Tag Archives: love

That “other” person is someone I love!

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I have traveled in the same circles with Ron Sider since I was in my twenties – actually ran into him on my son’s street a few weeks ago. I was profoundly influenced by Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. I am a fan.

I say all that so my small criticism of what he recently said in Christianity Today is not taken as a slam. His article: Tragedy, Tradition, and Opportunity in the Homosexuality Debate: We need a better approach to the traditional biblical ethic on sexuality in the November 18 CT was passed around by some of my acquaintances and friends in the BIC, which made me wonder what it was all about. So I read it.

A progressive evangelical “gay” policy

Here’s the gist: 1) He wants evangelicals to admit their track record on relating to: “gays” is tragic. 2) He makes a more-generous-than-usual argument about Biblical tradition that ends with the conclusion that everyone who is not in a lifelong heterosexual marriage should be celibate. 3) He ends with seeing the present argument as an opportunity: a) to do what it takes to nurture marriage, b) to listen to “gay people” c) To be nice: “Surely, we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to teach and nurture biblical sexual practice without ignoring, marginalizing, and driving away from Christ those who struggle with biblical norms.”

His thoughts seem revolutionary to some people. For instance, someone wrote in to voice their struggle with Ron’s assumption that gay people could be saved (!). Ron knows CT’s audience, so I appreciate his boldness. I saw that the moderator of our denomination and a bishop posted the article on Facebook. So he got some affirmation. One commenter said that he appreciated how a person of authority stated something that he had thought for a long time.

I’m only cousins with Evangelicals

LGBTQ debate?
Is there an epidemic of early debate training?

This is the one thing I offered on FB: “I don’t think I have ever been part of the ‘we’ Ron is talking about. I’ve certainly been listening to so-called gay people for my whole adult life. Just to be clear ‘gay’ people have been ‘us’ while ‘we’ have been dithering about ‘them.’”

Someone wrote in response to my thoughts: “clear?”

I guess my problem is not clear. So here I am writing about it.

For one thing, I have never been an evangelical. I officially left that fold (to the extent I was in it) when I became consciously part of the Brethren in Christ (that’s now another whole story, of course). I am fond of evangelicals, and I have ridden on their bus at times. I just wanted to miss all the excess Ron calls tragic. I am still getting tagged with the tragedy, but I tried to miss it. So when Ron says “we” need a better approach, I want to note that I did not adopt the former bad approach along with millions of other Christians.

For another thing, so-called “gay” people have been part of my life and part of the church for as long as I have been a part. The tone of the article sounds like “they” just got discovered and people should stop being reluctant to accept their existence! My views have developed along with the whole movement in the last 30 years, but my friendships with LGBTQ people have always been just that: friendships. They have been part of my “we.” When I think of the people Ron is talking about I think of faces, not some mysterious “other.” Christians belong to a transnational, transhistorical, transcultural body in the Spirit; only people who renounce Jesus could be considered truly “other,” I think – and we are called to love even them! So-called “gay” and so-called “straight” are called to the same allegiance and the same application of it.

We have tried to stay out of polarizing debates about sexuality during the life of Circle of Hope. But even we got blamed for the “tragic” behavior of evangelicals in the local gossip column! We ended up making our statement and trying to repair the divisions the “us” vs. “them” competition for the dominant, legalized thinking of the day caused in our community. I think we were pretty successful. But I suppose I am still sensitive about getting dragged into some loveless debate about some “thing,” when the “thing” happens to be someone I love.

An old story: loving our neighbor on Tenth St.

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When we first got started as Circle of Hope at Tenth and Locust I was determined to stay under the radar of the Philadelphia authorities until we were established. I did not expect them to understand us, much less love us, and I have been generally right about them.

The authorities

So I was pretty horrified when I showed up late for a concert one night and about six police cars were flashing outside our door! So much for staying under the radar. I think it got too hot in the mosh pit so they opened up all the windows and welcomed the neighbors to enjoy the music. One of the higher up, white-shirt policemen was about ready to go upstairs so I asked him what was going on.

He said, “Who are you?”

I said, “I’m the pastor and this is our church.”

He took a brief look at the building and at me and said, “Like hell you’re a pastor.”

I had to take him upstairs to my office and show him my array of Bibles to convince him that we were, indeed, some distant version of the species called church.

The neighbor

What I did not know then was that we had an irascible neighbor who knew this police officer in the white shirt from way back when they were kids in Kensington. The old man had lived for many years on the third floor next door to an empty space. Our beloved realtor talked a client into renting this empty space to us. We had punk concerts that, admittedly, made about a thousand times more noise than the neighbor had ever experienced. He did not like worship either. It vibrated the paintings on his wall.

Our neighbor called the police every Sunday. I got in the habit of waiting for the officers on the stairs. I invited them to join us.

We finally discovered somehow that we had this enemy next door with nothing to do but torment us. What we did not know then was that his health was deteriorating and he was often alone in his apartment feeling lonely, sick and scared.

