John Foote

The Curious Case of Masculine Christianity

2012-02-05T17:23:00.000-05:00

On January 31, 2012, pastor John Piper made the curious assertion that “God has givenChristianity a masculine feel,” and that “God has ordained for the church amasculine ministry.” Like many people, I found these claims prettybewildering. It’s one thing to believe that God expects men and women tolive in accordance with specific pre-ordained roles. But it seems anotherthing entirely to suggest that all of Christianity---including the church, thevery Bride of Christ---either has or should have a masculine character to it. In his speech, Piper acknowledged that what he was saying was susceptibleto misinterpretation, so he attempted to provide a definition of “masculineChristianity” or “masculine ministry”, and then to articulate eight hallmarksof it.

I. Piper's Ends Without His Means

All greatpastor-evangelists hope to win the world for Christ. Piper, however,hopes also to win the Body of Christ for Masculinity. If you listen tothe full breadth of his remarks, it seems that he appreciates the trickynature of his task. His ideal of masculine Christianity would, ofcourse, be led by men, but he appears sensitive to the awkwardness of assertingthat women can’t do what men can do. So even as he lays out thedistinguishing features of masculine Christianity, he equivocates,repeatedly recognizing it’s not that women can’t do the things that arehallmarks of masculine Christianity, but only that it’s better for men to dothem.

Piper’shesitance to insist that only men were capable of building a “masculineministry” made me curious. Sure, his vision of masculine Christianity calls formen and women to be segregated into fairly rigid sex role rules (“men must . ..” and “women should . . .”). But if Piper himself is willing to admit thatwomen are capable of doing the things he calls men to do, I wondered what wouldhappen to his vision if they did. In essence, I wondered whetherPiper’s ideal of masculine Christianity---on his own terms---might beachievable without sex-based discrimination. From my perspective, if itcould, this would be an appealing development. Far and away, what I findmost inflammatory about Piper’s entire gender crusade are his efforts to placerestrictions on what men and women can and cannot do. I have a lot ofhigh minded philosophical reasons for disliking those rules, but in thisinstance, my inner lawyer just kept reminding me that when it comes to race andgender, a claim of ”separate but equal” is a loser.

So Istarted to do some tinkering to see what his definition of masculineChristianity would look like if it was stripped of its sex segregatingdelineations. Here’s what I came up with. Where I had to deleteMr. Piper’s language, I’ve used strikethrough. Where I had to tweak andadd language, I’ve used a highlighter. All other language is his own.

Theology and church and mission are marked byoverarching godly ~~male~~ leadership in the spirit of Christ, with an ethosof tender-hearted strength, and contrite courage, and risk-taking decisiveness,and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading, protecting, and providingfor the community—all of which is possible only through the death andresurrection of Jesus. It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by hisredeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines ~~men~~ his followers both to take humble,Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside ~~themen~~ one another with joyful support,intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.

So, whatwas originally a 100-word definition only had to be altered by about 5% to bestripped of offensive sex segregation language. And you know what? Theresult isn’t half bad! Leadership that is characterized by strength,courage, decisiveness and readiness, but also tenderness, contrition andsacrifice, all done for the purpose of leading, protecting and providing forthe community? From the perspective of a churchgoer, it doesn’t soundhorrible. And when you combine that with a vision of all members in thecommunity sharing responsibility to take initiative, and partner with oneanother for the purpose of mutual support and assistance in furthering the community’sgoals, you’re describing something pretty appealing.

Intriguedby these results, I turned next to the eight characteristics of masculineChristianity with the same agenda. For these, though, I first had tosummarize to make sure I understood what he was saying. Once I did,though, I made minimal additions and deletions just to knock out the sexsegregation. Here’s what I came up with:

1. “A masculine ministry believes that it is more fitting that mentake the lash of criticism that must come in a public ministry, than tounnecessarily expose women to this assault.”

~~Men, rather than women,~~ Leaders should absorb the criticisms targeted at the ministry

2. “A masculine ministry seizes on full-orbed, biblical doctrinewith a view to teaching it to the church and pressing it with courage into thelives of the people.”

Teach and exhort your church with full-bodied biblical doctrine

3. “A masculine ministry brings out the more rugged aspects of theChristian life and presses them on the conscience of the church with a demeanorthat accords with their proportion in Scripture.”

Emphasize holiness and sanctification

4. “A masculine ministry takes up heavy and painful realities inthe Bible, and puts them forward to those who may not want to hear them”

Preach about Hell; ~~spare women the responsibility to do so~~

5. “A masculine ministry heralds the truth of Scripture, withurgency and forcefulness and penetrating conviction, to the world and in theregular worship services of the church.”

Preach with urgency and forcefulness and penetrating conviction

6. “A masculine ministry welcomes the challenges and costs ofstrong, courageous leadership without complaint or self-pity with a view to puttingin place principles and structures and plans and people to carry a whole churchinto joyful fruitfulness.”

Provide wisdom, discernment and leadership to keep a church from drifting into ineffectiveness

7. “A masculine ministry publicly and privately advocates for thevital and manifold ministries of women in the life and mission of the church.”

Aim for maximum joy and flourishing of everyone in the church

8. “A masculine ministry models for the church the protection,nourishing, and cherishing of a wife and children as part of the high callingof leadership.”

Love and care for your family.

And thereyou have it. Eight hallmarks of a “masculine Christianity,” devoid of sexsegregation! As with the definition above, the result isn’t half bad. Maybe the take away for Piper is that he can have his cake and eat ittoo. Allow me to elaborate.

