yesterday. One of the books we read was the story of Tootle by Gertrude Crampton. Tootle is a young train who dreams of becoming the Flyer on the New York-Chicago line. But in order to do this, he must attend train school. He takes classes in “Not Spilling the Soup in the Diner” and “Stopping at Waving Red Flags.” But, according to the headmaster Bill, the most important class, the one that every little train must master, is “Staying On the Rails No Matter What.” Tootle must get a 100 A+ in this class.
Things are fine for a bit, but eventually the lure of the meadow is too much. Day after day, Tootle sneaks off to dance in the daisies and frolic with the butterflies. Bill becomes aware of what Tootle is doing, but instead of reprimanding him, instead of insisting on obedience, Bill makes a plan. He gathers all of the townspeople, gives each of them a red flag, and then hides them in the meadow.
Eventually Tootle comes to the meadow again to play. But as he’s enjoying himself, he suddenly sees a red flag in front of him. He stops and turns to the left. But there is another red flag. And then there is one on his right. Soon the only thing he can see are red flags. He is caught and helpless. The one law he knows to obey--the law of Always Stopping for a Red Flag—has trapped him.
But then he sees it. A green flag! A green flag means freedom. A green flag means “Go!” A green flag means race. A green flag means he can fly. Bill is standing on the tracks, waving a green flag with all his might, beckoning Tootle to come to him.
To our modern sensibilities, the moral of Tootle’s story—Stay on the Tracks No Matter What—could sound a lot like conformity. Won’t this make children feel guilty about pursuing what they love? Doesn’t this reinforce legalism? Shouldn’t we teach children to think outside the box? But the moral of Tootle isn’t quite that superficial; it isn’t about conforming to societal expectations and it isn’t about legalism. In fact, the moral of Tootle is deeply teleological; it’s rooted in who Tootle is. Tootle has to stay on the rails, not to please Bill, but because he is a train and he is destined to become a Flyer. The horse can run in the meadow. The bees can buzz around the flowers. But a train stays on the rails.
A lot of times we can believe that God’s standards are a barrier to our happiness. Like Tootle, the idea of “Staying On the Rails No Matter What” can feel unnecessarily confining. Worse still, some of us have been taught that we have to choose between making God happy and making ourselves happy. So when we do conform to His standards, they weigh heavily on us and we can begin to believe that we’re missing out. But we trudge on, committing ourselves to keeping “the rules” out of fear or self-righteousness. Some of us can’t handle that kind of pressure and eventually end up rushing off to the meadow.
But the truth is that neither of these paradigms is right. A train is not made for the meadow, but it not meant to trudge down the track either. A train is meant to fly down them with joy.
In Made for More, I write about this tension:
Because God's boundaries reveal His nature, they also reveal our own... Instead of a barrier to keep us from being ourselves, God’s law is intended to guide us back to our true selves… Apart from God’s law, we would ruin ourselves because we would keep living in direct opposition to what we were made to be.” (53-54)
But as we all know, and as Tootle learned, a standard by itself is not powerful enough. We need Jesus. Just like Bill stood on the track to guide Tootle back to where he belonged, Jesus stands waving the green flag, inviting us to the abundant life that only He can offer.
But it takes faith to live in our true identities. The world tells us that we will only be ourselves when we do what we want, when we do what we love. Faith tells us that we will never be more fully ourselves until we live as image bearers of God. But when this happens, when we are conformed to His Image through Christ, we are free to race. We are free to run. We are free to fly down the tracks.
We are finally free to be who we are meant to be.
What Is in Your Hand?
A little over a week ago, I sat at my kitchen table and listened to my friend Heather explain the world of widgets and add-ons and web hosting. I know she was talking because I saw her mouth moving, and my ears seemed to be receiving some sort of sound; but if you were to ask me what she said, I'd probably end up giving you my best impersonation of Charlie Brown's teacher.
Heather is helping me through some very necessary updates to Sometimes a Light (stay tuned); and within a matter of minutes, she had cleared up several things that have eluded me for the last two years. (If you've ever wondered why SAL seems a little low tech, it's not because of some Luddite idealism on my part. It's sheer, unadulterated ignorance.) But sitting there, watching Heather work her magic, something else happened: I remembered of why I believe so strongly in providence.
In Made for More, I describe providence as God's love and His power working together to make us exactly who we are meant to be. You see, it's one thing to embrace the fact that we all reflect God's nature, but it's another thing entirely to understand how the details of our lives allow us to do that. Because just as much as I sat there in awe of Heather's gifting, she expressed the same awe at mine.
But the truth is that that I couldn't explain to her why I ended up writing a book anymore than I could explain why I can't organize a spreadsheet without having to call my husband for tech support. I couldn't explain why I received a Christian education for 17 years (K-5 through B.A.) or why I ended up working beside my husband in church ministry. It's not because I was more committed to God or a "better" Christian or a even a harder worker. The only reason I could come up with was thatGod put the pieces of my life together so I could do what He has called me to do; just like He put the pieces of Heather's life together so she could do what He has called her to do.
And most of the time, those pieces are more mundane than we realize.
Exodus 3-4 tells us about the time God meets Moses in the wilderness and commissions him to return to Egypt. From the flaming boughs of a dessert shrub, God tells Moses of His grand plan to redeem Israel and keep the promises that He made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He is going to bring His enslaved children into a land that flows with milk and honey, to provide their every need, to be their God. Moses responded to all this with a question. Essentially he asks "So you're expecting me to do what exactly?"
Undeterred, God asks Moses a question of His own: "What is that in your hand?"
What Moses was holding was a shepherd's staff. A staff that he'd been carrying around for the last forty years. A staff that he'd been using to nudge stubborn sheep and support himself in times of weariness. A staff that God was going to use to humble Pharaoh's magicians, part the Red Sea, and lead His people through the wilderness
In many ways, my experience has been a lot like Moses' with his staff. When I first started blogging, I had no way of understanding what God would eventually do. I only knew what He had placed in my hand. I only knew what His providence had given me to serve Him. And once God drew my attention to it, a funny thing happened. Once I realized that I was gifted to write, I automatically realized what I was NOT gifted to do (*ahem* web design) and so I was free to affirm the gifting of others. At the same time that I was freed to use what God had given me, I was also freed to celebrate how God was using others.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul teaches that differences in our gifting actually draw into dependence on each other and join us into one body: the body of Jesus Christ. And here's where imago dei identity comes full circle. God intends not only to reveal Himself through us individually, but through the relationships we share as well. God, who Himself exists in intimate relationship as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who binds Himself to us through loving covenant, does not intend for His image bearers to live in isolated, self-sufficiency. He intends for our abilities (and our lack of abilities), our weakness and our strengths, to join us together. He intends for us to reflect His nature through the Body of His Son.
When I sat across from Heather that morning, my mind was mostly consumed with just keeping up. But something else was happening too. I had a glimpse and a glimmer that we were participating in something bigger than either one of us. As Heather used her gifting to help me and as I used mine to bless her, we were freed to live as we were meant to live; we were free to live in God's image.
____________________________________________________________________ So what is in your hand? How has God providentially shaped your life to reflect Him in a way that someone else cannot? How does your gifting allow you to serve others? How do your limitations allow others to serve you?
Made Like Him... Like Him We Rise
This year, the folks in our congregation have decided to stage an outdoor drama on Easter Morning. It's something of a tradition for our little church, and as in the past, it will take place in the neighboring cow pasture. This is the first year that my husband and I will be taking part, but I can already feel the excitement. The choir's been working on music for several weeks; I've been busy writing and rewriting a scrip; and other folks are tackling costumes, props, and sound. There are even rumors of flooding the creek to create the Sea of Galilee and setting off dynamite to reenact the Resurrection morning earthquake. I'll be sure to keep you updated.