The court

We ended up prosecuted in the Court of Common Pleas and convicted by an aggressive assistant D.A. who told the judge she needed to “put the hammer down” on the church or we would never comply. We had a potential fine of $5000 for future infractions of the sound ordinance. We built a sound barrier wall. The city’s sound people came out with their equipment during worship to measure whether the wall solved the problem. They said it did. To be honest, the testers told me they thought our whole situation was dumb. You could sneeze loudly and violate the sound ordinance — besides, it was designed for convertibles with loud radios on South St., not churches. I’m not sure we could have failed with these guys running the test, but we passed.

Back to the neighbor

It has been so long ago now, that someone may have to fill in the details. I remember not long after sitting in court I was sitting in the neighbor’s living room hearing about his back condition and his military service. Then I climbed out his kitchen window onto his roof to fix a drainage problem.

I remember telling people it was rare to get a bonafide enemy to love. People started to take him food periodically and others made a better relationship than I did. I never heard about him pouring hot water out of his window onto people on the sidewalk again. He never poured glue in our locks again. We started missing the weirdness of having the police show up for worship.

Last week during the PM Gwen did a fine job of personalizing the gospel to a man who was a bit drunk and letting his anger get the best of him during talk back. Some elementary kids squeezed in closer to their mothers when he shouted threatening things. Maybe we won’t see a couple of the newcomers again. But someone came up to me afterwards and said, “It was just like the old days!” I hope they meant that we had a good chance to love our enemies, not just talk about how we ought to.

My revelation from the past week

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I was encouraged by Michiko’s bold, vulnerable, faithful writing. So I asked her to appear as a “guest writer” on my blog this week. Here is her revelation:

It’s easy to look at the world right now and think that maybe there is no God.

On a personal level, as I’ve watched my son descend into addiction, I’ve at times wondered what God was doing.  Where was Jesus – when was he going to wake up and talk to him and bring him out of the hell he, and I were in?

Now that he’s going to NA regularly, I’ve started going with him.

Yesterday I was witness to the kind of love that I only see at Circle.  One young woman freely admitted her brokenness.  She was in full relapse, of food disorder, substance abuse disorder, and starting on the self-harm scale.  She also said she was apathetic.  She didn’t care.

One by one, the group acted as one.  It was one huge encouragement through many voices — One saying “You’ve done great to be here.” Another saying, “Push through; you’ll be OK.” Another saying, “We love you and are here for you.”

Continue reading My revelation from the past week →

It’s a new creation, vato.

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I think the feeling was probably in the room last night when we were together for worship. But I could not see it too well. There were not a lot of fist pumps with

“Yes! I feel that sting. I know I have been poisoned. But Death, you have no power over me!”

Lent kind of teases out that kind of reaction, but it can be a long tease for some of us. It might take even longer for people to start dancing around the room shouting,

“Yes! I feel oppressed! I understand how the law has been keeping me down. But Jesus, you have freed me!”

But it is all there in the Bible; Jesus-lovers trying to woo people into newness:

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:56).

I think it might be easier to feel guilty for sin and just keep trying to fulfill the latest or oldest law. Being controlled so often feels like we are in control.

So out of control

his rules are being challenged
his rules are being challenged

One of the reasons I try to emulate the Apostle Paul is that he is so out of control when it comes to the usual domination systems and he is so moved by the Holy Spirit. Thus, I am getting a lot from this little video parable full of seekers, vato.

Even when Paul is abused, shipwrecked or in prison, he doesn’t forget that Jesus just recreated him and his eternal destiny is just around the corner from the latest mess. The diaper, the deadline, the demand, or the disaster do not derail his delight. He does not create a law so he never has to experience trouble; he lives by a law that turns trouble into life. His wonderful insight results in some great teaching that has been an antidote to the poison of sin and an alternative to the graceless oppression of law for centuries.

Even marriage is upended

The other day we were looking into one striking example of just how exceptional it is to follow Jesus when we explored Paul’s teaching about marriage. If you have read 1 Corinthians a few times, you’ve probably noticed that Paul places his famous “love chapter” in the middle of his teaching about how the Holy Spirit builds the Lord’s followers into the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12-14). He does not place it after his chapter on marriage (1 Corinthians 7). By pointing this out, I am not trying to insult everyone who has had the beautiful “love chapter” read at their wedding. But I am pointing out that if you think Paul wrote it because he thought your marriage was the epitome of love, you are wrong.

