Singing in Harmony
We almost missed it. Like the classic “big picture” person that I am, I had mixed up my dates, double-booked house guests, and created the very distinct possibility that we would be absent from a mainstay of the church’s yearly calendar. File this one under “How NOT to Be a Good Pastor’s Wife.”
Fortunately we didn't miss it. A little rearranging and a couple blushing conversations later, we ended up at Miss Kay’s front door promptly at 7:00. (Okay, not promptly… but we did get there.) The evening began like any other social gathering—food and small talk—but then about forty minutes in, something happened. A whisper spread through the house and with the enthusiasm of children, this eclectic group aged 17 months to 77 years assembled themselves in the front parlor (yes, I do mean parlor). Out came the guitars; next a mandolin; and before you knew it, someone was seated at the piano, running gospel scales up and down.
Then it began.
And with the initial chord, with the first blend, I knew that I was witnessing something special. I was witnessing what is fast becoming one of the rarest (and soon to be extinct) forms of social interaction in our culture—communal singing. Now this wasn’t the embarrassed-national-anthem-mumbling type of singing that happens at ballgames and graduations. No, this was classic “daddy sang bass, mama sang tenor” and everyone instinctively did seem to know how to “join right in there.” Song after song, voices called out favorites and all of us--from the boy soprano to the bass who in a another life had traveled with a gospel group—sang with abandon. At times, a soloist would take over and the rest of us would simply drop back without a word. We repeated choruses and elongated final lines all via a silent understanding that only exists between people who have lived a lifetime together.
For my part, I joined in when I could although I was raised more Watts than Gaither. Mostly though, I just sat in awe—in awe of the secret that I had been entrusted. A secret best kept in mountain hollers, family reunions, and small country churches—the secret of singing as community.
We are people who are quickly losing the capacity to live together in peace. We are consumed by our private issues and personal angst; so much so that we can’t even elect a president in civility. At the same time, we are losing the ability to sing together; and as this piece notes, even when we want to, we don’t know what to sing. And as we lose the music, I’m afraid we’re losing something more. We’re losing a metaphor for life, for how to live and engage in community, how to be silent when the soloist is singing, how to support the melody with our harmonies, how to not need the spotlight. Because as we lose the ability to sing together, we also are losing an opportunity to learn how to work together to reach larger goals.
What’s saddest to me is that we’re losing this in our churches as well. After decades of projecting lyrics onto overhead screens, the gradual disappearance of hymnals, and the repetition of simple melodies, we may have just raised an entire generation that never once encountered the beauty and wonder of singing in parts. (To quote Church Curmudgeon: “Worship team practice is canceled. Use the four chords from last week.") This is not a rant against contemporary music—our family has been part of communities that have been exclusively contemporary and those that have been strictly traditional. And in every case, there’s been good... and otherwise. This is simply a call to not forget that corporate singing must be corporate. It must be more than simply singing in unison because our congregations are not uniform. They represent people of different backgrounds, giftings, personalities, and ages; and what better way to embody that than through music that lets you find your place and sing at the top of your lungs.
Because honestly, corporate worship was never intended to be--nor can it ever truly be—simply a collection of individuals expressing their private worship to the Lord. No, we must sing in parts. We must embrace the unique callings that we each represent and then combine our voices in harmony to praise a God who can orchestrate the motliest crew into a beautiful chorus. And we must teach our children this—it is as necessary as any other educational experience or process of socialization. We must teach them the magic of harmonizing and the joy of not having to be the soloist; we must teach them the wonder of singing as a group.
And along the way, we might just learn a little something about life in community as well.
On a Dime
Only now, I’m the mother.
I don’t know why I haven’t yet gotten my act together yet. Every Sunday the ushers pass the offering plate and every Sunday my children hold out their hands to me. And still, I routinely find myself playing Minute to Win It. Your challenge: find enough money to distribute between three children so that each of them can put something in the offering plate by the time the ushers reach your pew. You have sixty seconds. And… Go!
To be fair, I have learned a few things over the years. I’ve learned that the denomination of coins must be roughly equal in order to avoid protests. At the same time, I’ve also learned that in the cosmic realities of childhood, two quarters do not equal ten dimes (“No fair! She got more than me!”). And forget the widow’s mite--according to my children, God doesn’t want pennies. Still knowing all this, I routinely find myself caught unprepared. It’s particularly problematic now that my husband’s pastoring again and we sit only three rows from the front.
But this last Sunday, something happened. In the process of sorting through my coins, mentally calculating and dividing the little change I had, I noticed a coin that I didn’t recognize. It was the size of a dime, but slightly thinner and the profile was definitely not a Roosevelt. Initially I thought it was a foreign coin that had simply gotten mixed up in some return change. So I paused to take a closer look. This coin was worn, thin—almost elegant. And although I couldn’t make out all the script, I quickly realized that it was no foreign coin. No, this stranger in my wallet was United States currency. In fact, it was a dime. From 1918.
I quickly passed along some other money to the kids and handed the dime to my husband for safe keeping. As the dust settled, I sat there taking it all in. Without warning, I had unintentionally become the owner of a small bit of history. Later I discovered that this particular dime is known as a Mercury or Winged Liberty dime and unlike today’s coins, is predominantly silver. Still, even in my pew that morning, I could tell that my dime was no museum show piece—no this dime was a working dime. A dime that had made it way through the masses, serving those who owned it faithfully, and nearly one hundred years later had found itself in my wallet. And the whole time, I hadn’t even known it was there.