One of the things that I love about all this busyness is that it's creating a sense of anticipation and excitement for the coming holiday. Too often, Easter can come and go without even so much as a notice. But not this year. This year, Easter is going be quite the production and it's going to require something from every member of our congregation.
Today over at Pick Your Portion, I had to opportunity to reflect on Easter and making sure that we don't miss the big picture:
To co-opt C. S. Lewis, the “deeper magic” of Easter is not simply that Christ suffered under the curse but that He overcame the curse entirely! When He emerged from the tomb, He proved that His creation was not subject to death because her Creator was not subject to death. When He emerged from the tomb, He proved that there was nothing stronger, nothing more powerful, nothing greater than the One who is Life Himself.
The One in whose image we are made.
And suddenly the words of Charles Wesley’s famous Easter anthem make sense: “Made like Him, like Him we rise. Alleluia!” The beauty of the Easter is that the God, who at that first dawn cried out “Let there be light!” once again shines light into our darkness in the face of His Son. The beauty of Easter is that the God, who stooped down into the dust to form us in His image at creation, again stoops down into the mire of our lives to transform us into His image through Jesus Christ.
You can read the rest here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Also, Pick Your Portion has been generous enough to host a giveaway of Made for More. Head on over and check it out!
Why Made For More?
If you're a regular reader of Sometimes A Light, you probably know that I have my first book coming out soon. I'm not sure how you could miss it given the constant stream of Twitter and Facebook updates and the fact that my mother has actually replaced her Facebook profile with an image of the book. (Thanks, Mom!) Entering this process, my three biggest fears were:
- Starting a book that I would not be able to finish.
- Writing a book that even I would not want to read.
- Writing a book that would end up in The Dollar Tree.
We’ll have to see what happens with #3, but as far as the first two, let me say that God has been faithful. I. actually. wrote. a. book. And not just any book but a book about a topic I love: How does the truth of being made in God’s image change our daily lives?
As excited as I am, a funny thing has happened. When you spend this much time with a subject, it’s easy to forget that others haven’t. When you become so familiar with your book, it’s easy to forget that very few people have even read it yet. Your own paradigm has shifted and you actually begin to forget why you wrote it in the first place.
But recently I read several blog posts that reminded me why I did.
The posts themselves weren’t in any way earth-shattering. They were basic defenses of conservative positions about gender and marriage. In one post, the writer rooted his arguments in Genesis 2, and not surprisingly, those who disagreed with him were quick to point to other Scripture that seemed to contradict his applications. It’s the kind of debate that has dominated the church for decades, and with the advent of the internet, has been multiplied thousands of times over.
So what was significant about these conversations? These conversations reminded of how quickly we all—conservatives and progressives alike—miss the big picture. They reminded me of how quickly we give lip service toimago dei but then root our definitions of human flourishing in very secular notions of personhood, calling, and identity. They reminded me of how essential it is to start at the beginning.
I am convinced that we cannot understand the lives we lead and the choices we make if we do not first understand what it means to be image bearers. Simply put, we cannot understand what is happening in Genesis 2 (or any other text) if we don’t first unpack Genesis 1. To do this, imago dei must become more than a caveat or a starting point.Imago dei must become the paradigm by which we understand the entirety of the human experience.
>Think about how the conversation would change if a woman’s calling were not defined primarily by a man's identity but by God’s identity.
>Think about how the conversation would change if the ability to give birth were not simply about producing offspring but about sacrificing our bodies to produce new life—the same way Jesus Christ did.
>Think about how the conversation would change if we realized that all work is defined by working like God does, whether that happens in an office, a school cafeteria, or a subdivision.
>Think about how the conversation would change if education became less about preparing for a career (whether it be mothering or accounting) and more about being image bearers of the divine Logos, the source of all thought and wisdom Himself!
Next Tuesday, Moody Publishers will release Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image. Made for More is not a theological treatise. It is not a defense of a specific position on womanhood or family structure. It is, in fact, not even an academic book. Instead, Made for More is for those of us who have been caught in the middle, those of us who feel like the current conversations miss the larger point--even if we don't always know what that is.
It is for the mama who’s lost herself in the midst of dishes and diapers. It is for the single woman who doubts her worth because she isn’t married or a mother. It is for pastors and counselors who are guiding the rest of us to the abundant life in Christ. And it is for my brothers who, whether they realize it or not, have an invested stake in the lives of their fellow image bearers.
In this sense, Made for More is an invitation to fundamentally change the way we think about ourselves.
Over the next several weeks, I hope to write more about it. If you’d like to join the conversation, please comment here, share these posts, or write your own! (File under #madeformore.) If you’d like to review Made for More or host a giveaway, contact me at hannah(dot)anderson(at)live(dot)com. It's also available on Net Galley for review.
So why Made for More? Well, I'll let the book speak for itself:
"If we are to find any lasting stability in this life, if we are to really answer the question: "Who am I and why am I here?" we must move past these categories--we must stop talking simply in terms of home vs. career; we must dig deeper than biology or gifting. We must find something more stable, more fixed, more permanent on which to base our sense of self. We must find a North Star. And not simply because our circumstances change, but because we ourselves are more than the roles we play in this present world. We are large, deep, eternal beings, and only something larger and deeper and more eternal will satisfy the questions in our souls."
We are made for more.
Photoshopped Goddesses: How the Gospel Frees Women
Last week, Target got caught with their pants… er… umm… photoshopped. To be completely accurate, they got caught photoshopping pictures of the women modeling their junior line of swimwear. Their attempts to create the perfect womanly figure were so absurd that I was tempted to just laugh the whole thing off. And I would have--if this sort of thing didn’t happen each and every day.
Those pictures of flawless skin that make yours look like the hide of an elephant?
Photoshopped.
Those perfectly shaped curves achieved without the assistance of Spanx? Photoshopped.
Those sculpted arms that most certainly do not belong to a woman juggling her briefcase, toting a baby on her hip, and chasing her two older children down the grocery aisle? Photoshopped.
I don’t think I’m the first to tell you that the images we see everyday in magazines, on television, and splayed across the internet are not real. And yet, everyday we see them. Everyday women are confronted with impossible standards of beauty and success. Everyday women measure their own identities against these photoshopped marvels and everyday they come up short.
What you may not realize is that this problem didn’t start in the digital age.
Over the last several months, my husband has been preaching through the book of Acts. Acts begins with Christ’s commissioning his disciples to “be [his] witnesses” and details the spread of the gospel throughout the ancient world. Interestingly, Luke, the author of Acts, makes a point to record that even in a highly patriarchal society like Greece, many women came to embrace Christ. In Acts 17:12, he writes: “Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.”
So why would these women be particularly drawn to the message of the gospel? What about the gospel resonated with them in a way that other philosophies had not? What about their lives made them ready to receive it as good news? I think it has something to do with photoshopping. I think it has something to do with what we experience when we’re confronted with images of unattainable womanhood. The helplessness, the judgment, the insecurity.
In his commentary on Acts, G. Campbell Morgan, writes:
What comfort was there for a Greek woman in the cold gray eyes of Athene, or the stereo-typed smile of the voluptuous Aphrodite? What was there in Greek religions or philosophic thought for a woman? I am not surprised to read that these Greek women turned readily to the great Gospel. What is there in the world to-day for womanhood other than this great evangel? Let there be no undervaluing of the meaning of this. The women of high and noble estate, the convinced daughters of Greek culture, sick at heart because of the degradation of womanhood, as the result of Greek philosophy, turned to this great evangel with its broad and spacious outlook, with its light flashing and shining upon them.