Paul fully respects marriage as part of the order built into creation. But what he really wants us to know is that Jesus has inaugurated a new creation that is restoring our poisoned hearts and unlocking the manacles of our control systems. You’d think there would be regular dancing and shouting about this. But the poison is really deep and the law is so attractive to us. When Paul talks to the church in Galatia about their temptation to follow the Jewish law he says, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” and “what counts is the new creation” (Galatians 5:6, 6:15). I keep trying to make this fundamental understanding basic to how I see myself and relate to others: “From now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17).

the unmastered dead
the unmastered dancing dead

Paul teaches out of this radically new vision of the world when he writes to the Corinthians about love. He has some very practical teaching on marriage in chapter seven, but I think it can be summed up as: “Marriage is good, but don’t let it get in the way of your life in the kingdom of God.” The epitome of love is not getting married, it is when Spirit-filled people form the body of Christ and live as a new creation. Some of the Corinthians really go with this new grace in which we live. Paul has to oppose one faction in the church whose slogan appears to be “I have the right to do anything.” Paul adds, “but not everything is beneficial and I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Some things are built into creation and it is arrogant to think we can improve on God’s basic design. Other things are built into society and even if we know they are not that important, we still respect them so other people will respect us. You can’t really make a law about everything, you need to be filled with the Spirit of God and be one in love.

The Jesus way

An approach like Paul’s requires a great deal of love and commitment. It is a lot easier to be at a level where you are just negotiating with sin all the time or you are dealing with life by making a law. Paul wants a life where love makes a difference and law no long masters him. Lots of Jesus-followers think the love chapter is pretty; Paul thinks it is animating. Many people skip the messiness of relating to God and others and make connections based on mutual denial or politics but Paul is led by Jesus right into all the  relating,  sorting, struggling and time it takes to be the body of Christ! It is a lot easier to be on this side or that, conform to the laws of one’s side and skip the struggle of the third way that guides our steps though the pressures of the binary world in which we live.

The third way was definitely being followed in the room last night. It is true that some people were still considering whether they thought it was “sin” or just themselves that entangled them. Some people were struggling whether it was just another “law” or it was irrefutable truth that dominated them. Lent kind of teases out those kinds of thoughts. But I think most of us were moving toward the love of Jesus and almost ready to dance. Death comes at us and we apply all the laws we know to stop it. It never works, vato. But sometimes we discover some amazing things in the process, even dancing beyond death.

The both/and of our ongoing dialogue of love

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Someone is always sinning; someone is always doing something you did not like; someone is always failing. How do we respond to that?

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.  Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.  If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.  Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,  for each one should carry their own load (Galatians 6:1-5).

We use this section of Galatians so often, it has become the “both/and” proverb. It answers the questions that come up whenever there is a dialogue about something that is wrong in the body: Do we have to put up with every bad thing someone is doing until they get better, or do we need to put a stop to their nonsense before everyone gets hurt? Do we accept people where they are at, or do we demand that they live up to the gospel? The answer is “both/and.”

Can one be too empathetic?

baby in basketSome people are so empathetic that they defend the sinner even before they have repented! They understand the person’s problems so well and care about them so much that they are offended if anyone points out what they did wrong. Even more, sensitive people know that everyone is afraid of being criticized, so they don’t want more trouble being thrown on already-overburdened people who are just trying to have a life, for once. The “sinner” might just quit doing anything if they are asked to improve right after they just got brave enough to appear in public. So even if someone tries to “restore that person gently” the empathetic are afraid they could be mortally wounded in the process.

For instance, some people have been talking about the Audio Arts Team’s latest gift to the church. It is a brave thing to put out a piece of art that can’t be edited any more. But they did it and a lot of people love it. But like everything and everyone else, there are some “sins” lurking in that CD. If someone has a reaction to it that seems critical, someone else may automatically feel wounded and jump to the defense of the victimized artists. Rather than doing that, you’d think we would just instinctively “carry each other’s burdens,” since we’re all flawed — and if we caused trouble by being creative, bold and artful, then we’d really need help! Instead, some people try to solve the problem by insisting that there are no problems! — and they imply that people who love people don’t make people feel bad by saying they have a problem.

Can one be too careful?

man and bearOn the other hand, some people think that empathy has gone too far and everyone needs to carry their own load and bear responsibility for what they say and do. They assume people are more likely to take advantage of loose situations rather than repent or even listen to reason. So they are not expecting good will to rise up if people are left alone.  As a result, they are often rather offended by the latest dumb thing someone did that went unquestioned or even got defended. They become very reactive because they can’t get their shell hard enough to repel the sin that keeps getting poured on them. If they say something about it, they are instantly seen as a mean person. So they walk around feeling unaccepted. No one seems to be held liable for carrying their own load, so the responsible people feel even more burdened!

For instance, the pastors and other speakers and the PM Design Teams are often the recipients of this group’s scrutiny, since they have a tendency to do something wrong every week. Compared to what should happen, something is always not happening. If one is intelligent, the problem with what gets done wrong (or not at all) just gets worse. It seems like every flaw could have been prevented and nothing ever gets better! One would think we would all “carry our own load,” especially if we accepted a role that is very influential in the church.  Instead, leaders, especially, make people have a fight with us about what we are doing or neglecting. Who wants to do that?