Jesus tookserious issue with the Pharisees because they “tie[d] up heavy loads and putthem on [people’s] shoulders, but they themselves [were] not willing to lift afinger to move them.” Whether or not he realizes this, every time JohnPiper uses his public platform to reinforce what men must do and what women areforbidden from doing, he ties up heavy loads and puts them on people’sshoulders. While he seeks to reassure all concerned that these rules willpermit the “flourishing” of both men and women, he ignores the contrary evidencefound in the outcry his remarks generate every time he makes them.

But of course, not all parts of his vision forChristianity are detestable. As the exercise above demonstrates, it’sfully possible to re-imagine the best of John Piper’s vision for Christianity without his sinful imposition of onerousburdens on ordinary men and women. Onthis he should meditate, and rejoice.

II. What is Best

MasculineChristianity represents the apotheosis of John Piper’s Christian faith. It is hishighest, best sketch of what it means to be Christian. When someoneoffers their highest and best vision for something like this, it presents aninteresting window into the soul. Youget the chance to see what they esteem more than anything else, what ideas havecaptured their imaginations, and what scriptures they find most compelling. And the more I reflected on it, especiallyafter I had stripped his vision of its most egregious elements, the lessimpressed I became.

A funny thing happens when you kick Jesus out ofhis role as the head of the church, and elect masculinity as his replacement. Masculinity may be many things, but it is asorry savior. Take another look at Piper’seight hallmarks of masculine Christianity. This time, I’ve un-enumerated them, and summarized them further. According to Piper, in its highest form, Christianministry should be marked by:

Teaching and Preaching with passion about full Biblical doctrine, focusing specifically on holiness, sanctification, and hell, even when you face adversity for doing so;
Making good leadership decisions to avoid ineffectiveness; and
Aiming to maximize joy and flourishing in church and home.

How does this stack up with what you would articulate as thehighest and most important values of Christianity? How does it stack upagainst what Jesus teaches are the highest and most important values in the Kingdom of God? One mightinquire:

Where is the focus on caring for the poor, the marginalized and the needy?
Where is the emphasis on every member of the community discerning their spiritual gifts, and using them in the service of one another?
Where is the focus on making known the name, character and glory of God to the world? [I seem to recall reading a book on this once, but I can’t recall who wrote it…]
Why wouldn’t one emphasize the essential role of unity among believers---a particular obsession of Jesus, I might add---including those with different theological perspectives?
When emphasizing theology, why prioritize the teaching of holiness, sanctification and hell over the doctrines of grace, redemption and the Kingdom of God?
Why not simply state that Christian ministry in its highest form is characterized by Love---the lost, the sick and broken being found, cherished, and restored?
What role does diversity play in the ideal Christian community?
Where is the emphasis on personal growth and maturation?
Why not focus on the role of making disciples of all people and all nations?
Why wouldn’t the highest and best version of Christianity be utterly, totally consumed with Jesus himself---the Messiah?

I believe this list, incomplete though it is, makes itspoint. When you’re consumed with asserting,and proclaiming, and penetrating, and forcefulness, and conviction, it’sremarkably easy to forget to be caring, and be broken, and serve, and heal,and listen. May God be gracious to usall, and build us up until we may reach unity in the faith and become mature,attaining to the fullness of Christ.

The Curious Case of Masculine Christianity

2012-02-05T17:22:00.000-05:00

On January 31, 2012, pastor John Piper made the curious assertion that “God has given Christianitya masculine feel,” and that “God has ordained for the church a masculineministry.” Like many people, I found these claims pretty bewildering. It’s one thing to believe that God expects men and women to live inaccordance with specific pre-ordained roles. But it seems another thingentirely to suggest that all of Christianity---including the church, the veryBride of Christ---either has or should have a masculine character to it. In his speech, Piper acknowledged that what he was saying was susceptibleto misinterpretation, so he attempted to provide a definition of “masculineChristianity” or “masculine ministry”, and then to articulate eight hallmarksof it.

I.Piper's Ends Without His Means

So, whatwas originally a 100-word definition only had to be altered by about 5% to bestripped of offensive sex segregation language. And you know what? Theresult isn’t half bad! Leadership that is characterized by strength,courage, decisiveness and readiness, but also tenderness, contrition andsacrifice, all done for the purpose of leading, protecting and providing for thecommunity? From the perspective of a churchgoer, it doesn’t soundhorrible. And when you combine that with a vision of all members in thecommunity sharing responsibility to take initiative, and partner with oneanother for the purpose of mutual support and assistance in furthering thecommunity’s goals, you’re describing something pretty appealing.

Intriguedby these results, I turned next to the eight characteristics of masculineChristianity with the same agenda. For these, though, I first had tosummarize to make sure I understood what he was saying. Once I did,though, I made minimal additions and deletions just to knock out the sexsegregation. Here’s what I came up with:

1. “A masculine ministry believes that it is more fitting that mentake the lash of criticism that must come in a public ministry, than tounnecessarily expose women to this assault.”

· ~~Men, rather than women,~~ Leaders should absorb thecriticisms targeted at the ministry

2. “A masculine ministry seizes on full-orbed, biblicaldoctrine with a view to teaching it to the church and pressing it with courageinto the lives of the people.”

· Teach and exhort your church with full-bodied biblical doctrine

3. “A masculine ministry brings out the more rugged aspectsof the Christian life and presses them on the conscience of the church with ademeanor that accords with their proportion in Scripture.”

· Emphasize holiness and sanctification

4. “A masculine ministry takes up heavy and painfulrealities in the Bible, and puts them forward to those who may not want to hearthem”

· Preach about Hell; ~~spare women the responsibility to do so~~

5. “A masculine ministry heralds the truth of Scripture,with urgency and forcefulness and penetrating conviction, to the world and inthe regular worship services of the church.”