I used to think that civilizations that worshiped goddesses would have a stronger view of women. After all, deifying women seems like a natural way to elevate their status in society. Turns out it doesn’t. It just sets the standard higher for us mortals.
Today we don’t have temples to Athene and Aphrodite, but we do have Sheryl Sandberg telling us that we’re not savvy enough; we do have Pinterest telling us that we’re not domestic enough; we do have religious leaders telling us we’re not feminine enough, and we do have Target telling us that we’re not beautiful enough. It was into this very same context that Paul spoke the gospel. And it was in this very same context that women embraced it and found it to be a balm for their tired, worn out souls.
The beauty of the gospel is that it frees women from the cult of perfect womanhood. It teaches us that we don’t gain immortality by pursuing certain feminine ideals but by pursuing Jesus Christ. It teaches us that we have already been “crowned with glory and honor” as His image bearers; and what sin has destroyed, Christ is actively and persistently restoring. He is right now transforming you, not into some photoshopped idealized womanhood, but into His own likeness.
C. S. Lewis put it this way in Mere Christianity:
He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.
The reason those Greek women embraced the gospel—the reason you and I embrace it today—is because the gospel confirms what we already know. There is no way we will ever live up to the “ideal.” There is no way we will ever be successful enough, beautiful enough, or feminine enough. But it doesn’t stop there. The gospel reminds us that this was never the point in the first place. So in those moments when we feel small and helpless, when we feel judged and less than perfect, when we know we are not enough, the gospel invites us to Christ. It invites to run to the One who is, and will always be, enough.
The Least of These
On the third Sunday of January, people all across the country celebrate Sanctity of Human Life Day which commemorates the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. And the very next day, the third Monday in January, people all across the country celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day which commemorates our complicated history of racial inequality.
On the surface, these two days may seem disconnected, nothing more than an odd fluke of the calendar. But if you look closely, there is a deep and profound connection—one that reaches to the very definition of what it means to be human. Every year, this third week of January reminds us that when society doesn’t view you as a person made in the image of God, it won’t see your children as image bearers either.
This year, this week struck me particularly hard because I had just finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Published in 1861, Incidents is the first-person account of Harriet Jacobs, a woman who had been born a slave but eventually escaped to freedom. Harriet’s story is important because it shows how women uniquely suffered under slavery. Often preyed upon by their masters and unable to legally marry, these women had little hope. But as Harriet's story reveals, if there was anything worse than being a woman and a slave, it was being a mother and a slave.
During Harriet’s life, American society operated under the legal precedent of partus sequitur ventrem or “the child shall follow the condition of the mother.” Whenever a slave gave birth (even if that child had been fathered by a white man), her son or daughter was automatically a slave, the property of her master who could do with that child as he saw fit. Harriet writes that the slave mother
…sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns… I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave trader, and… before night [they] were all far away… I met that mother in the street, and her wild, haggard face lives to-day in my mind. She wrung her hands in anguish, and exclaimed, “Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?” I had no words wherewith to comfort her.
And I had no words when I read this.
I immediately thought of my own three children—children who live in a world of innocence and security, who know nothing but abundance and love, who trust me to protect them. How could a society be so degraded, so unfeeling, that something as natural as the bond between a mother and her child was completely disregarded?
And then I remembered. We are not much better.
Ultimately, the laws of Harriet’s society saw her children as less than image bearers because they saw her as less than an image bearer. "The child shall follow the condition of the mother..." Today, the laws of our society view unborn children in much the same way. And I wonder why? Could it be that we view unborn children as less than image bearers because we view their mothers as less than image bearers?
"The child shall follow the condition of the mother…"
To all you who are tiring of the fight to protect the unborn, who are jaded by “culture wars” and one-issue votes, let me say this: We are not fighting simply for the imago dei of unborn children; we are fighting for the imago dei of their mothers as well.
To all you who think it is enough to fight for the unborn, who turn a blind eye to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, let me say this: We are not fighting simply for the imago dei of unborn children; we are fighting for the imago dei of their mothers as well.
Because as much as we’d like to convince ourselves that we’d have stood for the rights of Harriet and her children; as much as we’d like to believe that we’d have marched shoulder to shoulder with Dr. King himself, if we shy away from protecting those who today bear God’s image—whether born or unborn—we must not trick ourselves into believing that we would have protected them then.
So on this third week of January, do not truncate your vision of justice; expand it. Do not walk away from the fight because it has been too narrowly waged on one front. Instead, become a true one-issue voter—a voter who sees the image of God in your fellow men and willingly fights the evil that preys on them. To co-opt C. S. Lewis, the problem is not that our desire to protect the sanctity of human life is too strong; it is that it is too weak.
Do not forget that God Himself once became a child, embracing the weakness and vulnerability of living nine months in His mother’s womb. Do not forget that this same God also made Himself a slave in order to redeem those who were enslaved to sin. And do not forget that this same God calls you to defend “the least of these” even as He defends you. Because it is in the face of those yet to be born, in the face of the oppressed, in the face of the slave that we see Him.
We see them imago dei.
Teach Like a Girl
Doris Day in "Teacher's Pet" (1958)
One of the books I discovered over the holidays is a collection of vignettes about the women of the New Testament. I was prepping for this year’s women’s Bible study at church and like any good teacher (who is consistently running just shy of deadline), my first stop was the Amazon search engine. I typed in “Women of the New Testament” and one of the first entries was written by, of all people, Abraham Kuyper. Apparently in the midst of reforming turn-of-the-century Dutch society, establishing an entire branch of theology, and pastoring multiple congregations, Kuyper also had time to write on women of the Bible. (Abraham Kuyper: Statesman, Theologian, and Father of the Modern Women’s Bible Study?)
I snagged a 1933 English edition (complete with “Suggested Questions for Study and Discussion”) for a little over a $1. Presumably Kuyper wrote his Women of the New Testament in the late 1800s (I couldn’t find an exact date), and so it’s not surprising that he affirms a fairly traditional understanding of womanhood. What is surprising, however, is that his traditionalism has been thoroughly informed by the gospel and in some respects, doesn’t look like traditionalism at all.
Take this gem from the chapter about Mary of Rome. In writing about the work a woman is called to as a Christian, Kuyper says:
A woman who really loves Jesus must place all she has upon His altar… therefore Jesus may expect that those who love Him exert their energies strenuously to help His sacred cause to prosper. In this matter, too, talents are too frequently buried; gifts are allowed to lie fallow, and energies to remain latent. This does not imply that a woman must forsake her home… but a woman frequently proves to be amazingly ingenious and energetic in the care of her husband and children. She should give full expression to that same ingenuity and energy in her endeavors for the Lord. (p.86)
He reiterates the same thought in discussing Priscilla, who with her husband Aquilla, actively taught and discipled early converts:
A woman such as Priscilla was, is a potent influence in any congregation to which she happens to belong, and we might wish that we could point out ten or twenty such women in each of our larger congregations. From her position in the Word of God, she affirms that a woman, also a married woman, has another calling besides those of dispatching daily duties and engaging in activities of mercy. A woman, too, must have faith, and that faith must borrow its strength from a knowledge of the truth… In that lies the strength of a Priscilla. She knows the truth, and knows how to present it with perfect clarity. Beside, she has the ingratiating tenderness of feminine appeal, a quality no man has… (p. 105).
There is a lot of debate about the role of women in Church and society. And while I’ll quickly identify as a conservative, I’ll also quickly admit that women who use their gifts to teach the Scripture—whether through writing or speaking—can sometimes feel like their femininity is a weakness. Teaching is something they do despite being women rather than an outgrowth of their full personhood which includes being a woman. But for Kuyper at least, Priscilla’s womanhood was an asset that allowed her to communicate the truth in a distinct way—in a way no man could.
