Saturday, August 27, 2011

welcoming the gray

I remember all too clearly the process that taught me of the gray character of life. Clarity was revealed to be deceptive, answers clouded. In my most self-assured moments the emptiness resounded like so many nails on so many chalkboards. In my carefully constructed world of right and wrong, in my storybook land of heroes and villains, the world could be made right by a heroic act. My failure to achieve a perfect level of heroism left me devastated emotionally and spiritually.

I am still living this process out. I am still learning to live according to gray rather than black and white. And, limited by a human nature that leaves me prone to romanticizing pain and joy alike, I will probably always live with the pain of an unwelcome ambiguity.

This ambiguity is unwelcome because it leaves me unable to place myself and others on a continuum of right to wrong. It renders me powerless, lost in a sea of partial right and wrong. Everything good is tainted by the bad, the right negated by the wrong. In my purest moment my righteousness is hopelessly sinful.

I'm learning to embrace the gray. Never because gray is good, for gray signifies a mixing of black and white; but because gray is the only way I can properly understand myself and my role in creating heartbreak in this world. Accepting my woeful position in the dance of humanity is incredibly painful, not least because the last thing I want is to hurt anyone, and I am now all too aware of the pain my sin causes. Only in embracing the gray in me, however, am I able to fully forgive the gray in those who sin against me. And, indeed, in gray there is black, but there is also white. There is bad, but there is also good.

the way

Maybe one day I'll be strong
confident
fully satisfied in all things

Until that day I'll be here
terrified
fully convinced of nothing

Along the way I'll try to sing
try to stand
fully dependent on the Giver of all good things


Thursday, August 25, 2011

thoughts on Christianity and gender

Quick note - I would very much appreciate comments from either side of this debate. I have not by any means come to any conclusions and need some help in clarification. Also, I am not trying to offend anyone by my ideas which may be a) too conservative, b) too liberal, or c) completely off-base academically or historically. I'm not by any means a biblical scholar or an ancient historian.
I was walking through the religious history section of the library the other day on my way to find a book on religion in Nazi Germany when I stumbled past a whole section of books on first century Christian society as it relates to women. Ironically enough, I have not only been really interested in understanding the culture that Jesus was a part of, but I have also been very interested to figure out how I feel about the issue of women's role in the church and society in general today. So I checked out a couple of the books. I have been reading one called When Women were Priests by Karen Jo Torjesen for the past few days. So far, I highly recommend the book. It is giving me a whole new context in which to not only understand Paul's views on gender/women but also a new context in which to understand many of Jesus' parables.

In my observations of the churches that I have been part of (all of them Evangelical Free, which is a relatively conservative denomination), I have begun to notice something interesting. Society has changed to such an extent in the past 50 or so years, that outside of church government/leadership, I would be hard pressed to observe a significant number (in my opinion definitely not a majority) of conservative Christian women who act out the ideals of the New Testament in regard to gender. Sure, women don't preach in my churches, they don't give communion, and they don't even collect offering. They're not on the elder board. Most are involved in leading Christian education, music (as I am), or women's ministry, but that's about it. (Now that I think about it, teaching Sunday School definitely seems to me to be "speaking in church," which Paul teaches against). Even assuming that my churches (my home church, the church I attended in college, and the church I now attend) are following the NT to the "T" in regard to women's involvement in the church, what are their home lives like?

Most women in modern society -and in the churches I have attended- have jobs. Some even make more than their husbands. I have even known husbands to stay home with the kids so their wife can pursue a career. So there's that. Let's assume 60% (a VERY conservative estimate in my opinion) work outside of the home in some significant way. Even of those who do stay home, what are the dynamics of their marriages like? Now, on this count, I have few solid facts, because I am not a fly in the corner of many houses. But from my observations, it seems as if many women that I know "lead" the family - either spiritually or just in a general sense. Many wives have strong personalities. In many marriages, decisions made are at least a joint effort. The husband doesn't hold all the cards anymore.

That is where I am coming from in questioning what a God-honoring approach to women's involvement in church and society is. I have read all the key passages about women and men and their relationship to one another and God so many times, looking for some loophole, some way to rationalize or excuse the behavior I see around me and in myself. Why am I at school, pursuing a post-baccalaureate degree if my place is in the kitchen or with the kids, in submission to my husband's lead in all areas of my life? Why am I not spending my time babysitting or nannying in preparation for God's plan for me, and full-heartedly seeking out marriage? What am I thinking?