Polarized dialogue is an oxymoron

In the postmodern atmosphere these poles are often dividing up a dialogue. There is usually a group at one extreme that wants us all to bear one another’s burdens. If there is insensitivity, that is the main sin — Love means you never have to say you are sorry. Then there is another whole group at the other extreme that wants each person to bear their own load. If there is irresponsibility, that is the main sin — Love means everyone has to say they are sorry. In the adversarial way our culture has designed everything to work, those two positions could be vying to make policy until Jesus returns. It could be the survival of the loudest; MSNBC vs. Fox forever.

We keep thinking that Paul assumes an obvious both/and in the matter of loving sinners like Jesus loves each of us. In the course of a few lines he wrote: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ…for each one should carry their own load.” We all bear one another’s burdens and each of us carries our own load at the same time.

  • In the name of sensitivity, one would not erase someone’s sin — because they are carrying that burden and need to be restored!
  • At the same time, in the name of responsibility one would not be insensitive and make it harder to repent — because we are in this together.

If someone is restored, we are all healthier. For restoration to proceed, both elements: carrying another’s burden and carrying one’s own load, need to be in every dialogue of love. Both elements need to be expressed by a heart filled with the law of love. The body of Christ is not supposed to work like a therapy room or a courtroom; we are the place where Jesus lives. There must be acceptance and judgment at the same time, but mostly there must be the Holy Spirit restoring humanity.

Cut off and screwed over — learning reconciliation and communication

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I’m kind of enjoying the geekiness (no offence) of Pentatonix these days. So let’s start out with them. They do a cover of Gotye’s big song of 2012: Somebody That I Used to Know:

Apart from telling a good story, Gotye and Kimbra summarize in song what so many people experience every day: being cut off and screwed over. Those are common ways NOT to relate. But a lot of people have experienced so much abuse and have had so little opportunity to recover, that they don’t know how to relate another way. They’d like to love, but they are always getting cut off and screwed over. Let’s talk about that.

In the song, Gotye’s character sings about how she “cut him off.” That’s a common experience in relationships that is worth noting. We could talk about how someone refused sex or did some emasculating thing (another time, maybe). But I want to talk about how people try to disappear their intimates to manage their fears. [More here]

When Kimbra’s character comes into the song, she’s talking about something just as relevant: how she feels screwed over. She is so glad she got free of his unprocessed manipulation! And she doesn’t mind telling him so. Maybe you’ve been there.

The song demonstrates two relationship traits common to people when they are not safe in Jesus and are not aware of the frailties they need to have healed. These two common traits are sinful ways we kill love.

Getting cut off happens. 

It feels terrible. Gotye paints a vivid picture of it.

  • Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
  • But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
  • Have your friends collect your records and then change your number

That last line hints that he may have caused the cut-off himself, since who sends their friends to get their stuff or who changes their number unless there is some kind of weirdness going on? Were there constant texts? I heard about that a few times lately. Friends did have to send their buddies to retrieve their stuff because the ex might go off.

This movie actually exists

I have a friend who has perfected the cut-off. She says it – you do me wrong I cut you off, you’re dead to me. Most of us would not say that; we’d just do it [even legally with restraining orders]. When we are threatened, we disappear people. We make them nothing. So a lot of us feel cut off. You might feel like a relationship is bleeding right now and you are emotionally wounded.

I am not going to do a big Bible study to respond to all this. I think it is enough to say that our preoccupation with Matthew 18 around our church is important because people have been cut-off and have cut people off. Cutting someone off is the common sinful way to deal with “problem” people and with our own troubled feelings. We cut the feelings and the people off. In an abusive and abused, violent society the laws are all about protecting victims (who are numerous). So the society even teaches us to cut-off.

That’s the problem Gotye’s character has in this song. What he did not do is presume that he was in a relationship in which all the parties are sinners, including himself, and that reconciliation was going to be a constant necessity. He actually says in the song that they discovered that they did not make sense, as if that’s how relationships work – like they are supposed to magically make sense, or the interaction is supposed to be so effortless that they never don’t make sense.  That’s very unlikely.

Christians relate with reconciliation in mind. They know they need to be listening for God to make sense of things. They know that their loved one needs to be loved, not to make sense according to some tiny idea we have of what makes sense. I know so many people, including myself, who have spent entire evenings arguing about how their interpretation of what happened an hour ago makes more sense than their mate’s interpretation! Reconciliation is more important than everything making sense.

Getting screwed over also happens.

It is a terrible feeling and Kimbra paints a vivid picture of it.

  • You “had me believing it was always something that I’d done.”
  • You did not talk, so I was “Reading into every word you say.”
  • When we broke up “You said that you could let it go”

That last line has a lot packed into it (which is one of the things that makes this a good song, isn’t it?). Between the lines she is saying, “Now we are broken up and you are still obsessed and angry. That points out how you had been simmering with anger the whole time we were together. I was trying to make that work for you. So I basically screwed myself in your honor. And that makes me angry!”

screw in chipotleSorry to keep using the word “screwed.” But this song is basically about sex. They don’t really get to intimacy. Being used for sex is part of the woman’s pain, I think. “Having sex” in our language right now is not necessarily a term of endearment. “Fuck” is one of the meanest things people say. We “get screwed over” a lot. Sex is often a violation and we are mad about it. A lot of people talk about sex as if they need their rights protected, like they are so shallow that intimacy can be regulated by state law or something – or maybe they feel so hurt they think there ought to be a law.