Thinking about this reminded me of another woman I read about over the holidays who “expounded the way of God more perfectly.” For Christmas, my husband gave me a copy of Laura K. Simmons’ Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. (Don’t assume too much about us—he also gave me the first three seasons of Duck Dynasty, the juxtaposition of which reveals more about me than I care to admit.)
Dorothy Sayers is best known for her detective stories, but she was also an academic translator and lay theologian who actively argued for orthodox Christianity in the public sphere. Simmons writes that Sayers
had a unique combinations of talents: a keen theological sense coupled with tremendous writing skill and a concern for how ordinary people understand Christianity. In an increasingly complex and fragmented world, we need these gifts more than ever. (p.12) So to all you Priscillas and Dorothys out there who have been gifted to communicate the word of God, do so; and do so out of your femininity. Do not be afraid of your curves or what Kuyper calls the “tenderness of feminine appeal.” Do not believe that you must adopt a masculine voice or be something other than you are to be heard. At the same time, do not hide behind your femininity; do not give yourself a pass for sloppy work or careless study because you are “a woman” and less may be expected of you in theological circles. You must do the work because, in the end, logic and clarity and beauty are not masculine concerns but human ones.
Do the work because you love Jesus and you are offering Him your talents and energies. Do the work and engage in it with all He has created you to be—including your womanhood. Remember that being a wife or mother or aunt or sister or niece or daughter is as much a part of God’s calling on you as your ability to teach His Word in the first place. Because if Abraham Kuyper has anything to say about it, your womanhood might just be the very means by which you communicate it best.
The Writer's Life
DeYoung’s advice was aimed at those in ministry, but I think it applies to most writers for this reason: Very, very few of us will actually make our living as a “writer.”
Very, very few of us will spend our working days in front of a computer (or scribbling in our moleskin notebooks) in order to share our deepest thoughts with a waiting world. Even if we get that elusive “book deal.” Case in point: a friend of mine has published four novels with a major Christian house, has a contract for more and still finds that she has to work at something other than writing. So she works another job, is a wife and mother, and only in the in-between moments, a writer.
Like her, the majority of us write for the sheer passion of it. We have been gifted to do this; we have heard God’s call to speak a specific message; and in His providence, He has given us opportunities to proclaim that message. But along the way, we end up doing a lot of other things. And this is fine. In fact, I believe it’s more than fine. It is good.
So much of this goes back to how we understand calling and gifting. (Or should I say, how we misunderstand calling and gifting.) When I was younger, I believed that my calling was some sort of magic—that God would reveal “His will” for my life and I would then commit myself to a specific job. In high school, I thought it might be mission work. When I was in college, I thought it would be teaching. After I married a boy headed to ministry, I thought it would be found in being a pastor’s wife. And once I had children, I thought my “calling” would be motherhood.
But there was something I misunderstood. God does not call His image bearers to categories or abstractions. God calls them to life. He call them to a specific embodiment in a specific place and time for a specific purpose. In my case, it is a life that includes being a pastor’s wife, a mother, a writer and a whole host of other things that work in coordination to reflect Him in a unique way. Truth be told, we really can’t even discuss calling apart from the specific image bearer who is called.
Here’s what I mean: about two weeks ago, I posted a link to a video that celebrated the life of the stay-at-home-mom. Many of the scenes were familiar to me—the small acts of care, the late nights and early mornings, the countless hours in the kitchen. I found it beautiful and affirming of work that often goes unheralded. But shortly after I posted it, a friend tweeted this response: “It was pretty sweet, but a very specific kind of motherhood for a specific cultural context. Not my experience.”
At first, I was surprised, but then I realized, of course, it wasn’t. This film wasn’t depicting an abstract calling—it couldn’t; it was depicting the lives of three specific women who happened to be stay-at-home moms. There is no such thing as a “job” apart from the one who embodies that job. There is no such thing as a role apart from person who gives form to that role. There is no such thing as a position apart from the image bearer who lends life to that position.
What does this mean for writing?
Those of us who write must have faith to believe that the other things we do—whether it is pastoral work or motherhood—make us the people that God calls us to be. We must have enough faith to believe that these things are not in conflict with each other but are all part of His Providence. We—no, I—must have enough faith to believe that being a mother makes me a better writer and being a writer makes me a better mother because He has called me to both.
This is not easy, and often we feel like we will be torn apart by the very things that God has created us to do. We crave the safety that comes from ordering our lives in an efficient hierarchy. We long to know ourselves in terms of job descriptions and boundaries; we want to understand where we belong—to be able to definitively identify ourselves, to say, “I am a ____________.”
But what if God never intended for us to find safety in anything other than Him? What if He is the only One who can make sense of the competing forces in our lives? What if He is the only One who can reconcile all things under His feet—even our unique callings?
What if this is precisely what He intends to do?
The God who Himself exists in wholeness invites us to live in this wholeness. He calls us to peace. But this only happens when everything in life comes under His headship. When every part of us is submitted to Jesus Christ, when He pervades every facet of our being, when nothing else—not our writing, not our motherhood, not our pastoral roles—has preeminence. Because when He is supreme over all, all will be unified. All the different parts of our lives will work together because they have been united by something greater than themselves.
And suddenly there is peace.
I don’t know what this means for your life. For me, it means submitting to the calling to write and mother and love my husband and clean the kitchen floors and hem the curtains. It means submitting to the multi-dimensional, layered, crazy existence God has given me. It means pursuing my work with passion and abandon, at the same time that I hold it loosely, never once believing that these roles give me my core identity. For me, embracing God’s calling for my life starts by embracing Him. By finally understanding that all things—my motherhood, my writing, my personality, my gifting—all these things “flow from Him and through Him and unto Him." To him be glory forever. Amen.
Who's Afraid of Proverbs 31?
But recently, several women have been challenging a typical approach to this text. At the recent Q event, Women and Calling, progressive blogger and author Rachel Held Evans reiterated her long-standing concern that we tend to misuse this passage, making it more of a “Pintrest page come to life” than the poem it is. Sarah Bessey makes the same point in the recently released Jesus Feminist. She writes:
Some evangelicals have turned Proverbs 31 into a woman’s job description instead of what it actually is: the blessing and affirmation of valor for the lives of women… It is meant as a celebration for the everyday moments of valor for everyday women, not as an impossible exhausting standard.
These women have a legitimate concern. How many Mother’s Day sermons or Bible studies have turned Proverbs 31 into a checklist? How many times have teachers used it to reinforce their private applications of gender? How many times have you felt defeated from just listening to such sermons? So let me go on record as saying that I agree with Evans and Bessey. With one caveat.
Proverbs 31 is intended as a blessing and affirmation, not of all women, but of a certain kind of woman: a wise one.
Because while Proverbs 31 isn’t prescriptive, it is descriptive. It is designed to tell us the kind of woman who deserves honor and praise. In this sense, the poem is the culmination of an entire book whose main goal is to teach the difference between wisdom and foolishness. But as the beginning and end of Proverbs point out, you don’t become wise via a checklist; you become wise by fearing the Lord.
To be fair, it’s easy to confuse prescriptive and descriptive passages. Obviously it happens in Proverbs 31, but it happens just as often in less controversial texts. The Beatitudes or the Fruit of the Spirit can quickly become metaphysical checklists if we divorce them from their Source and view them as goals to meet in our own strength.