· Preach with urgency and forcefulness and penetrating conviction

6. “A masculine ministry welcomes the challenges and costsof strong, courageous leadership without complaint or self-pity with a view toputting in place principles and structures and plans and people to carry awhole church into joyful fruitfulness.”

· Provide wisdom, discernment and leadership to keep a church fromdrifting into ineffectiveness

7. “A masculine ministry publicly and privately advocatesfor the vital and manifold ministries of women in the life and mission of thechurch.”

· Aim for maximum joy and flourishing of everyone in the church

8. “A masculine ministry models for the church theprotection, nourishing, and cherishing of a wife and children as part of thehigh calling of leadership.”

· Love and care for your family.

And there you haveit. Eight hallmarks of a “masculine Christianity,” devoid of sexsegregation! As with the definition above, the result isn’t half bad. Maybe the take away for Piper is that he can have his cake and eat ittoo. Allow me to elaborate.

Jesus tookserious issue with the Pharisees because they “tie[d] up heavy loads and putthem on [people’s] shoulders, but they themselves [were] not willing to lift afinger to move them.” Whether or not he realizes this, every time JohnPiper uses his public platform to reinforce what men must do and what women areforbidden from doing, he ties up heavy loads and puts them on people’sshoulders. While he seeks to reassure all concerned that these ruleswill permit the “flourishing” of both men and women, he ignores the contraryevidence found in the outcry his remarks generate every time he makesthem.

But of course, not allparts of his vision for Christianity are detestable. As theexercise above demonstrates, it’s fully possible to re-imagine the best of JohnPiper’s vision for Christianity withouthis sinful imposition of onerous burdens on ordinary men and women. On this he should meditate, and rejoice.

II. What is Best

Masculine Christianity represents the apotheosis of JohnPiper’s Christian faith. It is his highest, best sketch of what it means to beChristian. When someone offers their highest and best vision forsomething like this, it presents an interesting window into the soul. You get the chance to see what they esteemmore than anything else, what ideas have captured their imaginations, and whatscriptures they find most compelling. And the more I reflected on it, especially after I had stripped hisvision of its most egregious elements, the less impressed I became.

A funny thing happenswhen you kick Jesus out of his role as the head of the church, and electmasculinity as his replacement. Masculinity may be many things, but it is a sorry savior. Take another look at Piper’s eight hallmarksof masculine Christianity. This time,I’ve un-enumerated them, and summarized them further. According to Piper, in its highest form,Christian ministry should be marked by:

Teaching and Preaching with passion about full Biblical doctrine, focusing specifically on holiness, sanctification, and hell, even when you face adversity for doing so;
Making good leadership decisions to avoid ineffectiveness; and
Aiming to maximize joy and flourishing in church and home.

Where is the focus on caring for the poor, the marginalized and the needy?
Where is the emphasis on every member of the community discerning their spiritual gifts, and using them in the service of one another?
Where is the focus on making known the name, character and glory of God to the world? [I seem to recall reading a book on this once, but I can’t recall who wrote it…]
Why wouldn’t one emphasize the essential role of unity among believers---a particular obsession of Jesus, I might add---including those with different theological perspectives?
When emphasizing theology, why prioritize the teaching of holiness, sanctification and hell over the doctrines of grace, redemption and the Kingdom of God?
Why not simply state that Christian ministry in its highest form is characterized by Love---the lost, the sick and broken being found, cherished, and restored?
What role does diversity play in the ideal Christian community?
Where is the emphasis on personal growth and maturation?
Why not focus on the role of making disciples of all people and all nations?
Why wouldn’t the highest and best version of Christianity be utterly, totally consumed with Jesus himself---the Messiah?

Ibelieve this list, incomplete though it is, makes its point. Whenyou’re consumed with asserting, and proclaiming, and penetrating, andforcefulness, and conviction, it’s remarkably easy to forget to be caring, andbe broken, and serve, and heal, and listen. May God be gracious to us all, and build us up until we may reach unityin the faith and become mature, attaining to the fullness of Christ.

Christianity's Mark Driscoll Problem

2012-02-01T12:39:00.001-05:00

Not the Problem
Mark Driscoll courts controversy. To a certain extent, it goes with the territory of being one of the most widely watched, read, and listened to Christians in the Protestant church. Quite frankly, when your life’s work leads you to communicate about religion to the masses, there’s a certain measure of controversy you’ll never escape, no matter how innocuous your message, nor how vanilla your personality. For exhibit A, take Joel Osteen, who manages to be the subject of controversy despite a public persona which is nicer, smilier and less offensive than any actual person you’ve ever known.

But Mark’s personality has never seen the inside of a vanilla bean, and he doesn’t peddle feel-good messages for the masses, on that basis alone his controversy quotient is upped. For one thing, he’s the face of the so-called Neo-Reformed Calvinist movement, a theological trend identified by Time magazine in 2009 as one of the 10 most influential ideas of our day. The cost of being America’s top neo-Calvinist spokesman: being targeted and criticized for your theology by some, and heralded for it by others. The same goes for Mark’s other iconic ideology: conservative gender views. As a defender and evangelist for old school gender roles, he’s a hero to some, and a pariah to others.