Kimbra could have helped herself if she had just had one small rule of communication: “Don’t read between the lines.” Clear communication includes the recognition that the other person hasn’t actually said something until they have said it. If you think their body language means something, ask them if it means what you think it means. Don’t react as if you know what they have not articulated. Conversely, communication happens when a person has responded to what you say in such a way that they confirm they heard what you said. Just providing a lot of information and expecting people to find it is not enough. We’re tempted to treat each other like we are websites – “I already laid out all the info, search it.  I don’t need to talk to you because I posted it on my timeline. It’s on my blog.”

There is actually a little incident in John 14 where Jesus has to negotiate this process of communication with one of his intimates. Philip says, “Just show me the father. “ And Jesus is a little exasperated. He says, “Haven’t you heard the words of the father in me? Haven’t you seen the miracles?” I suppose Jesus could have cut Philip off at that point. Or he could have remembered Philip’s cluelessness as an example of all the ways his disciples had screwed him over. Instead, Jesus humbly communicates it again, as clearly as he can. Philip is not required to “read between the lines:” “It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” The Lord humbly, clearly communicates.

Christians know that truth and love are hard to communicate because they know how hard it is for them to receive the truth and love of God, who is the source of truth and love! So we are patient with our intimates, and with everyone else. We know we are hard to understand; we know the other person is hard to understand — they don’t even understand themselves! Why get all hacked off when they behave as confused and as detached as they are! Help them! Listen to them! Speak clearly and in love!

There is hope

kimbra unpaintedMy favorite part of the video is at the end, when Kimbra stands apart and loses the paint of this unloving relationship. She kind of returns to the state of being naked and unashamed like Adam and Eve were before sin messed them up and they got separated from God and each other. She gets out of the damaging matrix. Now that they aren’t locked in some sinful way to relate, maybe something better can happen. Hopefully, they both learn to practice reconciliation, not just self-defense. Hopefully, they learn to communicate, not just react in some pre-verbal way.

I don’t think Gotye intended for me to get any hope at all out of his sad song. But I am way Christian. I really wanted that woman’s unpainted self to get out of that messy video, so I took it that way.  Why not? Jesus is doing the best God can do to call us out of the condemned and condemning ways we relate and into real love. If we let him be present and don’t suck up some bogus narrative, if we don’t cut him off, if we let him communicate, we have a good chance of being restored to love ourselves and even having great intimacy — and great sex.

Related articles

Let’s look at this cohabitation thing again — You’re married, right?

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I heard a common story from a new friend last night. As far as she knew about church people, “living together” was so frowned upon that she and her boyfriend suspected they would be ostracized if they got involved in Circle of Hope.

I said to her, “You guys are married, though, right?” She said, “Yes.” (This is not a transcript of our conversation, but that was the gist).  What stood in the way of the official ceremony was money. They did not have wealthy or supportive parents; they did not have the money for a big party, money for the ring, the dress, etc.; plus, she wanted to feel more established financially before they made a commitment. This story is so common it seems to represent a new rite of passage into adulthood.

Care about people where they are

The “principle Christians” sometimes criticize Circle of Hope, as a whole, for our acceptance of people who are “cohabiting,” like my friend is. The implication is that we should consider these people taboo until they get themselves corrected. Instead, we apparently just let people have sex, willy nilly, and encourage people to sin. (Really, that’s gotten back through the gossip chain).

But, in truth, we’ve come up with an alternative. We care about people the way we meet them. So we usually get to know people who are cohabiting and ask them if they are married. Most of the time, if they aren’t just sharing an address, they say “Yes.”

I think people need to make a public covenant and have the benefit of a church-sanctioned marriage for any number of reasons. I’m not sure they need the government involved in their marriage at all – if they see that as an advantage, fine. But if they have taken one another home, and we all know they are a “they,” I don’t feel out of line by acknowledging their marriage.

Cohabitation facts

Like I noted in a former post, cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States. It climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. It looks like most young adults today will, at some point, live with a sexual partner outside of marriage. The stats say that a majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. Often their parents encourage these “trial runs.” It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married.  It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Sex is easier now. The capacity to marry for love (as well as be unfaithful) provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. Divorce is easier. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage. It is easier to be “abnormal” now. Since the 1960’s, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable.

Although the contours of marriage have changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still overwhelmingly define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, even though many break their vows. They are pulled between opposites and are still sorting things out. They want the connection of marriage, but they have slowly become accustomed to being individualistic and consumeristic. They want the security and safety of marriage, but they still want all their choices unencumbered. They want to marry or exclusively cohabit, but then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan, but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

What is the best way to marry?