Suddenly, I felt both very small and yet oddly connected to the larger scope of humanity. Had this dime—this very dime that I held in my hands— passed through the hands of another mother? Who was its original owner? What work, what sweat and labor, had first earned this newly minted coin? And after that, what route had it taken?
Had it fed a hungry belly for just one more day during the Depression?
Did it buy a midnight cup of coffee for a GI returning from WWII, grateful to be back home but unsettled by his experiences?
A decade later, was it the price of a candy bar for a little one thrilled to see daddy coming through the door from work?
Or was it the dime that paid for that phone call from a child who had wandered a bit too far and simply wanted to come home?
I don’t know. But unexpectedly, in the scope of five minutes on a beautiful Sunday morning in October, I could trace the hand of Providence. It ran through the worn profile of Liberty and the now nearly illegible “In God We Trust.” It is a Providence that controls the fates of nations even as He nurtures and guides the individual lives of those caught in the whirlwind. A Providence that brought this dime to my wallet without my even knowing it and in doing so, offered a ten cent reminder of His hand, of the grand scheme of His plan, and the truth that none of us--even dimes--escape His watchful eye.
*Image from http://coinauctionshelp.com/How_To_Grade_Mercury_Dimes.html
As We Are Known
http://www.motherearthnews.com
There’s something about small towns and small churches. They offer us a sense of security--the security of being known, of not having to lay out the pieces of who you are, of knowingly exactly where you fit in the puzzle of human relationship. You’re the accountant or the librarian. You’re Jack’s mother and Bill’s daughter. You’re the girl who won the high school tennis tournament ten years ago. And somehow, knowing your place in all this inter-connectedness seems to make life more manageable.
One of my favorite authors, Alexander McCall Smith, describes this phenomenon as it plays out in a quiet Scottish village:
It was a Scotland of quiet manners and reserved friendliness, a Scotland in which nothing much happened, where lives were lived unadventurously and sometimes narrowly to the grave. The lives of such people could be read in the local kirkyard, their loyalty and their persistence etched into granite: Thomas Anderson, Farmer of East Mains, Beloved Husband of fifty-two years of…. and so on. These were people with place, wed to the very ground in which they would eventually be placed. The urban dead were reduced to ashes, disposed of, leaving no markers, and then forgotten; memory here was longer and gave the illusion that we counted for more. It was a simply matter of identity, thought Isabel. If people do not know who we are, then naturally we are less to them. Here, in this village, everybody would know who the other was, which made the crucial difference. (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, 230.)
And yet, this need to be known is so fundamental to our humanity that even in big cities—those havens of anonymity and obscurity—we still find a way to carve out our own micro-communities. NYC has Greenwich Village, SoHo, and Little Italy. San Francisco has Chinatown, and London has Notting Hill. All in an attempt to give ourselves a sense of continuity and identity, a place where we can be known and we can know others.
And really, this is the way it must be. We are people made in the image of an omniscient, relational God—so why should it surprise us that a significant part of our souls cannot be at peace unless we are known as individuals? Why should it surprise us that the children of an all-knowing God must, not only know, but be known?
I was thinking the other day about how many of us struggle through this particular challenge of identity, specifically in wanting others to know us as individuals, to embrace us for who we really are, not simply who we project ourselves to be. Listen to the conversation among my generation and you’ll quickly hear words like “community” and “transparency” and “honesty.” We are desperate for others to know who we are. And yet, at the same time, we dare not risk them finding out--we dare not risk revealing our deepest secrets unless they reject us altogether.
This is why ultimately only He can fulfill of our need to be known. Only the One who already knows us, right down to the very hairs on our head. Only the One who has known us since our first moments of existence. Only the One who will know us to the end of our days. Because only this One--only He--knows us completely, and yet still loves us unconditionally.
And suddenly, in the words of Alexander McCall-Smith, “we count for more.” And when we do, our small, quiet, individual lives are invested with significance and purpose and meaning. We are known and we are loved. And this is what makes all the difference.
Mercy That Endures
This last Sunday was no exception. My husband was preaching from Psalm 136 and one of his points was that God’s mercy endures forever. (This was the point that had been immediately preceded by a small delay when the congregation realized that a lizard was darting in and out of the pews and which ultimately resulted in several smartly-dressed parishioners on their hands and knees trying to catch the terrified creature.) But as he was unfolding the idea that God’s mercy endures, somewhere in the quiet place of my heart I heard another voice.
I heard it asking,
Daughter, how often do you endure? How often do you expect mercy to come easily? How often do you give up too soon--especially when it comes to your children?
Immediately my defenses went up.
“But you don’t understand,” I answered. “You’re God—mercy comes naturally to you. And my children? Well, they’re so foolish—they are messy and disorganized and lazy and I have to yell at them or they won’t get the point. I have to become exasperated or they just keep doing what they're doing.”
Yes, they are foolish, but do you endure?
“Oh, you have no idea how much I endure.”
No, do you really push past the barrier of your frustration, do you let your love soften your anger, do you endure? Like I do?