But not all neo-Calvinist complementarians are created equal. Mark Driscoll distinguishes himself from your run-of-the-mill conservative pastor with his commitment to preach and write religiously about sex, in all its graphic, scandalous glory. In case you wondered, even in the early 21st century, this remains something you can’t do in the evangelical church without raising eyebrows, and taking some considerable heat. And then, there’s the issue of that personality. If the church has ever known a public persona more dripping with testosterone, I’m unaware. While Mark might take the view that his personality merely reflects the awesome masculinity of his Savior, he’s clearly stretching it---or is at least re-framing Jesus in the light he most prefers. But so he pastors, preaches, and writes: in all his independent, competitive, aggressive, and, at times, emotionally insensitive glory. Not bad, mind you---just unmistakeably, stereotypically masculine.

But none of these things, not his theology, nor his gender views, nor his obsession with sexuality, nor even his unbalanced personality are enough to make him a problem for Christianity. Christianity is, in the political parlance, a big tent. It’s got room enough for profound diversity of perspectives and personalities, and Mark Driscoll doesn’t even begin to push those bounds. He’s entitled to his ideas and his soap boxes, and those who see the world differently are entitled to express their disagreement. When he faces contentiousness over these beliefs and characteristics, he should be comforted that this adversity is a fair result within the field of play. But Mark has also run into adversity over the years that has its origin in something far more grave.

The Problem
Christianity’s Mark Driscoll problem is a problem of sin. Specifically, it’s Mark’s unfortunate propensity to open his mouth and plainly reveal portions of his character, mind, and worldview that have been wholly untouched by the God whom he professes to know. In contrast to the cadre of loyal opposition Mark faces on account of his various ideologies, when people catch a glimpse of his sin---and particularly the arrogance with which he tends to commit it, and his apparent ignorance to it---people really begin to freak out.

It’s too early in his life and career to know whether he’ll eventually claim it, but Mark Driscoll is the heir apparent to the title of Most Bombastic Christian Leader---a title I would suggest was most recently held by the late Dr. Jerry Falwell. Dr. Falwell was a hero to many Christians, beloved for his uncompromising opposition to what he saw as moral wretchedness. But you could also safely say, at the conclusion of his life, that no one ever mistook him for a lover of his enemies. This was never more apparent than when he spoke publicly: the man had enemies, he was confident of his reasons for regarding them as such, and he was sworn to opposing them, up until his death.

Mark Driscoll is not so much known for hating his enemies. Rather, Mark’s public sin more frequently takes the form of chauvinism and homophobia, which is especially nauseating when delivered with a dose of his trademark swagger. But what Mark has in common with the late Dr. Falwell, though, is the inability keep closed every window to his soul, while engaged in the tasks of his ministry. While some pastors are skilled at keeping their sin out of sight, Mark often pulls a Falwell, and reveals through some public utterance a disturbing darkness near the center of his heart.

Mark’s prominence is what makes such sin a problem not only for him, his family and his community, but for all of Christianity. Obscure individuals in remote corners of the world whose speech reveals hypocrisy pose a danger to themselves, perhaps, but not particularly to our faith as a whole. Celebrity pastors, on the other hand, whose teaching is heard by 15,000 church members each week, and downloaded more than 10,000,000 times each year have the potential to do enormous damage. It’s doubtful that James ever contemplated influence on that magnitude, and yet he still cautioned people against becoming teachers on account the stricter judgment apportioned for them. (3:1) Why? Because God cares about people. And while he does not always intervene to prevent harm from befalling them, neither does he ignore it. Sooner or later, justice always comes.

I don’t know the extent to which Mark grasps this. Consider, for example, the dust up over an interview Mark Driscoll gave with a British radio personality. When you listen to the interview, or at least read the transcript, you can’t help come away with the feeling that Mark pulled a Falwell: an ordinary conversation suddenly became occasion to reveal abject arrogance, sexism and contempt for his interlocutor. It triggered an online furor, and Mark felt compelled to respond with his side of the story. He ends with this hopeful plea:

“It’s All About Jesus. In the providence of God, I trust everything will sort itself out in time. The best thing is to not waste time blogging, twittering, and talking about me. I was not born of a virgin, have not lived without sin, and am not going to judge the living and the dead. Jesus is all that matters.”

Mark seems a bit bewildered as to how he ended up at the center of such fury. The answer, I submit, has nothing to do with the fact that he had a disagreement with a Brit about penal substitutionary atonement, nor even that they quarreled over the Biblical role of women in church leadership. The vociferous denunciations were a result of Mark’s sin---apparent as it was to most onlookers.

Were Mark to go back and inspect his heart in full vulnerability before God, he would no doubt see what the rest of us plainly can---that in this simple conversation his heart was revealed to have a certain arrogance and cruelty, if not contemptuousness and outright hatred that threatens to swell up and blot out the sun. It is, remarkably similar to the same conclusion reached by the New York Times, of all sources, in the concluding paragraph of its 2009 piece on Mark: ”Who Would Jesus Smack Down?“ I mention this interview, only because it is most recent, but a similar tale could be told about many other public comments.

If I could prevail on Mark to see a single thing, it would be this: appreciate the difference between strenuous disagreement with your theology and beliefs, and an outpouring of public Christian outrage over your sin. Do what you like with the former, Mark. But recognize that you trivialize and ignore the latter at your peril.

Solutions
So what is an aggrieved observer to do? Speak up. But be sure to calibrate the tenor of your speech to the circumstances requiring it. Which is to say, before you put pen to paper or keystroke to CPU, query whether what has riled you amounts to a mere difference of opinion, or whether the stakes of sin and harm are considerably higher. For a great example of how to do this, consider Rachel Held Evans. Observe the fire with which she rages in calling Mark out for inexcusable sin, and the graciousness she evinces in the wake of Mark’s semi-apology, while still noting their fundamental disagreement.