I've heard the "culture" argument before. According to this line of reasoning, Paul was actually radical for his day. In acknowledging women in his letters, he was being very egalitarian for his day.

So, when I walked by the whole section of books on the culture of the early church as it pertains to women just waiting for me to pick them up and read them, I knew what I needed to do.

I didn't quite know what to expect though. After all, I attend a "secular university" full of "liberals." Who knows what books they choose to fill their library with.

The first chapter found me pleasantly surprised. Torjesen approached early Christianity (and it seems Christianity in general) from a very sympathetic and seemingly orthodox perspective. At the least, she knows and uses the "language of Christianity" flawlessly. Many scholarly works on religion betray the author's lack of personal religiosity in their failure to accurately employ Christian vocabulary and concepts. Although Torjesen draws from a variety of early Christian sources - not only the New Testament, but also extra-canonical works such as the Gospel of Mary - I believe this makes her work fuller and able to stand up under academic criticism.

Torjesen argues that through the early centuries of Christianity, women occupied important places of leadership at all levels of the church. During this time, churches were found primarily in houses. When Christianity moved from a house church movement to a state religion, this all changed. Women were marginalized, and scholars worked to "erase" as much as possible women leaders from the historical record. Although women leaders in the church never occupied an unchallenged position, as is clearly evident from Paul's ambivalence in his treatment of the issue, they were not barred from leading churches until the rise of institutional Christianity.

Also important to understand is Roman ideals of men and women's place in society. After all, ancient Rome was far from egalitarian. So how were women able to be leaders? The secret lies in the separation of men's and women's spheres. Men were ideally supposed to occupy the public sphere, while women were relegated to the private. The line was (ideally speaking) supposed to be hard. Men found their most full realization if they stayed in public - in government, in politics in finances. Women, as heads of the household, were able to exercise fair amounts of power, as long as they stayed within the household and its workings. Men, in fact, were able to stay outside the house because the women took care of things there. Because of women's heavy involvement in the private sphere, they were often able to accrue significant power and resources, even becoming patrons with second-hand pull in the public sphere.

So it makes perfect sense in the context of a house church movement that women were leaders. The fact that this power often bled into a more public realm, though caused their position to be constantly challenged.

For a woman to be involved in leading a house church was fine as long as she was involved in the "household" aspects of it. When she began to speak, though this too closely resembled involvement in a more public aspect of the church. Could it be this was why Paul warned against women speaking? Was he was trying to reassure society at large that Christianity was not about upsetting society? I'm not sure how I feel about that theory - the confused Paul theory. Although I have no doubt that Paul was human and was not perfect, the fact that he wrote what he did and that it became recognized as canonical makes it a tricky prospect indeed for me to assume that Paul was okaying something about society that he may not have actually at the core believed.

I think that's the biggest problem I have with this whole quest I am on. If it turns out that what Paul wrote was entirely a product of his culture (not only in the sense that he wrote things that we could only fully understand if we lived there but also that he had presuppositions and prejudices that my society rejects as immoral (namely sexism)), then what does that say about the nature of the inspiration of Scripture?

And so my foray into a relatively safe question of a Christ-honoring perspective on gender leads me to a less safe question. Namely, assuming modern, "egalitarian society" has it right, what was Paul thinking? And how can we claim every word to be inspired if we pick and choose what was "cultural" and what wasn't?

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

embracing the emotion

I love giddy. I love love love it.

And, I live by myself and it's 1:29 in the morning leaving me without an outlet for this giddyness. So the blogging world can absorb some of my excess joy. :)

Thank you, God, for emotion, and for the way that even in its darker times, it reminds me that I'm alive.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Today has been such an emotional day...and "all I did" was wake up and go to work for 6 hours and then come home.

Maybe it stems back to last night/early this morning. I recently stumbled upon a blog that puts much more eloquently and much less confusedly many of the things I have been thinking lately. As I thought today, I came to the conclusion that many of the things this woman writes are representative of the "devil" on my shoulder - things that I am forced to consider just by way of living in this world, and things of which I am terrified. It is as if she has already walked the path I am currently on and that she followed it to the conclusion at which I am terrified of arriving.