Even though there are very few negative social consequences for breaking former sexual codes by not being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. Even same-sex couples want to marry and thirteen states will allow them to do it legally. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why people mate the way they do, but I do want to respond to what is happening with grace and discernment.

It is an interesting era. I am watching it as something of an outsider, since I and my Anabaptist tradition do not tune our faith to the varying pitches of government music or the society’s dance. As far as I am concerned, state and federal government definitions of marriage do not necessarily serve to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith. I don’t think legislation on sex, finances, or even procreation will protect marriage enough to make it work. It takes commitment. I don’t think couples need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But I do think they need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

As a church, we have not fully answered all the questions (including the ones that come through the gossip chain): Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that many of those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited?

A new look at the spectrum of how people, in general, are changing marriage from contract to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt:

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle! Just stand up during the Love Feast; we’ll marry you and you can have a big party on your fifth anniversary.
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before they enter their covenant publically. That would be something like the way we embrace people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publically affirmed covenant.
  • Maybe we should stop keeping secrets. Why should someone feel like they are secretly married just because they have not jumped through all the sometimes-arbitrary hoops? Why shouldn’t we help people have healthy, godly relationships with the people they are living with?
  • Maybe we can help people who are getting married to relax about it and not try to meet the demands of the wedding industry. That might encourage others to celebrate the relationship they have made with more freedom and less stress.

Here are some more blog posts and pages about marriage:

The Marriage Story (August 2012) http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-marriage-story/

Keep Talking about How Your Lover Is Doing with Jesus (April 2012)

Monica and the new marriage (June 2011)

Go Ahead and Marry (2000)

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Four more reasons people might not care to be radical Christians: Part 2

Doing Theology, , , ,

Who are radical Christians? They may not look as wild as you might expect, or be famous for being “out there.” But, like I said last week, they will have some basic characteristics. For instance:

  • They are devoted to being at the heart of the kingdom and to having the kingdom at the heart of them.
  • God is not trying to get them to do things with moderate success; they are trying to get God to do things.
  • Following Jesus is not a side job, it is their vocation.
  • The church is not one of many options; it is their tribal identity.
  • Mission is not a leisure time activity; they will use their money-making work to make it happen.
  • Believing is not exhausting for them; it is exhilarating

My whole Christian life has been devoted to being a regular guy who is a radical Christian. When I became a Christian, I never thought it was about joining a club or being on the right team. I just picked up on what the Bible was saying and went with it. And I did not miss that the Bible was written by regular, flawed people who were saved, not superpeople, or people who even thought they could get it right. It seems to me that the Bible is written “in the face” of people who think they are great or who think they need to be great to make God look good. Regular people who are filled with the Holy Spirit living heart to heart with God: that’s radical. What they do may never get into the news cycle, but that’s not the point for them. The are at the heart and they do from the heart like good trees bearing good fruit, their roots sinking down into eternity.

But there are reasons people might not want to be radicals these days. Here are four more, that are a bit more personal:

5) They probably don’t have a taste for community

So many churches in the past fifty years were just political fronts for the Republican party or the new age movement — they weren’t communities gathered around Jesus. One time I had to demand that my deacon not put local Republican voting guides on the church’s info site – that in a supposedly Anabaptist-tradition congregation! More often I have had to defend why Jesus is the loving center of what we are all about and not just a figure of intolerance — and that to people in covenant with me! It is no wonder that people feel liberated when they get out from under the thumb of the church’s dialogue-stifling system– if that is Christian community, count me out, too! But as people get free of the nonsense, they often end up inoculated against true Christian community by the faux community they have experienced.

Even more, in general, “churched” or not, the population seems to be losing their capacity to connect (could this be true?). People have grown up in detached families. They are immigrants who have left their culture. They have moved to the city to get away from community and be themselves. They live virtually. The hand held computer has taken all their attention. The church comes around and wants consistent relating and it seems like it might be from another planet. But they are going to be gone for the next three months on a job anyway, so the temptation to care about that is fleeting.

church scene of the crime6) The church was the scene of a crime.

This might be the most under-reported reason why people lose their faith. Something bad happened to them while they were part of a church and they did not have the resources to get over it without leaving the church – or the church did not have the resources or opportunity (see the first point) to help them.

  • They got a divorce and only one of them got custody of the church.
  • They had a messy break-up with someone and couldn’t face sitting in a meeting with them.
  • They had a conflict and never faced it or forgave it.
  • They unwittingly got connected with a mentally ill person and didn’t want to handle it.
  • Their children did not get along with other children.
  • The leader said something that didn’t sit right and they were too afraid of him (generally) to talk about it.