Honestly, though, your voice probably won’t make any difference. Supposing you aren’t a prominent pastor or blogger, you likely have no one to vent to save a spouse or some friends. In which case, you might take a cue from the tale of Noah. Pop Quiz: When you walk in on your dad, sozzled, naked, and passed out in his tent, what do you do? Hint: you either run out and tell your brothers, or you discretely cover him with a blanket, to avoid shaming him. Perhaps the same goes for Mark. Ask that God would be gracious to him, and cover his sin. When I pray for Mark, I ask God to cover him---literally, that God would squirrel him away where he can grow in his character and do no harm. He makes me so tremendously nervous! The thinly veiled homophobia, the obsession with having young men in his church, the ego, the sexism, the conversations about anal sex, oral sex, pornography and masturbation... it makes his life seem, at times, like a petri dish for potential destruction. And so I hope and ask with desperation that God will not permit His and Mark’s mutual spectacular defamation.

It also will do your heart a dose of good to stop seeing Mark as a caricature of himself. He may be more malleable than you appreciate. I came to this conclusion after recently reading the first chapter of his latest book. Be forewarned, it’s incredibly candid, and deeply humanizing. If you dislike this man, you may find it difficult to abide that distaste after you read it. Alternatively, and even more recently, check out this blog post from Tuesday, January 31. I doubt if Mark will ever set out more clearly his vision for shepherding young men. Even if you disagree with his gender philosophy, it’s hard to impugn his noblest pastoral ambitions. It’s a funny truth about God, that as long as he has your heart, he’s surprisingly tolerant of what you think. If you can see that God has Mark’s heart, you may find it easier to tolerate him yourself.

A Story
Early in the morning of May 15, 2007, just before I awoke, I had a vivid dream. In my dream, I had returned to the church of my childhood---a grand building, with a majestic steeple on a large suburban campus. I approached a side door to enter, when I was caught by surprise as the door flung open, and one of my favorite pastors emerged through the door frame. Dr. James Foster had been a cherished mentor during my years at the church. He was always keenly interested in my life and faith, and never failed to seek me out and inquire about my life. But as Dr. Foster burst through that door, I could see that he was in this moment, an unbelievably broken man.

His normally kind face was disfigured with raw emotion. He was sobbing, his chest heaving uncontrollably with the weight of something awful. All he said, over and over, was “my sin, my sin.” In an instant, I realized what had happened. There had been some deeply concealed, highly cherished sin, cloaked in the furthest recesses of his heart...and it had all just been laid bare. His wife Theresa followed him out the door, her face frozen in sullen devastation. My gut told me that she would not leave him over this---whatever it was---but that the road of grief in front of them was substantial.

About three hours after I awoke, Dr. Jerry Falwell finished eating breakfast with an executive from his school, returned to his office, and died in his chair. When I heard the news, as I suspect was true for many Christians, I found myself sorting out a complex of emotions. I was saddened, of course, to hear of his passing, but honestly I also felt some sort of guilty relief. This man had on so many occasions opened his mouth with the intention of honoring his Savior, only to reach the end of a sentence and discover that he’d actually just revealed the darkness of his heart (e.g., “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers.”) With his passing, I knew that a voice that had embarrassed our faith on so many occasions would now be silent. It then occurred to me that the dream I’d had hours before was about a Dr. J.F., only a different one than I’d thought.

I felt that I’d had the dream to see, with breathtaking clarity, what it was like for Dr. Falwell to pass through the doors of death, and head toward the presence of God. As he left the church on earth behind, and crossed that threshold, it was no longer possible to keep the darkness in his heart concealed. When Dr. Falwell went to meet his Father, he was undone over his cherished sin. In the presence of a perfect God, you can’t not be. As for my impression that his spouse would not leave him, I took it as an indication of his ultimate disposition vis-a-vis his spiritual Betrothed. I have no reason to believe the man did not know and love the God he professed, nor do I think that his sin compromised his salvation. But I do know that when your sin calcifies and ossifies and fossilizes into your soul, and you deny the efforts of God to work it out gently, you will one day face a brokenness that you cannot imagine.

A Coda
Here’s Mark Driscoll, again on Tuesday, January 31: “I want to not get more angry, narrow, hardened and tribal as I get older but rather grow in grace. I don’t want to be a lonely old man shooting everyone who does not fit on my island.” And more: “I don’t claim to be humble, but I want to pursue humility by the grace of God and learn.” And more: “I have a lot to learn.” And more: “I love people that I don’t agree with.” And more: “The Holy Spirit is not done with me.”

I don’t know Mark personally, and cannot comment on where, precisely, he is in his journey. But I do cry out on his behalf: Kyrie, eleison.

The Birth of a Salesman

2011-12-28T16:36:00.001-05:00

“If there’s magic in the world, it’s the understanding of something that someone’s trying to share.”
- from Before Sunrise (via S. Henderson)

I’ve completed two parts of the response I’m drafting to Kate Bolick’s article on marriage and singleness from the November issue of the Atlantic, and I have one post yet to write. Faced with a shortage of time before and during the holidays, I decided to take a breather in this post to crank out a little meta-response (you know, a self-styled response about my response, and a response about the response to my response), and leave the true “third part” of my response to Kate’s piece until after the New Year.