Just be peaceful. Check. Just be kind. Check. Just be humble. Check.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
But while these passages are not intended as “To Do” lists, they are a kind of “field guide” given to describe what we will look like if our hearts are being changed by God. They describe the fruit and bark and leaves of the tree so you can know what kind of tree you’re looking at. In the case of Proverbs 31, the poem shows how wisdom embodies itself in feminine form; so that in a beauty only God Himself could conceive, a book written primarily to young men doesn't climax with a description of a mature man but with a description of a mature woman.
Evans rightly pointed this out during the Q event. She noted that the original audience of Proverbs 31 was men, and joked, “Can you imagine a men's conference where that was the central text?“ (It was a pretty funny thought.) But even this isn’t the whole picture. The main audience of Proverbs 31 is men—true—but it’s given to men in order to teach them the kind of women they should celebrate. One of the assumed purposes is to distinguish wise women from foolish ones in order to help men “find” a good wife.
Talk about sexist.
Or maybe not. Maybe this actually affirms a woman’s imago dei. To understand what I mean, consider Proverbs as a whole. Throughout it, you’ll find this recurring theme: weak men can be ruined by strong men but strong men can be ruined by foolish… women. Yes, women.
And here’s why: Women are men’s spiritual equal.
Think about it. If a woman were not equal to a man, then her spiritual life would be of little consequence to him. She simply wouldn't be able to influence him for either good or bad. But if, as we are, equal image bearers, reigning as queens alongside earthly kings, then the kind of women we become is of supreme significance. We have intrinsic power that we can use for either great benefit or great destruction.
Because of this, Proverbs is intent on teaching young men to flee from foolish women in order to embrace and affirm wise women. This is why they are to avoid the adulteress but to delight in the wife of their youth. They are to avoid women who are quarrelsome but to celebrate those who speak with kindness. They are to avoid women who tear down their homes and to run to those who build them up.
In other words, a wise woman can make a man; and a foolish one can break him.
This assumption of a woman’s power is implicit in the description of the Proverbs 31 woman who wields influence over both her home and society. Because of her wisdom, her husband sits in the gates. Because of her wisdom, her household doesn’t fear the coming winter. Because of her wisdom, her children rise up and call her blessed.
In this sense, Proverbs 31 is both a song of affirmation AND a standard of what maturity looks like. We must not shy away from the descriptive principles simply because they have been misused. Apart from them—apart from knowing that a wise women “stretches out her hand to the needy”—we wouldn’t be able to distinguish her from a foolish one and we’d end up assuming that ALL women deserve praise when in reality, not all of us do.
To quote The Incredibles: “When everyone’s super, no one is.”
Not all women are sacrificial. Not all women work hard. Not all women are kind. Not all women are generous Not all women are joyful.
Some women are selfish. Some women are lazy. Some women are mean. Some women are stingy. Some women are bitter.
But a woman who is wise, a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. She is such a rare find, so exceptionally valuable that Proverbs 31 describes her as more precious than a jewel. A beautiful, expensive, glittering jewel. So that just like light reflects and radiates through a diamond, the light of God’s nature reflects and radiates through her, bursting forth in resplendent glory.
And for this kind of wise woman, wise men get up on their feet and cheer.
So, yes, please don’t reduce Proverbs 31 to a checklist or a Pintrest page come to life. But let’s also remember a harder truth. Wisdom doesn’t come naturally to any of us. Our only hope of being this kind of noble woman comes by looking into the face of the One who is Wisdom Himself and allowing Him to conform us to His own likeness. And when we do, He will make us the fully formed image bearers we are destined to be. He will make us women of kindness and grace and sacrifice and love and joy. He will make us like Himself.
To Have or Not to Have: Childlessness and Imago Dei Identity
This past week I found myself cuddling the newest member of our church--a sweet, Dreft-scented little girl named Hope. As I held her in my arms, I have to admit that I felt the ache of maternal longing well up inside me. The memories of my own children at that age and the sheer wonder at new life were almost too much. And yet, my husband and I are not presently pursuing any new members of the family. For us, as it is for many couples, the question of when and whether to have more children has been a complicated one, one that has forced us to wrestle through desire, calling, and limitation. On the other hand, for an increasing number, the question is not when or how many children to have; the question is whether to have them at all.
Last month, Time magazine explored this phenomenon in their cover story entitled, "The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children." And then earlier this week, Emily Timbol wrote a piece for Her.meneutics, a blog of Christianity Today, explaining why she and her husband do not intend to have children (and why she’d appreciate you not judging her for it.) Now, couples choosing to not have children is nothing new; but what I do find interesting is why they are choosing this. The current argument seems less rooted in the classic appeal to overpopulation or the desire to commit oneself to extreme callings or even a worry about bringing children into a terribly broken world. Instead, it seems that more and more couples are choosing to not have children in order to pursue certain lifestyles and careers unhindered. And while it’s easy to chalk this up to Millennial selfishness, (see here for a piece that rightly challenges the temptation to make Millennials the scapegoat for every societal ill), I don’t think it’s that simple. At the same time, the question of whether to have children is going to be increasingly pesky one for Millennials for a couple of reasons:
- 50+ years of reliable birth control has successfully divorced children from sex and created an entire generation that is functionally illiterate about reproduction and child-rearing. We may know how NOT to have children, but we have not been schooled in how to have them.
- A growing Gnosticism that separates gifting from biology and links it to intangibles like personality and intellect. We simply don’t view gender and the capacity to have children as gifting in itself.
- The belief that aforementioned intellectual gifting is somehow necessary to the. future. of. civilization. Getting sidetracked by mundane things like children wouldn’t be in the best interest of greater human flourishing.
- Increasing inability to think generationally. In a society obsessed with youth, we don’t have categories for aging--whether that is our parents' aging or our own future aging. This means that we also don’t understand children as the bridge that connects generations, stretching back to the past and on into the future.
Among Christians, I think it’s also fair to recognize that that the question of childlessness is heavily influenced by the gender debate. Since 2nd-Wave Feminism, conservative Christians have responded by elevating the calling of a wife and mother. But because this sometimes came as a reaction to feminism, it also sometimes devolved into an idolization of motherhood and wifery, of understanding women only in terms of biology. To be fair, conservative Christians aren’t the only ones capable of this. In this brave new world of IVF, surrogacy, and egg donation, we brazenly reduce women to their reproductive capacities at every turn.
So how should we navigate the choice to have or not have children?
The first thing we must do is clarify what we are actually talking about. When we broach the subject of human reproduction, we are not talking about “babies” or “children” as if they were pets or diminutive, lesser versions of adults. When we broach the question of human reproduction, we are discussing the unique capacity of human beings to create new image bearers of a transcendent God. By definition, this is not reproducing the same way plants and animals do. And the difference lies, not in the mechanics of reproduction, but in what we are creating in our procreation.
Ironically, one of the arguments in favor of childfree living is that we need to view women first as people, as image bearers, and not simply in terms of their reproductive capacities. And while I understand this impulse, I’m concerned that it is often based on a one-dimensional understanding of imago dei. Instead of some nebulous, idealized autonomy, imago dei is better understood as the convergence of the relationships in which we live. We must understand ourselves, as Anthony Hoekema suggests in his book Created in God’s Image, through 1) our relationship with God; 2) our relationship with each other; and 3) our relationship with Creation as its steward.
What that means for the question of children is that we cannot properly discuss the how and when of having them apart from these relationships. Unlike we've been taught, this is not simply a matter of personal choice. Consider how the very act of conception mirrors a relational understanding of imago dei. When 1) a man and woman unite their bodies in dependence on 2) God’s sovereign will, they act as His representatives in 3) stewarding Creation by being fruitful and multiplying. Here in this one moment, the three planes of imago dei identity align and allow God’s nature to shine through their lives like light through a prism. What before was invisible to the naked eye, suddenly bursts forth in a rainbow of color, incarnated through the very process of conceiving, birthing, and nurturing new life.