If you have a relationship difficulty, it is tempting to not grow through it but to just move on. Most conflicts require confronting something in oneself, but the habit for many is to blame and cut off. People tend to be “slash and burn” relaters. We’ve all become samplers. So it does not take much to scatter us. Once we get scattered from the church, it is easy to see it as the scene of the crime we are trying to escape.

7) Perfect love does not cast out their fear.

Being a radical Christian is not a sociological phenomenon. If the society is open to Jesus or not, following Jesus is still going to be a matter of having a living relationship with God. One will have to lose their life to save it. Jesus will have to be accepted as Lord. It is a scary proposition.

  • If one lives by the detailed laws of science and relies on a few significant relationships for comfort, then the demands of Jesus are very big. Not only does Jesus insist he is the law and the most significant relationship we have, he insists from an eternal perspective.
  • If one is convinced that being an individual is the height of self-realization, if one is acclimated to the rewards of the economy, and if one believes love is all you need, then Jesus might seem like he is way too abnormal.
  • If one is mostly reacting rather than thinking and feeling things through, Jesus is way deeper than what seems possible.

Faith can be overwhelming for some people. They don’t have the heart for it. They are even defensive that I said that and then talked about saying it.

Christ’s love is the key to being other than what I just listed. Otherwise, being a Jesus follower from one’s heart is too huge to try.

8) Church people will not do evangelism.

Given all the problems enumerated above, and last week, Christians are loathe to make disciples. Just the thought of “making a disciple” seems like it must be against the law, or certainly some relic of a colonial past. They won’t even tell their story of faith, since it is up against the big alternative narratives that have taken over the airwaves. They wonder if everything that is important to them is just socially constructed anyway, so why would they infringe upon what someone else has constructed for themselves from all the bits and pieces of spirituality readily available? They won’t even give people a chance to discover the Gospel and change.

I think the main reason people might not want to be radical Christians is that they don’t really  know one. They may never have a dialogue in which the Holy Spirit gets to play an intimate part. All those spiritual experiences they are having may be left to be organized by their own imagination rather than the risen Lord. They will still be interesting, mysterious and moving experiences, but they won’t be radically Christian.

I think all Christians should speak up about what brings them life — especially the radical ones guarding the integrity of the faith for the next generation.

Thanks for all the dialogue last week about these ideas. The process of thinking together makes being a new people in Christ possible.

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Stop the Repression

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, The Mission, , , , , ,

Sometimes it looks like the only “safe place” we can understand is the self-protected heart-space we keep free of outside influence.

Sometimes we extend the idea of “having good boundaries” so far we can no longer get out of ourselves and express the love of Jesus.

Meanwhile, God has violated the boundaries of space and time to come to us in Jesus. Today in the liturgical calendar, he is in the heart of Jerusalem teaching us how to live. Nevertheless, self-protection, self-discovery and self-protection seem reasonable to us. But those reasons rarely lead to strength, tenderness or faithfulness, just more self-ness. Stop the repression!

Your poor child

barbed-wireA woman who was abused as a child finally felt like she needed to cut off her mother. She was an evil woman who would rather destroy her daughter than admit her husband had abused her.* For years the daughter “set appropriate boundaries” and “took care of herself.” These are such basic recommendations from psychotherapists that they have become cliches.

She applied their teaching and definitely experienced more peace and less anxiety as a result of keeping her mother at a distance. But she did not become more gentle or experience much joy. She was supposedly loving herself, but the way she did it cost her the thrill of giving herself to another. To maintain her new defense system she had to continuously reaffirm the necessity of protecting herself. She was like North Korea, expending costly efforts to maintain big weapons while the heart of her country starved. Hardening her heart to her mother’s horrible life did transform her from a passive, frightened pawn. But the hardness also moved her toward being an angry, tough woman who, ironically, was willing to destroy her love rather than let down her defenses – a lot like her mother.

Our abusers have no qualms about remaking us in their image. Evil has no reticence about expressing itself through us. Jesus wants to stop their repression. Love requires we lose the ways we have been saving ourselves in the face of what threatens us and find our true selves in relationship with our Savior. Then we might even gain the strength to undo the evil done to us.

Love feels so risky to the abused

Our network talked a lot about this risky love last week, here and there. We are trying to figure out how to love and it hurts sometimes. We are especially afraid of abusers and evil people who don’t mind telling us we are fools to follow Jesus, who ignore us, or who aggressively impose their Christ-less ways as if they were moral, even while they tell us to not be so aggressive. We are tempted to be passive in order to not be a nuisance or to cut them off contemptuously, or become like them in other ways.

When I see Jesus in the center of Jerusalem today, teaching in the Temple courts in full view of people who are plotting to kill him, people who can’t see the peace he would bring to them, I take heart and keep learning the lessons of love. His objective is obviously to bless people, not just make sure he is not abused. He refuses to live in fear. He is not so dominated he maintains some semblance of peace instead of being his true self. To love is to be more committed to the other person than we are to the relationship, to be more concerned about their soul than with whatever comfort not rocking the relational boat might bring to us.