I began Part I of my response by making the case that Christians are notoriously bad at listening to thoughtful non-Christian commentary, and that I regard this as a bit of an embarrassment. One reader of this weblog recently offered up a bit of criticism, agreeing that Christians are "notoriously bad at listening to what people like Ms. Bolick have to say about issues like gender, marriage, etc.," but defending Christians’ distaste for listening in two ways:

“1) We know we can’t allow them to change our views. (Frankly, you’re right – I’m not interested in anything they have to say about marriage and gender roles.) I have settled that for myself without their help. 2) We know they don’t want a response from us. Just as you accuse Christians of doing, these people don’t think that we could possibly have anything to add to the conversation. They don’t ask us to join in a conversation. They just want to tell us we’re wrong.”

I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to “Traditional Mom” for sharing exactly what she thinks. I’ve been inviting readers to leave comments, and I’m grateful for her contribution. Even if this comment represents a minority view, she’s not the only one to hold it, and it provides a great chance to continue the conversation.

* * *

If you do a little spelunking to unearth Christianity’s prime elements, right next to the Scriptures, and the ethics of love, charity and hospitality, you’ll recognize a few nearly forgotten items: evangelism and apologetics. Figuring out how to articulate and give away what we’ve seen, received and understood has always been at the heart of the Christian faith. This is a truth so basic and axiomatic that it barely bears mentioning. In fact, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning at all, except that the term evangelism has fallen so far out of favor that it’s met with considerable revulsion by many both inside and outside the church.

A lot has been written addressing the shortcomings of the popular evangelistic techniques of the last 20 years, so I’ll limit myself to a succinct critique. Evangelism is distasteful and ineffective for everyone involved when it consists of one person compelling another person to listen to speech that is not native to either of them. This is why I personally found the concept so off-putting for so many years. I could never bring myself to take an account of the gospel written by someone else and compel a stranger into conversation about it. The speech would be an awkward fit for me, would seem like a foreign language to the other person, and it would become immediately apparent to both of us that we’d each rather be doing something different.

Like so many things in life, evangelism is a conversation, and all conversations begin with the ability to hear, and the capacity to speak. You simply cannot evangelize if you cannot hear, because you won’t know how to articulate what you want to say. Just ask any Bible translator or missionary or church planter: comprehending the language of the people group you wish to reach is a prerequisite to sharing with them. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot complete the Great Commission by speaking the Gospel in our native tongue slowly and loudly enough.

Suppose you’re on Jim Elliot’s team when he arrives in Ecuador in 1955 to evangelize the Waodani people. You’re hiding in the bush with Jim, when you spy a tribe of Waodani speaking to one another in Waodanicean. You look at Jim, and Jim looks at you, and then he whispers anxiously, "Try not to listen to what they’re saying! We can’t allow them to change our views!" And you pause for a moment to survey the scene and then whisper back, "Yeah, I don’t think they want to hear from us. I can tell by the look on that warrior over there that he doesn’t want to join us in a conversation, he just wants to tell us we’re wrong." Of course, Jim Elliot’s actual approach would be the same as any missionary: start sharing by learning the language. People like Jim Elliot and me are obsessed with listening, because we have so much to say.

I suppose that once you compare yourself to Jim Elliot, there’s no hiding it any longer: I’m writing this weblog to evangelize. Perhaps that is reassuring to some of you (Traditional Mom, I’m looking at you! (I hope.)). But for other readers, you no doubt see in this confession all you need to write me off completely. But wait! Our culture is brimming with evangelists. Don’t hate just because I’m candid about it.

You see, as much as I have in common with a missionary like Jim Elliot, I have in common with Mad Men. (Well, minus the alcoholism, sex-crazed workaholism, and neglectful parenting, that is.) You see, virtually every realm of modern life is saturated with evangelism. We’re daily blitzed with sales pitches from ad campaigns, political parties, candidates, television personalities, and bloggers! From the best restaurants to eat at, to the best ideologies, to the best cars, to the best of youtube, the best of the web, the best of the best of the best. Setting aside people who sell things for no purpose other than to profit, and the occasional person who will, in the words of Tommy Boy, “take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed,” you’re left with the only real reason to evangelize: when you’ve found something too good not to share.

Even if you somehow avoided ever consuming advertising---you never watch TV, you never look at a billboard or subway ad on your commute, and you use a web browser with built in ad-blocker, as long as you have friends, you’ll never escape being evangelized. You see, friends are really the worst. They’ll come after you with so much charm and personal appeal that they’re nearly impossible to resist. Friends are like little toxic orbs of evangelising. They always have political opinions they have to share. And they’ve always read something that we have to read too. They always know someone that they really want to set us up on a date with. They’ll never stop trying to persuade us that Radiohead is the greatest band of our day, and why cancelling Community was the worst decision NBC has made in 5 years. They’ll explain what type of electronics we should be purchasing, and all the great ways they’ve found to use them and make their lives better. Friends are a never ending stream of restaurant picks, bargain shopping tips, and your neighborhood’s best kept secrets. This is what I am. And if you’re honest, it’s probably what you are too.

Which brings me back to listening. Three weeks ago, I became an early adopter of an iPhone 4---my first ever Apple purchase. (I use the term “early adopter” loosely.) In the years leading up to this event, I had countless friends eager to evangelise me on the merits of Apple design and technology. But you know which friends were the most convincing? The ones who listened to me rant and rave about my priorities---about the way I wanted technology to serve me, and not the other way around. About my concerns about the costs of a data plan. About my obsession with efficiency and my suspicion of trends. About my doubts that I’d find much of use in the app store, and that the whole “intuitive user interface” bit was a hoax. The friends who heard me out, who took the time to appreciate my own little quirks and oddities before explaining why I was wrong made for the very best salespeople. Those who didn’t take the time to hear me out, and who just prattled endlessly about the glories of what I saw as a glorified PDA, I regarded as brainwashed and ignored (or teased, to that effect).