And I knew, of course, that I didn’t. I knew that too often I confused childishness with disobedience. I knew that even as I found characters like Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer endearing, I simultaneously found their traits, once actualized in the bodies of my children, infuriating. And I knew that I all too quickly embraced my “righteous anger.”
But this Sunday, I also realized something about God. Too often I think that we imagine Him as a fixed character in a cosmic drama—He is the constant to our development, the foil to our inconstancy. And while it is true that He never changes, we must not confuse His faithfulness with being flat and static, almost as if He were a cardboard cut-out. Because if we ourselves are not one-dimensional, how could the very God who made us in His own image be otherwise?
No, He is not a force or a concept or a paradigm. He is alive--He is a living God. And being so, He exists in all the complexity that any other living being does. He exists in a kaleidoscope of love and justice, of mercy and holiness, with nothing but His own divine power to hold the tension that allows Him to be all in all--all at the same time.
So when David says in Psalm 136 that God's mercy endures forever, perhaps it does just that. It endures. It endures our foolishness; it endures our stubbornness; it endures our weakness. Like a long-distance runner or a mountain climber, His mercy pushes past the comfort zone of His justice and keeps going until it reaches the goal--the goal of forever. So that with lungs bursting and sweat dripping, His longsuffering becomes true suffering, and through Christ, His mercy willfully and strongly holds back His very reasonable frustration.
A lot of times we talk about mercy falling “like the gentle rain from heaven.” And to us at least, it seems to--it feels like rain, like cool, calming, life-giving rain on our parched souls. But we must not think that what comes down to us so easily has been bought or won easily. Mercy freely given does not mean that it was mercy freely obtained. No, as I learned this past Sunday, mercy doesn’t simply fall. Mercy fights. Mercy struggles. Mercy endures.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ * Carl Trueman related the following anecdote that encapsulates the unique position pastors' wives often find themselves in. "Talking to a colleague the other day, he told me how, on one Sunday, he preached an absolute stinker of a sermon. After the service, he said to his wife, `That was the worst sermon I have ever preached.' `No it wasn't.' she replied `Be encouraged. I have heard you preach much worse.' That is a truly great preacher's wife for you."
My Take: Chik-Fil-A Takeaway*
Now that the dust is settling a bit, I’ve been reflecting about what’s happened over the last few weeks surrounding Dan Cathy’s statements about biblical marriage and what ultimately culminated in Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day this past Wednesday. And while I’m not the first or last to make these observations, please take them for what they are: simply observations about what has become perhaps the most polarizing social/religious issue of the year. They are not meant to critique anyone who chose to participate or anyone who chose not to. There have been thoughtful opinions on both sides (here and here for example) and I think it’s safe to say that choosing to eat or not eat a chicken sandwich is truly (in a divine twist of humor) something that we can file under Romans 14.
(For the record, we did not eat at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday primarily because we ate there last week and as much as we believe in freedom of speech, we also believe strongly in supporting a balanced family budget and lower cholesterol.)
So first things first…
- Chick-Fil-A makes a really good chicken sandwich. And waffle fries. And coleslaw. And lemonade. I wish we could settle this whole thing right there on the merits of what a company produces, but in this day and age…
- Companies are no longer just companies. Matthew Lee Anderson has an interesting explanation on why this is the case. Because we have become primarily a consumption-based society, the things we choose to consume are intrinsically linked to our identities. And because we are a society driven by the marketplace, we will naturally articulate our values in the marketplace. Unfortunately, this makes us easy prey for companies that choose to leverage social issues in the marketing of their products, and so for my part….
- I respect Chick-Fil-A for choosing to distance itself from social policy as much as I respect their decision to remain closed on Sundays. Unlike some companies (JC Penney, for example), Chick-Fil-A has decided to let their business rise and fall on the merits of their product. JC Penney, on the other hand, currently in the midst of a last-ditch effort to re-invent themselves (unofficial slogan: “This is not your Grandma’s JC Penney.”), has actively embraced controversial social issues in an effort to drum up business. Part of their make-over included featuring same-sex couples for BOTH their Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day ad campaigns; so that instead of re-inventing their products to appeal to a younger generation, it seems like they simply looked at statistics, saw that the Millenials and Xers tend to support same-sex marriage, and made an advertising decision based on a targeted demographic. To me—a member of that very demographic--it came off as patronizing and cheap. Still…
- Homosexuality is THE defining issue of this generation. As such, Christians are going to have to learn to navigate it with charity and boldness, grace and truth. We are going to have to be both wise and harmless, and that means coming to accept that…
- Public statements are likely to be misunderstood. What we mean to say (“I’m standing up for civil liberty.”) and what others hear (“I hate gay people.”) will rarely be the same thing; and while we can’t control someone’s interpretation of our actions, we better make certain that we’re not erecting extra barriers that might lead him to think that his conclusion is justified. And to do that, we must be willing to take the beam out of our own eye first, and…
- We must be honest about our own lack of God-honoring marriages and families. Every time we accept divorce as normal; every time we deny a man and woman the sacrament of marriage based simply on skin color; every time we entertain ourselves with movies that highlight heterosexual couples living together but shudder when the same movies portray gay couples; or let’s get even more personal--every time we complain about how inconvenient our children are, we are overlooking our own sin in favor of judging another’s. Because in the end, if we don’t hold biblical family values privately, we have very little ground to be promoting them publicly. And speaking of being honest with ourselves….