Of course, this is not the only way human beings image God, but we cannot continue to talk about reproduction apart from it. Unfortunately, in our culture, babies and children are more associated with the cutesy-ness of baby showers, miniature haute couture, and the tallying of “firsts.” And parenting is reduced to a sort of pastime that some couples undertake. Worse still, babies and children, when not wanted, are seen as barriers to self-fulfillment and personal goals. So the message that many young couples receive is that having children is something that you can pick or choose if you like it or not. And if you’re not quite ready to pull the trigger, get a puppy. Because, after all, there’s not much difference between human child and canine one, right?
But what if procreation isn’t simply a hobby but as the Scripture actually speaks about it, the creation of new image bearers? What if, when Adam fathered sons and daughters in his own likeness, he mirrored God’s first fathering man and woman in His own likeness? And what if, bringing a life into being and sustaining that life is one of the most God-like things human beings could ever do?
I don’t think this demands that every individual become a parent—clearly some will not and are no less capable of experiencing imago dei—but I do think that it changes the tenor of the discussion and how we view children. So that ultimately, the decision to have children is not one we make simply because we “feel” like it or don’t. It’s not a choice we make out of sentimentality (maternal ache notwithstanding); and it is not one we avoid out of fear or the desire to be unhindered.
Instead, the choice to produce and nurture a new image bearer is directly tied to our own status as image bearers, and as such, it is a choice that we make in context of relationship not stark autonomy. It is a choice made in prayerful dependence on God, in loving relationship with others, and as a steward of Creation who rules with the same life-giving authority and the same open-hearted generosity that God Himself does.
"A Heaven in a Wild Flower:" Discipling Children through Awe
It was one of those moments when I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I opted to just shrink lower into our second-row pew, stifle my giggles, and hold my seven year-old son close, thanking God for him and all his glorious honesty.
If you are a regular reader, you know that my husband pastors a rural church; and while we do our best to keep our kids out of the fishbowl, we do expect them to participate in the full-scope of congregational life. Including our mid-week service. This isn’t usually a problem, but like all of us, there are those days when they’d rather stay home. Perhaps they're tired, busy doing other things, or in the case of my seven-year-old son, simply find Legos more interesting than having to sit still for an hour.
On this particular Wednesday night, we had dealt with the standard objections over dinner, and by 7:05, everyone was safely ensconced in our normal pew with our heads bowed as one of the deacons opened the service with prayer as only a deacon from a rural Baptist church can. About half way through, he asked God to touch the hearts of “those who could have come tonight but chose not to.”
Not missing a beat, my son piped up, “Well, I didn’t want to come, but I HAD to.”
To be fair, my son’s resistance to church is not the only discipleship hurdle we face with our children. It is easily matched by his older sister’s recent acknowledgment that she finds God's eternality “weird” and the fact that their little brother regularly asks to pray at meal time for the sole purpose of being able to control the length of the prayer. (“Dear-God-Thank-you-for-this-food-help-us-to love-each-other-Amen.”) If success is measured by religious conformity, we’re batting 0 for 3 here.
Still, these kinds of situations have the potential to worry Christian parents who desire to pass faith on to their children. With the reports of widespread Millennial angst and stories of even apologists’ daughters rejecting Christianity, it easy to lose heart. And when we do, it’s even easier to respond by simply doubling our efforts to force faith into them through more catechism, more Bible memory, more “church.”
We do this because we are conditioned to think that discipleship is primarily the accumulation of religious knowledge. A quick Google search for “children’s discipleship” brings back resource after resource—everything from catechisms to Bible memory systems to pint-sized devotional books--all promising to produce the next generation of believers. What I rarely hear discussed is the necessity of discipling our children through “natural revelation.” When theologians use the term “natural revelation,” they are referring to what God has revealed about Himself through the world around us. “Specific revelation,” on the other hand, is what God has revealed about Himself through the Scripture—and what is often the mainstay of our efforts to instill faith in the hearts of our children.
And while I believe Scripture is essential to the process of belief, Scripture was never intended to be engaged in a vacuum. Instead, faith happens as the Holy Spirit impresses the truth of God’s Word (specific revelation) onto a heart that has been primed to accept it by experiencing the truth of God in the world around it (natural revelation). Like a pair of chopsticks, the two must work together.
The Apostle Paul understood this and it’s precisely why in Acts 17—that famous Mars Hill sermon—he begins by appealing to what the Athenians already know through their experience of the world. They already believed in some “unknown God” because they could see His works both in them and around them. So too, most of us already understand the importance of this approach in evangelism; we craft winsome arguments and appeal to the nature of the cosmos and the intrinsic code of right and wrong that seems to be written on every human heart. What fewer of us understand is that we must evangelize our children this exact same way. We must disciple our children through wonder as much as through catechism. In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton, that great British philosopher of the last century, writes that he gained his understanding of the world as a child:
“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery… a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by mere facts.” It is this “certain way of looking at life” that many Christian parents neglect—or perhaps have never even acquired for themselves. We are not merely stuffing our children’s heads with facts; we are shaping hearts to believe that certain realities are true. So that when they do finally encounter the facts of faith, they will already have hearts that can recognize them. When they finally memorize “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” it will find lodging because they have already gazed up into this same heaven and marveled at its brilliant stars; they have already let the sand from this same earth slip through their chubby fingers and work its way into every nook and cranny of their tiny bodies.
So that in the end, they don’t believe there is a Creator simply because Genesis 1 tells them so; they believe there is a Creator because they have seen His Creation. As you go about discipling your children, as you teach them their Bible verses and correct them when they disobey, do not neglect the sacred discipline of awe and wonder at God’s creation. Take them to the mountains to walk forest trails in search of the millipedes and butterflies that are the works of His hands. Take them to the seashore to be knocked over by the power of a wave so that one day they’ll know how to be knocked over by the power of God. Take them to the art museum to thrill at the colors, shapes, and textures whose beauty can only be explained by the One who is Beauty Himself. Take them to the cities to crane their necks to the see the tops of sky scrapers and shiver with anticipation at God’s miracle of physics that keeps them from tumbling down.
And then take them to Church.
Take them to Church to bow their heads and receive the Word that gives them the ability to know the God behind all these wonders personally. Take them to Church to let the joy of their little hearts overflow in worship of the One through whom all these things consist. And take them to Church, so that in the midst of other worshipers, in the midst of other image bearers, they too will eventually be able to find their place in the great, wide world He has made.
Women's Work
Last week the Pew Research Center released a report revealing that women are the primary breadwinners of 40% of American households. Conservatives have interpreted these statistics as yet one more step on the road to social ruin. And I agree that they should give us pause—not because of how many women are in the workforce—but because of the staggering number of these women who are single mothers. But somehow, instead of focusing on issues like male abandonment, the conversation inevitably shifts to the fact that women are earning more money than men. The standard conservative response goes something like this:
“It’s not that women can’t work—it’s just better that they stay home with their children. Men should be the primary providers for their families.”
For the record—and perhaps in my defense given what I’m about to write—I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for the last eight years and my husband has been the primary breadwinner for our entire marriage. Still, I find this response highly problematic. Not because I don’t value what happens in the home, but precisely because I do.
The problem with this kind of response is that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of work and what it means to provide for a family.
One of the interesting things about gender issues—both inside the church and out—is that they are rarely about gender alone. Instead, gender is often a presenting issue for deeper values and assumptions--in this case, how we evaluate what it means to “work” and what it means to “provide.” (For those following the New Wave Complementarianism conversation, this post addresses Theses 17 and 22.)