But what if what you’re selling isn’t just an iPhone or a new record, but is something far more important---like insight on the best way to live, or wisdom on relationships, or good news about how to harness human appetites for enjoyable but potentially destructive things. The more important what you have to sell, the more critical listening becomes. Being ignored or disregarded is sad when you’re selling Girl Scout cookies; it’s nothing short of tragic when what you have to share is unimaginably important. This is why church planters furiously study the cultures of the people they want to reach. They look for pockets where the grace of God has been revealed, and then attempt to contextualize those pockets in light of the gospel. But no matter whether you’re evangelizing for Jesus Christ or Proctor & Gamble, the process remains the same. You start by listening, and trying to discern the language and mindset of your intended audience. You seek to discern their convictions, concerns, needs and conclusions. And then, in light of all that, you figure out how to say what you have to say. The only difference between selling the Gospel and a bar of soap is how active a role is played by the Spirit of God

One final point. Even if you agree that listening is an important first step of evangelism, it can be difficult to put into practice. A good friend of mine read Kate’s article, and commented that he was exhausted by reading it. To him, it read “like one long Sex in the City episode, as if it were written by the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love.” He found it “even more frustrating that its banal sensibilities are so popular and celebrated." I think his comment helpfully illustrates how everyone can hear and respond to different things. We all speak different languages. My friend, for instance, is remarkably gifted at listening to film and theater, and has enormously insightful things to say in response to what he hears. The world consists of a diversity peoples, many of which I couldn’t hope to understand or speak to, no matter what effort I put forth.

Whom have you heard lately? You should probably try to engage them in conversation. I’m sure you have some evangelising to do.

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Marriage Is Like Christmas Every Day. (A Christian Responds to Kate Bolick’s ATSL, Part II)

2011-12-05T16:30:00.001-05:00

[This is the second in a series of posts attempting to sketch out a Christian response to Kate Bolick’s article in the November issue of the Atlantic on the modern state of marriage and singleness, All the Single Ladies. For the first post, see here.]

Before I dive into the substance of this post, I wanted to take a moment to endorse the value of comments. In the two months my weblog has been up and running, roughly 1 out every 50 visitors has left a comment. Sometimes it’s great to just read and think, but if you have feedback, please don’t be shy! I mean this even and especially if you disagree with what I’ve written. If you can put your thoughts into a couple of constructive sentences, they can be a great catalyst for further conversation.

An excellent example is a comment left on my previous post, pushing back on whether it is appropriate for Christians to celebrate the educational and economic successes of women. In the commenter’s view, (“Anonymous” on the previous post), the progress of the feminist movement is hardly an unmitigated good, and it cannot be easily decoupled from concomitant societal harm. I agree that Christianity may have real points of disagreement with some of the conclusions and recommendations that Ms. Bolick has reached, and I also would not dispute that pervasive relational brokenness is one of the most tragic features of modern life. But between listening to what Ms. Bolick had to say, and despairing over the brokenness in the world, we shouldn’t get so bent out of shape, that we forget what we know about why things are the way they are.

The Christian Scriptures provide an account of why the world is so enormously screwed up. Perhaps you remember it? It started when the Serpent approached Eve in the Garden and said “go to school and get a good education so you can get a good paying job,” and sin entered the world. An absurdism, yes, but this is essentially the message that we communicate when we say that the disarray of the modern family is owing to feminist gains in education and employment. This is no innocuous misattribution, but rather the inaugural component of a false gospel. A false type of original sin---legitimate female success---can only be atoned by a false kind of salvation---restoring so-called “traditional” male and female roles. It’s a twisted gospel that the world gets one whiff of, and rejects---thinking it has rejected Christianity, when it hasn’t even seen Jesus at all.

When I encounter a person peddling this type of gospel story, typically in a blog, a book or a pulpit, I want to quietly close the lid of the box in which I found them, and put them back in the corner and PRAY TO GOD that no one who isn’t already a Christian ever has to hear them. If you are not a follower of Jesus, and you’re reading this post, please hear me on this. God stands in full solidarity with women as well as men. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Christianity and Christians have no imaginable interest in educational and economic inequality. If you’ve talked to a Christian and come away with the sense that they despise this dimension of feminist success, please forgive them; they probably just got so flummoxed at the rampant depravity in the world that they lost their orientation on where it all went wrong.

Now with that out of the way, on with part 2.

2. Observing Men, or Addressing Them

One of the most oft-quoted and clearly inflammatory sentences from Kate Bolick’s article is where she says that:

“If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace---and of course it is---today we’re contending with a new ‘dating gap,’ where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players.”

Spending a little time in the viper’s den that is the comments section on her original post at the Atlantic website (yikes), it’s clear that this “deadbeats or players” characterization of men has drawn abundant ire. (Some of my personal favorites: they guy who said “your sexism is only surpassed by your sexism”; and another guy describing Ms. Bolick as “yet another female supremacist.”) Even if her language had been swapped out for something a little less incendiary, though, the reality she describes confronting does not seem implausible.

Kate devotes a significant portion of her article both to demonstrating that there really are a lot of men who are either players or deadbeats (this is why she says she investigates African American and collegiate culture), and then to putting her finger on precisely why men are behaving in such disappointing ways. But interestingly enough, she doesn’t actually address men at any point. While Kate is deeply frustrated by male shortcomings, she seems to accept their flawed state as a problem for rumination or reaction, but not one for rooting out. The church is not so constrained.