- We must not confuse the privilege of freely practicing our faith with the power to practice our faith. Many have rightly understood the current debacle as a threat to the basic freedoms of speech and religion. (Public officials simply have no right denying permits based on their own personal values.) But if we’re completely honest with ourselves, I wonder how many of us are standing up for civil liberties, not because we understand that they are essential to a just society, but because we have so long intertwined them with our faith that we can’t imagine how we could be Christians without them. We have confused the freedom that comes from Jesus Christ with the freedom that comes from the United States' Constitution. The first empowers us to follow Him, while the second simply makes it socially acceptable. Please don’t misunderstand. We must certainly fight to protect constitutional rights (for Christians and Jews and Hindis and Muslims), but we must not fight for them simply because we can’t envision our faith surviving without them. Because in the end…
- We need to remember what we’re really about. As of August 1, the conservative church proved that we can marshal a movement. We proved that when given a call to be part of something bigger, we will show up. So now, I’m issuing a call. Let’s have the same show of support for the Gospel. Let’s muster the same enthusiasm for the grace and power of Jesus Christ to change lives. And let’s put our energies and time and money into proclaiming that the love of Christ is by far the best solution for what ails us as a society.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *When my husband and I lived in NZ a couple years ago, we quickly learned that what we Americans refer to as restaurant “take out” is termed “takeaway” by our English speaking cousins. I simply couldn’t resist the pun.
Learning to Trust Again
Like most summer storms, this one went as quickly as it came, but unlike most summer thunderstorms, this one left extensive damage. We were lucky though—none of our trees came down and we never lost power. Within hours, the children were home, tucked safely into bed, and seemed generally nonplussed by the whole event. The only thing my six-year-old had to say about it (in his typically understated way) was “It was very windy. I was a little bit scared.” And that was that.
Or so I thought.
Then suddenly that same six-year-old started asking me to check the weather each morning, and that same six-year-old started needing to see the hourly forecast before he went outside to play. Then he started watching the clock and coming in early if the forecast threatened rain. He started jumping at the slightest breeze and one day, with his chin quivering, doing his best to hold back tears, he asked to go home while we were visiting a mountain overlook. He didn’t like the wind. It all came to a head when at a Fourth of July picnic, this same nonchalant little boy clamped his hands over his ears and ran screaming inside when sky turned stormy.
And then I knew we had a problem.
Despite our attempts to console him, despite reasoning with him that mommy and daddy would protect him, despite praying with him and gaining his verbal affirmation that “God is bigger than the storm,” this little boy simply doesn’t trust the weather. And truthfully, I don’t blame him.
When you’ve experienced something traumatic—whether it’s a storm or an illness or a broken relationship—you know better than to let yourself ever get caught in that situation again. You’re smarter for it. You learn to guard your heart. You learn to scan the sky and look for the warning signs. And you consider yourself, not so much living in fear, as having become older and wiser.
Until your caution turns into fear Until your “wisdom” starts to look a lot like paranoia Until you let your experience cloud everything else your life.
Then you know you have a problem.
Because as much as I understand my son’s fear, another part of me worries that as long as he lives in that fear, he’ll never be able to experience the joy of an ocean breeze whipping around him or the majesty of a summer thunderstorm. And as long as any of the rest of us continue to live in our fears—no matter how justified they are—we’ll miss the joy of so many things too. Family, community, church, friends, life. Sometimes even God Himself.
So now I’m trying to figure out how do I help him learn to trust again? How do any of us learn to trust again? How do you learn to feel the breeze without panicking? How do you stand on the mountain overlook, drinking in the winds that carry the hawk and eagle without wanting to go home? How do you face the vast ocean and delight in its mighty winds when at six you were evacuated to the bottom of a baseball stadium and the lights went out?
And maybe more to the point for the rest of us, how do you learn to love again when your heart has been broken? How do you learn to let down your guard when you’ve been hurt? How do you move past being cynical to being sensitive once again? How, like for me, do you learn to stop jumping to conclusions when everything in you wants to run screaming into the building to get away from the storm?
I’m not certain of the exact process, but I know it takes time. Not time by itself, but time for God to work. Time to let Him to rebuild the brokenness. Time to let Him heal you. Time to let Him to lead you one hesitant, terrifying step at a time. Time for you to learn how to trust Him again.
Because maybe, what we all need to recognize is that rebuilding trust doesn't ultimately mean learning to trust the weather or our churches or even another person again. Rebuilding trust means learning to trust Him. It means believing that when the storms do return, He will be right there to wait them out with you. Even if it's in the belly of a minor league baseball stadium.
My Take: Doubt, Faith, and Sibling Rivalry
Still stranger was that I found myself wanting to have doubted. I felt like I needed it as credibility somehow. Because if Christian liberty has become the new legalism, doubt has become the new “faith.” In this post-modern generation, if you haven’t doubted, you haven’t believed. If you haven’t walked away from church, you really don’t know what it is about. If you haven’t done something that flies in the face of religious convention, you are still its pawn.