A significant part of the problem is that we are still relying on the false paradigm of work vs. home. It is ironic that even as conservatives push against what they see as the fallout of 2nd Wave Feminism, they end up perpetuating the very philosophical assumptions that made feminism problematic in the first place. They continue to define “work” as something that happens outside the home and is rewarded financially. In context of feminism, this division plays out as an undercurrent of condescension toward women who have not pursued careers. In conservatism, it plays out by restricting men to the workforce and women to the home.
The problem is that these strict categories simply don’t exist. When God created man and woman in His image, He commissioned them to rule over creation by reproducing and stewarding the earth together. But not only were they to rule together, the very things that embodied their rule—reproducing and stewarding—also had to be accomplished holistically. God did not issue two commands but one command that exists with an internal tension and intrinsic interconnectedness.
Anne-Marie Slaughter highlighted this tension in her article, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, that appeared the July 2012 issue of The Atlantic. In this now famous piece, Slaughter argues that the greatest barrier to the success of both the family and business is that they are pitted against each other. So that when we insist on a strict divide between home and work, we set ourselves up to fail at both.
Secondly, by defining a man who works outside the home and earns a paycheck as the “primary” provider, we unintentionally communicate to women that what they provide is “secondary.”
If by saying “a man must be the primary provider,” we mean that a husband should be the first to sacrifice his freedom by indenturing himself to an employer because his wife needs greater flexibility to care for young children –well, and good. But what I’m afraid we are unintentionally saying is that by being the “primary” provider, he is doing something more essential to the well-being of the family. We are saying that the greatest need of the family is financial.
That is not to say that money is unnecessary or that money is not a legitimate expression of our values. One of the most romantic things that my husband has ever done was purchase life insurance for me at the same time that he was purchasing it for himself. In this moment, he communicated that he understood what I contributed to the family. He understood that despite the fact that I did not earn a salary, the work I did at home—the boo-boos kissed, the noses wiped, and the books read--was just as much a “primary” provision to our family as his work in a salaried position.
Which brings me to my third and greatest concern. By defining “work” as what men do in the role of primary financial providers, we allow women to excuse themselves from stewarding the earth because we position “work” as a male characteristic instead of an imago dei one.
When we say a woman “can” work, we are, in essence, saying that work is optional to her identity. But as a person made in the image of God, a woman MUST engage in meaningful work that capitalizes on both her biological potential and her personal gifting. Where and when and how this happens will vary, but she must be working because work is what humans do--not simply what men do.
Don’t think this is problem? You’ve obviously never watched the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
It is, in fact, so likely a problem that the apostle Paul warned against it in two of his epistles. In Titus 2, when he calls women to be “workers at home,” he does so in context of calling them to "renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to [be]… zealous for good works.” In I Timothy 5 when he issues a similar call, he cites that the danger of caring financially for young widows is that they would become “idlers... gossips and busybodies.”
Paul’s concern seems to be not simply that women would work outside the home but that they would cease from working altogether. When your physical needs are being met by someone else, the natural pressure to be a working, productive person evaporates. The greatest danger to a woman who is wealthy enough to stay at home is not materialism, but laziness. The greatest danger is that she would not keep working even as she is at home because she would think that "working" is what men are called to do.
As women made in the image of God, we must be productive, life-giving people because our God is a productive, life-giving God. How this works out in practice is undoubtedly affected by our various callings and seasons of life. But in the end we are not Cinderellas waiting to be whisked away from our work--we are Susans and Lucys bravely embracing our call to be Queens over Narnia who rule faithfully alongside our brother Kings.
So that in the end, the best we can say is about work and family is that a husband should provide for his family by working imago dei and a wife should provide for her family by working imago dei as well. If these new labor statistics reveal that men are failing to do this, we should be concerned. But we must be careful in how we express this concern. If we are not—if we insist on perpetuating the oversimplified categories of work vs. home--we run the risk of undermining the very thing that we are called to pursue in the first place—the flourishing of every individual as an image bearer of our infinitely complex, infinitely glorious God.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If this post piques your curiosity, here are several more that address the issue of gender and work:
http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/09/my-take-diy-pintrest-and-the-rise-of-the-new-domesticity.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/11/mad-men-june-cleaver-and-biblical-womanhood.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/08/dear-coal-miner-exterminator-cafeteria-lady-hotel-maid-and-anyone-else-who-works-a-less-than-glamorous-job.html http://www.sometimesalight.com/1/post/2012/09/on-being-a-stay-at-home-mom.html
Woman in the Image of God
Last Friday, Edith Schaeffer passed away at the age of 98. Despite the potential to have been overshadowed by her husband, Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, she held her own as a writer and thinker, delivering a message of joi de vivre and teaching a generation of women that there is power in the small moments, that even things like mothering and domesticity are an expression of God’s image. She taught us that when God takes up residency, our homes will be filled with His nature—filled with art and music and beauty and wonder and hospitality and joy.
But something’s happened to Christian women in the subsequent years--something that I’m not sure even Mrs. Schaeffer herself would approve. Over the last several decades, we’ve flipped the paradigm; instead of seeing womanhood (and all that comes with it) as an expression of imago dei, we've come to see our womanhood as an end in itself. We’ve come to believe that our core sense of self rests in our gender and our ability to conform to certain paradigms. And in doing so, I’m afraid we’ve developed a bit of identity myopia.
This idea has been rolling around in my head for a while now, but I didn’t quite see it clearly, didn’t quite have the words to speak it, until one day. It was the same day that I resolved to start blogging. It was the same day that I realized that my daughter was growing up.
She was six at the time, maybe seven, and I remember this moment of awareness that she was being shaped, not simply by her school work or television, but by the routines and liturgies that were happening in our home. She was being shaped by me. Every moment of every day, she was forming an idea about what it meant to be a woman. When I put on my makeup, she put on hers. When I wrote my stories, she wrote hers in a hot pink, spiral-bound notebook. She was becoming the woman I was.
This awareness made me consider what kind of woman I wanted her to become, and I realized that it wasn’t enough to teach her simply about womanhood—I had to teach her about what it meant to be a person. What it meant to be made in God’s image. Because all that is true about my womanhood--all that is beautiful and glorious and lovely--flows out of this deeper identity. If I didn’t start there, nothing else would make sense.
At the same time, I began to observe a kind of identity myopia among my peers. I saw women desperately striving to fulfill roles. And then angrily casting them off when the weight and expectations were more than they could carry. I saw women judging those who couldn’t carry them. I saw woman fighting loneliness and a pervasive sense of loss because they were single or not yet mothers. I saw women defining themselves by their sexuality or dress size. I saw women lost and wandering, confused about who they were and what they were supposed to be.
And I knew that there had to be an answer.
There had to be a truth that could speak to all of us. There had to be a truth that could transcend all the differences, that could bring order to the chaos. And that truth was this: each of us is made in God’s image and we will never be at peace until we live in it.
You see, being made in God’s image does more than establish the equality of all people (although is does); it is does more than simply level the playing field between men and women (although it does); it does more than argue for the sanctity of human life (although it does). Understanding that you are made in the image of God gives you a way to finally make sense of your life, to finally know who you are.
To know that your nature flows from His, to know that your identity mirrors His, to know that “in Him you live and move and have your being” to know that you are destined to be like Him, to know that He will move heaven and earth until you are.
This is what it means to live imago dei. This is what it means to be human.
And this is what Jesus Christ came to do. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer to restore what we have lost, to redeem what we have sold away--the bits of ourselves that we have prostituted off to smaller gods. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer so that we could finally be what we were meant to be, so that we could finally be like Him.