And I feel compelled to walk this path. Intellectual, academic, and spiritual responsibility requires it of me. I'm terrified, yes. However, I come to this path from a much more grounded perspective than I came four years ago when I almost lost the faith of my youth, for:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

blah blah blah

Have you ever just felt blah? That's how I feel right now. My life is moving past me in a never ending stream of mundane. I go for days without having meaningful interaction with other humans (besides work). I'm not unhappy. Just blah. Rather emotionless. Nothing's really happening in my life, and it is a somewhat meaningless existence.

I think I'd be okay if that changed. I hope life isn't always like this, a never-ending mundane. I understand why people don't like living life alone... I sometimes surprise myself with my proclivity to it. And yet, it still sucks. No matter how good life is, it remains meaningless as long as it continues like this.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

My life is such a mix of content and restless; happy and lonely, satisfied and longing. Sometimes it's so much of both that I don't even know how to begin to describe how I'm doing.

Right now I sit on the third floor of Haggard Hall at 5:21 am watching the dawn descend on the city. The very fact that I'm on a college campus at 5 in the morning holds so many mixed emotions for me.

This is the path I chose. I came here to study, and I knew I'd only be here for two short years. And yet it's hard. I'm an introvert, and much of the time I don't mind my solitary existence. But all too often I am reminded of how very alone I am. It bothers me. Partly because I don't know if there's anything I could do (short of fundamentally changing who I am) to change this. Partly because on another level I chose this solitary path.

Singlehood has chosen me, and I have chosen it. It appears we're meant for each other at least for the forseeable future. While I'm more at peace with this fact than I have ever been, that does not mean that I'm entirely at peace with it. Basically, it's just really hard to be so alone all the time. It's hard to go from college, where I was surrounded by my best friends, to home, where I was surrounded by my family, to here, where I'm entirely alone.

Thanks for listening. :)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

i promise i'm not an apostate..but....

Tonight I decided to check out Boundless, Focus on the Family's website for twenty-something singles.

One podcast topic in particular caught my eye: is it okay to have an opposite gender roommate if it's a platonic thing to pay the bills?

First off, I would like to say that I definitely see the wisdom in a Christian staying away from this type of situation if possible. Secondly, I do not have plans to do something like this myself.

However...I was very offended by Focus' approach to this question. First, the person they were interviewing immediately assumed the right answer: before even touching the question, she answered it and jumped into the aftermath: how should someone confront a friend who is living in sin in such a way? Afterwards, she did give biblical justification to her stance: 1 Thessalonians 5:22, which is the "avoid every appearance of evil" verse. Problem is...if you do a little research on google (aka type in "avoid every appearance of evil") you will quickly find that this is only in the KJV and that there is question about the validity of that translation. Most versions say something along the lines of "avoid every kind of evil." There's a difference there. One is used as justification for outlawing everything that some other more conservative Christian might find offensive. The other says to avoid evil. Plain and simple. If it's evil, avoid it.

Of course, there is Romans 14, which is the "don't eat meat if it's going to cause your brother or sister to stumble" passage. This is a much better passage to back up Focus' claim. Unfortunately, this passage was not mentioned in their podcast.

I honestly believe Focus means well, and I believe they are right on many (definitely not all) things. But they annoy the crap out of me. I can't even listen to or read any of their stuff anymore without getting really annoyed.

When I went to college, I was taught a new way of looking at the world, a new way of approaching life. I began to question what I believed. By the grace of God, I emerged on the other side still a believer. However, not every college student has the same story as me. Many fall away from the church. Young people are falling away from the church at unprecedented rates...and I believe that the way that Focus approaches issues is not helping matters (I definitely wouldn't go so far as to blame them).

I don't want rhetoric. I don't want someone to quote one verse out of context, in one translation, and use it as the basis of their argument, especially when that translation happens to be questionable. Even though I think that Focus had a good point that living with an opposite gender roommate could be unwise, they failed to responsibly back up their claim. Not only that, but they immediately jumped on the "it's a sin and how should we confront the sinner?" wagon. Never mind that the girl "living in sin" may not have been sinning at all, because that was never even an option. Maybe they're right, and maybe it is sin. If so, offer a valid logical and Scriptural argument for that. Start at the beginning, so that listening Christians can be given a responsible and not-only-rhetorical basis for their system of morals.