And then I started thinking about all those of us who aren’t Thomases. It’s not that we don’t have our problems and it’s not that we don’t honestly investigate what we believe. It’s just that we don’t stumble over faith the way some do. In many cases, we never ran away from home--or at least we only went as far as the next conservative church. And we end up taking as much of security in this as our doubting brothers take in their ability to question.
This tension, this need to one-up each other either by our faith or our doubt, reminded me a lot of my children and their tendency toward sibling rivalry. It also reminded me of that classic story of sibling rivalry that Jesus told: the story of the prodigal son. Because if those who doubt are the younger brother who ran away from home, those who don’t are the older brother who stayed and are easily tempted to pass judgment.
Still, today’s story has a twist. In our post-modern paradigm, doubt has been enshrined, almost made a virtue, and this ultimately makes it hard for prodigals to “come to their senses” and honestly coming home in humility. Because their doubt has been affirmed, they feel comfortable with it and even demand that the father fix the things that made them angry enough to leave in the first place. But the thing about doubt (no matter what post-modernism says) is that Scripture never frames it in a positive light. Whenever someone questions God--think Job, Gideon, Zacharias, Thomas--even when their doubt is completely understandable, Scripture portrays it as weakness.
But the glorious thing about God is this: with Him, weakness is not a liability.
Because ultimately this is the grace of doubt—not how wonderfully insightful and reflective it makes us appear--but how generous and patient it reveals God to be. In our doubt, we become the foil to display His faithfulness. And through our doubt, we learn how weak we were not to believe and how much we needed Him in the first place. In this sense, doubt can be very spiritual if it leads to faith--if in our weaknesses we cry out, “Lord, I believe--help my unbelief.”
But paradoxically, those of us who haven’t experienced strong doubt can be just as weak. Because we are the older son who finds security and pride—not in our Father—but in our certainty. We stayed after all. And we all too quickly identify ourselves as the “blessed” who haven’t seen but believe and we forget that not questioning the status quo is not the same as believing the truth.
Because faith that has faith as its object is not the same as faith in the Father.
Faith that is founded on tradition or religion or simply staying put doesn’t make us anymore faithful than those who doubt. And it doesn’t make us love our Father any more than the older brother’s remaining at home made him love his father more. After all, the reward he was looking for wasn’t the joy of a relationship with him; it was the approval he expected to gain from being the “good son.”
So in the end, this is what we must seek by staying home: not the Father’s approval because of our faithfulness but the joy of being with Him. The joy of days and weeks and years of fellowship that the younger brother missed out on because of his doubt and wandering. By staying home, we have the opportunity to forge memories, create a shared history, and enjoy a lifetime of discovering, not our own faithfulness, but His.
Because what both sons were missing in it all of it—what, if we’re not careful, we’ll miss too either by our doubt or our faithfulness--is the goodness of the Father. The goodness that allows for our questions and welcomes us home once we come to our senses. And the goodness that kindly and gently reproves us when we think we have been faithful enough to earn his love. In the end, what we must not believe is that the prodigal son was somehow better for his wandering. Or the older son better for his staying.
What we must believe is the goodness of the Father who loved them both.
My Take: Culture Wars, Millenial Angst, and a Dose of Perspective
So when I ran across the following in the preface of John Stott’s Basic Christianity, it sounded eerily familiar.
“‘Hostile to the church, friendly to Jesus Christ.’ These words describe large numbers of people, especially young people, today.
They are opposed to anything which savors of institutionalism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched privileges. And they reject the church—not without some justification—because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by such evils.
Yet what they have rejected is the contemporary church, not Jesus Christ himself. It is precisely because they see a contradiction between the founder of Christianity and the current state of the church he founded that they are so critical and aloof. The person and teaching of Jesus have not lost their appeal, however. For one thing, he was himself an anti-establishment figure, and some of his words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace wherever he went. And for another thing, he invariably practiced what he preached.
But was he true?
An appreciable number of people throughout the world are still brought up in Christian homes in which the truth of Christ and of Christianity is assumed. But when their critical faculties develop and they begin to think for themselves, they find it easier to discard the religion of their childhood than make the effort to investigate its credentials. [emphasis added]
As true (and timeless) as Stott’s observations are about the relationship between young people and the church, what struck me more was the fact that he wrote them first in 1958--the generation of our grandparents—and then reissued them in 1971--the generation of our parents.
Trust me, I’m not dismissing the concerns of millennials, just trying to offer a bit of historical perspective and the caution that maybe we’re not as special as we think we are. Maybe we’re not the first generation to have metaphysical angst and maybe, just maybe, the very people we are fighting against have a bit more perspective than we think they do.
How to Argue Like a Christian
"...there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment... your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Moses, I Corinthians 13, and One Belated Ephiphany
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.
Our pastor shared that this particular description of God, sometimes even the exact phrasing, is one of the most repeated texts in the body of Scripture. It’s found in as disparate places as the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans. As an aside, he challenged us to see how many other places we could find it.
So as he was speaking, the wheels started turning. My brain does that sometimes – just starts moving entirely of it’s own accord and I’ve learned that I pretty much have just hang for the ride until it’s decided it’s found what it’s looking for. (I suppose having admitted this, I should cut my daughter some slack when she responds to me with that same starry-eyed look and says, “I’m sorry Mommy--I just keep getting distracted!”) Anyway, this phrase in Exodus echoed something for me yesterday. I could sense it in the back of my mind… and yes, it was coming… if I pause long enough….. and…. There! I had it.