Which brings me to the book I’m working on. When I first started talking with Moody Publishers about writing for them, one of the questions they asked was, “How do you want to influence women?”
This is how.
More than anything, I want women, I want my daughter, I want myself to understand that the point of our existence—the answer to the question “Who am I and why am I here?”—is not found simply in being a woman, but in living imago dei. Our core sense of self comes, not in our domesticity or our careers, not in our relationships or motherhood, not in our brokenness or our fears, but from God’s nature. It's not that the details are unimportant; it's that they only make sense in the scope of the larger picture. In the end, I want what Edith Schaeffer did: I want all of life--all the domesticity, all the arts, all the beauty, all the love, all the philosophy, all the theology—to flow from this central Truth:
You were made to reflect and represent God on this earth. You were made for glory.
The writing is going well; but as you might expect, it’s slow at times. Something as heavy and intricately-layered as the image of God doesn’t come easily, and it’s just like me to try take on the world in one fell swoop. And yet, even this serves as a reminder that the whole point of living imago dei is living in dependence on Him, of following Him one faltering step at a time.
As you think of it, pray for me. I don’t view this so much as “my” book or a chance “break into the market.” It is a sacred trust. It is both a privilege and a responsibility. And most days, it scares me to death.
But just as quickly as I become afraid, His Spirit comes and whispers to my quivering heart, “Do not fear, my daughter; I have made you for this. I will give you the words that you need. For this moment, for this time, this is your work; this is how you reflect and represent me. My daughter, this is what it means to live imago dei.”
All God's Children
It’s been a very confusing week.
And like many of you, I find myself trying to parent through it all. Because as much as I’d like, I cannot shield my children from the world they live in. Within a matter of day, they have been confronted with our history of slavery; they’ve learned about the racism that up until fifty years ago was institutionalized in our governments, schools, and churches; and they’ve heard about a society that allows women to kill their unborn children. (And just to round things out, we also had a conversation about the restaurant Hooters this week too.)
This past Sunday as we celebrated the sanctity of human life, I finally began to fit the pieces together. Our history of racism, our present struggle against abortion. And I began to wonder if it wasn’t time that we needed to recognize that we created this. As much as we like to believe that abortion is simply the fallout of the sexual revolution, as much as we like to blame radical feminists, it’s not that simple. Because when--for over two hundred years--we chose to see minorities as less than human, we created a culture that would one day allow us to view our own children the same way. When we refused to see the image of God in our African-American brothers and sisters, we lost the ability to see the image of God in our unborn sons and daughters.
We have sown the wind and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
When we speak about the sanctity of human life, we must remember that we are not simply speaking about abortion. We are not simply speaking about euthanasia. Honoring the sanctity of human life means embracing God’s image bearers where ever they may be and whatever they may look like. True sanctity of human life means understanding that all human life--every man, every woman, every boy, every girl—is precious to God and should also be precious to us.
So that when we take a stand for the sanctity of human life, we are also taking a stand against all racism, all sexism, all elitism, all sectarianism—any ideology, any prejudice that would say that another human being is somehow inferior or somehow unworthy of our love, somehow unworthy of Christ’s love. When we celebrate the sanctity of human life, we are saying that because of Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female." There is no born or unborn.
The work of fighting abortion doesn’t begin with legislation. It doesn’t begin with marches or protests, and it doesn’t even begin with crisis pregnancy centers. The fight to sanctify human life begins in our own hearts; it begins as we root out the vestiges of pride and hatred and selfishness. It begins as we accept the fact that young minority women (who are disproportionately affected by abortion) will be hesitant to trust us when we offer them alternatives to abortion because for the last two centuries we have judged them simply by the color of their skin. It begins when we recognize that our own daughters chose abortion because they didn’t believe they could come to us without feeling this same weight of judgment.
The fight to end abortion must begin with grace. The grace to believe that all of us are made in God’s likeness. The grace to believe that none of us have any righteousness apart from Him. And the grace to believe that no matter what we have done—whether our sin is racism or promiscuity—that the power of Christ is great enough and the love of Christ is strong enough to reconcile each of us to Himself and to each other.
That Burning Fire
I also shared with you my firm conviction that the dreams that we hold dearest are often the very ones that God intends to use, that they are in our hearts precisely because He placed them there. I realize that this could have come across as overly simplistic--that it could have sounded a little too “Pollyanna/Mary Poppins/Climb every mountain”-ish—especially to those of you who are struggling through a low point right now. And yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the path of dreaming “never did run smooth.”
There are days when things are not working out as you planned, when you feel less than enthusiastic about the dreams stirring inside of you, when you want to pitch the whole thing and walk away. There are days when all you want is to escape your calling, and to do so, you wish that you could become someone else entirely.
There are days when you feel like Jeremiah.
The opening chapter of the book of Jeremiah contains a beautiful text that confirms that God sovereignly plans and ordains our callings. When God comes to Jeremiah, He assures him of that, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (ESV) And yet, twenty chapters later, Jeremiah curses the day he was born. The very thing that gave him comfort at the beginning of his ministry was the very thing that he wishes had never happened.
Jeremiah feels like God has tricked him—that by making him the way He did, by appointing him a prophet from birth and placing that “burning fire” deep inside of him, He has doomed him to a life of misery. So that as much as Jeremiah wants to escape his calling, for all the trouble that it has caused him, he simply can’t because God had made him that way. The very thing he is resisting is the very thing that he can’t stop doing. He calls it a “burning fire shut up in [his] bones.”
When I was in college, I attended a church whose pastor routinely gave this piece of advice to anyone considering vocational ministry: “Only do it if you can’t do anything else.” He wasn’t denigrating the value of ministry so much as emphasizing that ministry (like any other calling) is fraught with hardship, discouragement, and heartbreak. And in those moments, the only thing that will keep you going is the sure knowledge that God has made you for this—that there is nothing else you can do because you have that “burning fire shut up in your bones.”
It is so much a part of you that it is knit it into the very fabric of your being.
And if it is, there will be plenty of times that you will find yourself precisely in Jeremiah’s position—both hating the struggle and knowing that you can’t escape it because God Himself formed you this way. There will be plenty of times when it feels like a burden, times when you want to walk away, times when you will shake your fist at Him and say, “I didn’t ask for this. Why have you made me like this?”
For me, the “burning fire” has been a combination of being analytic and outspoken. It is both my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. It is the very thing that drives me to write, but it is also the very thing that leads me to be overly critical, noisy, and self-righteous. And I’ve hated myself for it. I’ve always wanted to be the quiet, demure one—the girl at the party whose very presence lends an air of sophistication and elegance–and yet, I always end up being the girl animatedly arguing some political or theological point. I inevitably wake up the next morning with a mental hangover and mountains of regret. “Why did I have to do that? Why couldn’t I have just kept my mouth shut?”
Ultimately though, it’s not about keeping my mouth shut. And it isn’t about achieving some mystical balance between the extremes of not caring and caring too much. Instead, it’s about finding a way forward, about transcending that type of one-dimensional thinking, so that you can pursue a greater reality--the reality that despite your frustration with yourself and despite your disappointed dreams, you know that God has “made you thus” for a reason. You know that He is shepherding and guiding you, that His Spirit is actively maturing you, and that even in the darkest valley, He is walking beside you and will bring you back into the light.
And this is requires faith. Not faith in your dreams or yourself, but faith in His providence and faith in His goodness. This requires believing that He has made you fearfully and wonderfully, that He did knit you together in your mother’s womb to fulfill a specific purpose, and that everything about you–even your dreams--are ultimately from His hand. So that in your darkest moments, this faith will manifest itself in obedience; an obedience that some days will simply mean putting one foot in front of the other and continuing down the path that He Himself has laid for you.