We need to honor the dignity and admit the depravity of the ones we love in order to truly love them. We cannot love if we distance ourselves or overlook the damage of another’s sin; neither can we love if we fail to move into another’s world to offer a taste of life. Like Oscar Romero, we might have to sacrifice personal comfort for the sake of helping another experience their own longings and need for grace. The risk to love like Jesus is worth it. We need to stop the repression dominating us and stop the repression of others to experience the freedom and fullness of self-giving love.

Yesterday was Oscar Romero’s martyr’s day. Let me leave you with a quote from him, since he inspires me to risk love like the Lord’s, even though I have been abused, even though I am afraid, even though others might be evil and I might prefer evil in some ways, too.

 romero    I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army, and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you recovered your consciences and obeyed your consciences rather than a sinful order. The church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of human dignity, of the person, cannot remain silent before such an abomination. We want the government to face the fact that reforms are valueless if they are to be carried out at the cost of so much blood. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression.
      The church preaches your liberation just as we have studied it in the holy Bible today. It is a liberation that has, above all else, respect for the dignity of the person, hope for humanity’s common good, and the transcendence that looks before all to God and only from God derives its hope and its strength (Last Homily).

* freely adapted from The Wounded Heart

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Jesus Has Other People Not of Your Fold

The Mission,

So much to do, so few Memorial Day parties at which to do it! That’s what I’ve come to think after hearing what happened at some of the recent BBQs. Maybe we should skip however else we do things and move exclusively to a couple of BBQs a week as soon as June hits.

At one gathering an unconnected neighbor was questioning how Circle of Hope operates. The host was introducing her neighbor to a couple of ex-cell mates from Circle of Hope. She explained how her cell had recently multiplied and how these people were formerly part of her cell.  The neighbor looked at the former cell mates and said, “Isn’t it painful to break up your small group?” The pair immediately said, in unison, “Yes!” It was like they had some unexpressed emotion that needed to get out and the neighbor had untied their balloon.

The host was still a bit flabbergasted when she was telling me about this. I think she would have told her neighbor, “Get thee behind me Satan!” if she hadn’t thought it would spoil the party. In her multiplication, she had successfully engineered a radical, missional action. She had catalyzed a small expansion of the kingdom, elevated a new leader and increased the amount of entries a person might stumble upon to get into the church. She had resisted the natural inertia of social groups and moved with what the Spirit was doing next. It wasn’t that easy! Now her neighbor was encouraging everything she was trying to overcome!

Her neighbor was unintentionally reinforcing attitudes that work against what Jesus is trying to do. Marketers have been helping to keep people static by customizing their offerings to customers’ individual tastes. For instance, we don’t buy as much yogurt in large containers anymore, as if we were going to be sitting down with someone and sharing. We get an individual serving in the flavor we like best. Appealing to individual preference is not always the best strategy, since people make choices on group preference, as well. But especially in the United States, the marketers push personalization more and more, since it fits the prevailing philosophies. So you can even get your seaweed soup in a packet. I think this mentality gets extended to our cell groups after they have reached some kind of homeostasis. They begin to have a group identity that tends to want its personalized container of yogurt. And they don’t really think of sharing a big container of yogurt with others.

Meanwhile, Jesus is moving on a steady course toward reaching everyone who will listen to his voice and including them in the “fold.” He says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16 TNIV).

My friend the BBQ host was having the regular frustration we have when we follow Jesus. Among other things that are life-changing about knowing Him, we are called to imagine more people in the fold. The marketers will talk us out of being in a fold, at all. The Lord is talking us into being in a fold of all. If we go with Jesus, we end up convincing people to not be singular and to be in a cell. Then we persuade them to multiply the cell and form a congregation. Then we talk them into multiplying the congregation and becoming a network. Then we talk them out of just being an isolated network and being part of a denomination. Then we talk them out of just being their denomination and being part of the church in Philly and around the world. It is all with the goal that “there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”

The crucial place of reorientation happens when a person who has been drawn out of their isolation and into a cell can imagine the Lord building another one. Post 9-11 it is even harder for people to imagine being in community — and they certainly don’t want to be talked into anything! The frightening expansion of the corporations and the police state in the last decade have people running for their individualized servings in a vain attempt to not be dominated by big things. The church can get tagged as another one of those big things. Circle of Hope was once merely small. Now that we have flowered into a network, we can get tagged as dominating. The multiplying cell is the constant place where we get a chance to be small and to expand, to go with Jesus

  • for oneness, not singularity,
  • for mutual dependence, not independence,
  • for a vision larger than our own personal needs, not mere consumerism,
  • for a growing organism, not a disposable personal experience.

It is hard to make a new cell when you love the one you have. I hope we never love so weakly that it doesn’t hurt to get bigger and let further people in to disrupt our lovely relationships. To expand the fold with people we love and to be loved by them is a pleasant way we fill up what is lacking in regard to the Good Shepherd’s afflictions (Col. 1:24).