All those attributes strung side by side--like pearls on a necklace--reminded me of I Corinthians 13.
Now probably like you, I am no stranger to the “Love Chapter” as we call it. But yesterday, for first time in my life, with Exodus 34:6-7 in one hand and I Corinthians 13 in the other, I finally saw it for what it was. For too long I had been reading it simply as a standard to be lived, an expectation of how I should relate to other people; and all along I had been missing that it could only be that because it describes how God already loves us. Of how He loves me. And how He loves you.
So with apologies to the ESV, here’s something of what Moses heard when God passed by:
God is patient and kind;
He does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on His own way; He is not irritable or resentful He does not rejoice at wrongdoing He rejoices with the truth. Your God bears all things. Believes all things, Hopes all things Endures all things. And He never ends.
Not bad for a Sunday morning. Not bad at all.
15 Reasons I Stayed in the Church
And it’s all because I read this post yesterday from Rachel Held Evans. Now, I’m no stranger to Rachel’s blog. And while I can’t claim to be a “fan,” I do find Rachel’s writing witty, engaging, and in a way, courageous. She says things that a lot of people are thinking but won’t say out loud--and I’d venture that’s exactly why so many people follow her faithfully.
And although we’ve never met, I feel a bit of kinship with Rachel. Her story and mine seem to have run parallel courses. We were both raised in conservative Christianity; we both excelled in that context (i.e. we were “good” girls, unafraid to eviscerate anything opposed to the expression of Christianity we knew); we both attended Christian colleges that originated out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s; and we both studied the liberal arts.
But after college, Rachel says that she began questioning her upbringing, and her faith took a decidedly liberal turn. The funny thing is that after college, I started evaluating my faith too. But I ended up nowhere near where she is today. Yesterday Rachel revealed a bit more of her journey in her post Fifteen Reasons Why I Left the Church, and after reading it, I had to stop and reflect, “Why did I end up staying in the church as I knew it?” Because if anybody had a reason to leave, I did.
Imagine the worst case scenario of church politics; add to that having to live on government support because the church won’t pay your husband (the pastor) enough to support you and your three children ("Nobody asked you to have another kid.") Throw in some deputation experience and seeing first-hand how we’re often simply franchising American Christianity via missions. Stir until you reach mental, physical, and spiritual exhaustion, and you’ve pretty much got our story covered.
And yet we stayed. Even more, we subject our children to the weekly routine of church life (despite the fact that my five-year-old pouts every Sunday morning about having to go.) To top it all off, my husband just accepted a position as a senior pastor of a conservative church only a little more than an hour away from an evangelical Mecca.
So why have we stayed unlike so many of our peers? I hope it’s not because we’re co-dependent or that we’re blind to the problems. And I hope it’s not because we haven’t evaluated our position or because we lack critical thinking skills. Actually, to be honest, it’s probably those very things that have kept us in the church. So here’s my list in no particular order:
Fifteen Reasons Why I Stayed in the Church
- I believe that there is no such thing as Church (with a capital “C”) without church (with a lower case “c”)--as messy and as difficult as that may be.
- I want to be the change in the world that I seek. And that means engaging the problems closest to me. Like in the next pew. Like in this pew. Like in my own seat.
- I believe that reconciling nations and people starts at home. If I can’t work toward reconciliation in my own church, there is no way I will be able to accomplish it on a broader level anywhere else.
- I’m not a militant separatist. I don’t believe that everybody has to think EXACTLY the way I do before I will worship with them. Even if they are more conservative than I am.
- I don’t expect the church to be anything other than it is—a group of difficult, broken people plodding their way to glory. The kingdom of God is coming; it isn’t here yet.
- I believe the church is bigger than political parties even if the people attending it don’t understand that. Even if the people who leave it don’t seem to understand that either.
- I believe Jesus can and wants to redeem Pharisees as much as publicans.
- I believe by staying in the church I earn the right to speak about the problems I see. It’s the old adage that you can criticize your family but no one else can. By staying with “my family,” I can speak about our failures and the doubts I wrestle with.
- I believe that 2000 years of church history holds a bit more weight than my personal experience.
- I have brothers and sisters in Christ who have been imprisoned and lost their lives for doing the very thing that I would be giving up.
- I do not want to lose people I love and who love me and my family. And while there are times that conviction must trump relationships, these relationships act as a grid to help me determine whether my convictions are sufficient enough to risk losing these people from my life.
- I need the church to regularly remind me about the things that I don’t like in the Scripture. Things like God’s anger and my sinfulness--things that if left to myself, I would conveniently ignore or rationalize.
- I am not an island. My choice to leave church affects everyone else in the congregation. Remove one part from the whole and it is no longer the same entity.
- I have children. And while I’ll be the first to admit that it’s dangerous to raise your children in a church that distorts the gospel, it’s equally as dangerous to raise them apart from church altogether. One way the gospel is expressed is in the loving covenant relationship that happens in the church – I want that to be part of the warp and weave of their experience. I want them to know that real commitment means taking the good with the bad.