I shudder that Focus on the Family is such a huge representative of American evangelical Christianity. Not because I think that they're not faithful to the Bible, but because I wonder if they will be able to make any real ideological difference in this generation as long as they continue to present every complex moral issue as an open and shut here's-an-out-of-context-verse-to-back-up-my-view case.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

my calling as a Christ-follower

Fragments of life and thought that converge one day onto an epiphany:

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I have struggled for a while now with the role of emotion in faith. How much should I allow emotion to define my "experience" of God? How exactly does the Holy Spirit move, and do Christians ever attribute to the Holy Spirit what was really just some overcharged emotions?

~
Street evangelism is not my thing, and being "witnessed" to by Mormons on the streets around campus has proved to me how annoying I find the whole concept. On the one hand, I want to share Christ with the world. That is my calling and it should consume my life. But I spent some time as a summer camp counselor, and led one girl through the sinner's prayer. That experience was so bittersweet for me. While it was nice to be able to report a "salvation" to the camp authorities, and while I hoped that the girl was sincere, it just seemed so surfacey to me. Even if she really meant it, she was only 10 years old, and it was all so new to her, and who was to say she wasn't just trying to make me happy? Did she really understand what had happened? Was it really real? Of course, I can't answer those questions - I can't judge her heart. But I have never forgotten that experience, and more importantly I have never forgotten how un-thrilled I was about the whole thing.

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Is faith about works? Or is it about belief? How do the two work together in practice? Does belief necessarily result in works? If so, what are those "works?" If not, what is left of Christianity?

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Can I really trust that Protestantism has it all right?


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I was at bible study last week, and we read the parable of the four soils, and for the first time for myself personally, I was convicted by the parable. I read it differently this time - I read it as directed at me. I allowed myself to question whether or not I am the healthy soil that bears fruit, and beyond that, I realized some things.

I don't think I can ascribe to a Christianity whose emphasis is entirely on conversion to a creed. I don't believe that one becomes a Christian entirely on the basis of a prayer. Christianity is about death to oneself. While I would never claim salvation to be attainable on the basis of works, because everything we do is filthy with sin, I do think that evangelical Christianity places too much emphasis on the prayer, and on the creed.

Because here's the thing. I believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, was without sin, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day, and then ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of the Father making atonement for the sins of the world.

There's a problem, though.

If my life's "works" do not reflect my belief, then do I really believe this in any meaningful way? Putting my bet on Christianity is a lot different than truly believing it in a life-altering way. Here's the thing. What is belief anyway? Something I ascribe to? Something I can recite, something that I have been taught? Or does my belief fundamentally affect my worldview? Sometimes I don't know what I truly, at my core, believe. Because so often my deeds do not match the creed that I ascribe to. If I truly believed all those things in the apostles' creed, would my life not be radically sold out? Would not all the things of the world fade away? Would not I be bold?

Even assuming I do truly, at my core, 100% believe the things I have been taught about Christianity - assuming I do nothing about it...is that belief at all meaningful?

My Christianity disturbs me. It disturbs me because it's this creed that I ascribe to - this crazy, radical creed about a guy who is God and man. About a guy who never sinned, about a guy who was crucified and died for me. And then rose again. After three days! Not 24 minutes in heaven until God kicked him back down to earth. No...three whole days. So I ascribe to this creed. I claim it as my own. I would defend it in a debate - I may even tell a friend about it if they ask.

And yet, my life is so much the same as the people around me who are not saved. I live a comfortable life in middle class America. I go to school to fill my mind with somewhat moot knowledge about a fascist regime that existed 70 years ago on the other side of the world.

Christ calls me to follow Him. What does that mean? I know it means death to myself. I know it means that I will be hated if I follow. I know it means sacrifice and pain. I know it means carrying a cross.

I often say that this year in Washington has been the best year of my life...

How is that possible? On what basis has it been good? In some "joy in any circumstances" sort of way? NO! I've been spoiled rotten here by life. I have forgotten my passion to share Christ with those around me. I have settled into life and I struggle to hold onto a creed that I barely make any effort to live out. I hem and haw about whether or not my entire belief system is a lie...I doubt, I cry, I wonder why God is so silent. My entire life revolves around me.

This disgusts me.

Forget grace...for just one moment I want to wallow in my sin. I want to recognize just how horrible it is. I don't want to jump to the fact that God somehow forgives me...because that does not condone my continued disregarding of His call on my life. His call to come and die. Sure...I prayed the prayer all those years ago. I was even baptized. I continue to hold to the creed...

Where has that all gotten me?

God, teach me to follow You. Show me the way of the cross.