- Jesus hasn’t left the church. No, of course, I don’t mean this in a sanctimonious way. (If I had, I would have put the word sanctimonious in asterisks.) I mean simply that after he threw out the money changers, Jesus continued to worship and sacrifice in the temple. His work is to purify and redeem, not to alienate or destroy.
Don't get me wrong--I understand that many young people are leaving church because they honestly don't think it represents Jesus well. But I wonder if the reality is that they are leaving because the church doesn't represents THEIR view of Jesus well. Like Rachel said, she and her husband "are struggling to find a faith community in which we feel we belong."
But I’m not entirely sure that’s the right goal.
Isn’t that the whole point to realize that the brokenness invades everything – even our churches? Isn’t the whole point to model faithful, loving service to people we don’t like—even in our churches? Isn’t the whole point that Jesus came, not only to establish justice, but to save people from their self-righteousness—even in our churches? Like I said, I get this generation’s frustration and I understand why many of them are leaving the church. I’m just not convinced that frustration equals maturity or that leaving equals courage.
In fact--in this day and age—leaving may be the easy way out.
(Edited: 3/21/12 10:09EST)
Faith for the Good Times
As you can imagine, it’s a high point for us as a family. And it comes with a great job in my husband’s field and a move to a fantastic region that really does offer “all the amenities of city life combined with the tranquility of a mountain arts community.” I’ve also had some unexpected opportunities open up for me personally, and our children are a constant source of laughter, love, and joy. Life is good.
And I’m having a hard time with it.
Something complicated happens when you go through a difficult season like we have for the last several years. In our case, it was an extended period of un- and under-employment, complicated by devastating interpersonal conflicts and private uncertainties. Things were so topsy-turvy at times that we wondered if the world would ever right itself. Thankfully it has and slowly we’re coming out of it. But even as we do, I’m realizing that regaining our bearings isn’t going to be as simple as getting the dream job and finally settling down. It can’t be, because our circumstances weren’t the only things affected in that difficult time. Our souls were too.
I think it’s simply that when you go through hard times, you become so accustomed to being strong, to protecting the ones you love, to being on guard, that it’s easy to see everything as a threat--even the blessing of God. So much so, that when the drought finally ends, when the rains finally come, your soul has become so dry and dusty that the healing water can’t penetrate. Instead, with each drop, with each shower, you find yourself asking, Can I really embrace this from Your hand? Can I really let down my guard and feel again? Can I really trust You?
And you discover that embracing the goodness of God requires as much faith as enduring the time of suffering.
You find that you must actually learn how to bless the Lord as He gives as much as when He takes away; you find that you must learn how to be content in abounding as much as in being abased. And like everything else in this crazy life, you learn that it takes faith. Faith to believe He is good so that you won’t fear His blessings, always waiting for the catch. Faith to believe He is sovereign so you won’t rely on yourself, convinced that you made the rains come. And faith to believe that He loves you, so that you won’t keep protecting yourself, always defensive and aloof.
Ultimately it is faith--that when the blessings finally come—allows you to accept them with an open hand and simply say, “Thank you for this gift! I love it.”
The Ten-Issue Vote
But the highs of youthful experimentation quickly led to the need for bigger and bigger hits, and while many of my friends headed off to Washington to pursue successful careers, I found myself bottoming out and becoming more and more apolitical. Today it’s really hard for me to get excited and invested in the process. Yet ironically--and probably dangerously--I’ve never been more directly affected by the actual outcome. Unlike in my reckless youth, today I’m a member of the workforce, wade through government bureaucracy on a daily basis, and have children who will inherit the choices we make.
Now more than ever, government is not an abstraction. And despite my best efforts at disaffection, it simply won’t go away.
So while I may not be manning the picket lines anymore, I’m realizing that I can’t be neutral. And as easy as it was to be a one-issue voter, I’m realizing I've got to become more. So I’ve decided, it’s time to become a ten-issue voter. As in, “The Ten” --you know--“Commandments.”
Now before you get all squirrelly on me, let me assure you that I’m not a reconstructionist and I really believe that we’ve got to move past using faith as a political talisman. But instead of simply fighting to keep God’s Law hanging on a wall in an Alabama courtroom, I’ve decided to actually start using it.
So this year I’ll be looking for a candidate who honors God in his private life as well as makes room for him in public discourse. I’ll be looking for a candidate who knows how to rest and doesn’t conduct his campaign like he’s the next messiah. I’ll be looking for a candidate who cares for the elderly, respects their wisdom, and doesn’t pander to the youth vote. I’ll be looking for a candidate that values human life and protects it from destruction whether that means opposing abortion or torture. I’ll be looking for a candidate who is committed to a proper understanding of sexuality both publicly and privately. I’ll be looking for a candidate who is honest in his use of public funds and other people’s wealth. I’ll be looking for a candidate who doesn’t spin, twist or manipulate the facts about his own record or his opponents. And finally I’ll be looking for a candidate who doesn’t encourage a culture of materialistic envy whether it’s in the name of Occupy Wall Street or capitalism.
And honestly, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll find one.
So what’s a girl to do--especially one already as disillusioned as I am? Part of me still holds out hope that if we demand better choices, we’ll get them. It’s been amazing to watch the historic ground swells from the Tea Party to the Arab Spring to the backlash against SOPA/PIPA. If there were ever a time for the little guy to be heard, it’s now. And so as we find our voice, we need to use it to hold campaigns, parties, and candidates to a higher standard. It’s our responsibility to do away with business as usual.
Another part of me tries to remember that despite the sound bytes, Teleprompters, and spectacularly coiffed hair, candidates are people too. People with the same sinful bent that I have; people who have made mistakes; people who will continue make mistakes. It’s simply hypocritical to think otherwise. Especially when we’ve created a context that almost necessitates cover-ups by pulverizing public figures when the truth finally comes out. So instead of a perfect candidate, I’ll happily settle for one who takes responsibility for his own failings, humbly seeks forgiveness, but is resolved to pursue a just society even as he plods along on his own feet of clay.
Even then, sorting through the mess of the next ten months isn’t going to be pretty. And often we’ll disagree who best embodies these values. All we can ask of each other is that we allow ourselves to be guided by something greater than our own fears. All we can ask is that as we vote our consciences, we’ll make sure that they are informed by truth. And ultimately, all we can ask of each other is that we won’t be pragmatic, political, one issue voters.
We’re not kingmakers after all--only instruments in the hands of One.
Women’s Ministry 101
an unexpected call to bring dinner over to a frazzled mother of three, invitations to join her family for Sunday lunches, the grace to overlook my children’s lack of manners at said lunches, babysitting for much needed date nights, lunch and shopping on my birthday, and Christmas presents for my family.
It grew, despite a generation's difference, until gradually I felt safe. Safe enough to open my heart, safe enough to reveal my real needs and expose the parts of me that were worried, scared, and hurting. It grew until I was finally able to say to her, “I don’t know how to trust God sometimes;” to admit, “I don’t feel so much content in His will, as resigned to it;” and to ask “How can I pray for the deepest desires of my heart when I don’t have faith that He will give them to me?” And then to be able to read this, several days later:
I have been thinking about what you mentioned about feeling resigned to an outcome we are praying for because of the reality of it and the need involved, etc. And I understand that, and have prayed feeling that at times in the past. I also am seeing how much better it is to pray for our deepest desires with hope and faith. We hold ourselves back, when we see our circumstances, and then pray accordingly. The hard part is, after not seeing change, to continue praying this way. I am at this place too. It is a choice I make daily of how to pray about life altering issues within my family. Sometimes, it seems as if things are continuing a wrong direction that I cannot turn around. But, this is what I see and feel.
We are called to go beyond that...to what we know is true....and the many Scriptures flood our minds here to equip us to pray believing.....and for God's will to be done. And we pray for sustaining grace while we wait, in large portions… I believe we pray for the unimaginable things, so we can know what God's will is. Well I have more thoughts on this, but that’s all for now...will write later.
It was just what I needed to hear and it was just who I needed to hear it from. Not from a book or an internet preacher, but from another woman who had walked the same ground I had, faced the same fears, and could offer me honesty and hope. And here’s perhaps the most surprising part--none of it happened “in church.” None of it was organized or scheduled. There was no notebook, Bible study, or special speaker. I don't even know if she had any intention of "ministering" to me or if she was just loving me the best she knew how.
There’s been a lot of conversation lately about what makes for good women’s ministry. And with my generation so eager for more depth, it'd be hard not to get excited. But if we're not careful, we may end up in exactly the same place that we started. If we're not careful, we'll easily find ourselves replacing one formulaic approach with another. Instead of tea parties, we'll meet at coffee houses, and instead of acrostics and poems, we'll rely on flashy graphics and technology.
All the time forgetting that lasting ministry only happens in relationship.
We must remember that the real work of woman to woman ministry is a lot messier, a lot more personal, and a lot more unscheduled than we’d like it to be. It means taking a moment to care, a moment to listen, a moment to feel deeply the questions and doubts of another woman. It means being honest with your own feelings and admitting that you’ve wrestled with the same thing. And ultimately it means waiting on God and trusting His Providence to build the bridge between two hearts to get to the point where this can happen.
We can schedule all the meetings we like--even those as valuable as a Bible study-- but we can't rely on them to do what only love can.
So maybe, as we move forward, the first step to developing a good women’s ministry for this generation isn't to schedule a meeting at the local coffee house to be transparent with one another; maybe, it's simply inviting another woman into your life and home. Maybe it's doubling a recipe to save some time for a working mom. And maybe it's showing up one day, watching the kids, and doing the laundry so another woman can go grocery shopping without having to use the car-cart.
The Favorite Child
Today is the last day of the first week of school for my daughter. And while it’s been a successful first week, it’s not been without its challenges. Truthfully it’s been an adjustment for all of us. We’d been homeschooling for the last two years and a lot of our family rhythms were built around that. But with changing family dynamics, new opportunities, and a budding social personality, it was clear that, at least for now, it was time for her to head to second grade in a traditional setting.
...and neither are these.
And suddenly, just like my five-year-old in the absence of an older sister to compete with, I was at peace, calm and content. There was no need to fight, there was no need to agitate, and there was no need to try to get my Father’s attention.
I already had it.
I’m sure that as my son matures and begins to understand our love and God’s love for him, there’ll be less and less rivalry with his sister. In turn, he himself will be able to love her more fully. But until then, I’m just going to enjoy these fleeting years and do my best to make sure that each of my children at least thinks he's the favorite.