Instructing men and women on issues of gender and family life is one of Christianity’s great pastimes. (For an intriguing look at this tradition over last 2 centuries, take a look at this blog post.) I understand if this leaves you less than enthusiastic. Surely, Christianity’s propensity to tell people how to live, or that what they’re doing is wrong has to be one of the most annoying aspects of the religion. But it’s also one of the most powerful. How you regard it all depends on how you feel about the behavior being endorsed or curtailed. If Kate is correct that the world is passing through an unprecedented gender upheaval, the need for direction that is both timeless and timely is more apparent than ever. The path forward lies not in attempting to undo a sea-change that has produced both bad and good, but in learning to live better in light of it.

So men, whether you are married or you hope to get married, you need to understand that the best of what you have to offer as a husband does not depend on your economic or educational or intellectual dominance over your wife. You don’t need to have a better paying job than your wife, and you don’t need to be better educated. (Wanna be inspired along these lines? Take a look at this guy's approach.) However personally important it may be to you to be able to provide for your wife, you should not conflate that with the most important aspiration for marriage. To do so would be ill advised, because as the global economy continues to evolve, it’s clear that men may not always be best suited to making financial provision. If your highest ideal for marriage can be subverted by economic impossibility, you need a better highest ideal.

The Bible paints what I think is a pretty stunning picture of marriage, and it does so with a parallelism designed to reflect the relationship God has with the church: the husband works to make his wife more beautiful---to help her shine. How exactly? He does things for her, loves her, works on her behalf, and figures out how to serve her. He ensures that she continues to have opportunities to do what she needs to do to thrive, and works to preserve those things that give her life. He lavishes her with gifts. The collective effect of this literal labor of love is a radiant wife, at which the rest of the world can look at and say: holy smokes, how is this woman’s life so good!? Why is she so beautiful!? The highest ambition you can bring to a marriage is to love and to serve in this way, and to address whatever needs your wife may have, no matter how unique.

Alright, so a confession: I’m married. I have three kids, and to top it off, I’m white. All of which makes me a prime candidate to pen a Christian commentary on the year’s seminal piece of journalism about single women, right? But in the spirit of Kate Bolick, maybe I can share a few personal anecdotes to personalize and justify my thesis. My wife has been married for 8½ years and has three kids. For several years, she’s worked as a therapist social worker in a couple venues in NYC. By virtue of the nature of her work, my wife has played an enormously important role in many people’s lives. She’s beyond gifted at what she does, and inevitably her clients come to appreciate that she is a person of staggering beauty, with depth and insight and knowledge and perspective rarely seen. Breathtaking is a word that I think describes her well. And yet, she’s a mother of 3, she’s nursing, she helps our 6 year old practice violin every day, she’s teaching our 4 year old his letters, and she maintains a spotless house. In other words, while Natalie’s life circumstances would seem to mandate that she be distressed and overwhelmed, her life continues to be characterized by the opposite.

So where does a husband fit into this picture? My covenant is to love her and serve her and to do whatever it takes to enable her to be the beautiful, powerful woman that she is. I am committed fully to the responsibility of running our home and raising our children right along with her. I value her career as much as I value my own. I make it my business to figure out what my wife needs to thrive, and figure out how to get it for her. My wife’s radiant beauty is certainly not because of me; her beauty is her own. But in the chaos of life, it is my abiding commitment to her that her beauty will not be submerged beneath the bedlam.

Which is not to say that I always succeed in doing this! Please hear my heart; this is not an effort to arrogantly parade our success at life, but the beggar’s emphatic gesture back at the trail of crumbs leading to where I found my bread. On those rare occasions when I catch a glimpse of my wife’s selfish, less than admirable qualities, I occasionally kick her while she’s down. Or I’m profoundly impatient and un-accepting of her lack of maturity, however it may show itself. But this concept of beautification is my guiding force. The Spirit of God living within me permits me to recognize when I’ve failed to love her in this way. The testimony of the Scriptures points me towards a model of self-giving love as my highest ideal. The accountability of a community of like-minded individuals, actual guys that I personally know whose literal approach mirrors what I’m describing here, and, of course, the fruit of my labor, all continue to commend this course of action as the best I can aim for. It’s self-reinforcing, because I am constantly reminded of the spine-tingling beauty of the woman of my dreams, my best friend---one of the greatest people of all time. This is not romantic rhapsodizing; it’s poetic realism.

Part of the beauty of this vision for marriage is that it satisfies the dual test of timelessness and timeliness referenced earlier. It works as well in antiquity as it does in medieval Europe as it does in 1960s New York as it does in 21st century Kenya. It does not require that your wife be educated, or that she be uneducated. It has application whether she has a career outside the home or will be a pillar of service and volunteerism in the community. It works whether she is self-assured and confident in her strengths, or self-conscious and uncertain of her worth. All it requires is that you have a deep understanding of your bride---her past, her present state and context and her future---and that you vow never to circumscribe what is beyond the scope of your service and love. Because if you really understand her, and can commit to doing whatever it takes for her to thrive, you’re at least half way to the marriage of your dreams. Which brings me to my next point...

3. Knowing Love

If the language of a husband working to beautify his wife offended your feminist sensibilities, I understand. I use that language because I speak to men, and the men I know are generally into beautiful women; in other words, I seek to speak in the language of the male soul. But I can strip away any subtle objectification or lingering sexualized/romanticized overtones, and simply speak of love. Marriage presents the unique privilege that is working to enable another person to become something even more good and beautiful that they could become without your presence, commitment, labor and love. This is a two-way street, with little if anything, to distinguish a wife’s approach to her husband from what I’ve already described. Even when we return to the esteemed Biblical simile, you can actually see the same thing at work. Just as Jesus works to beautify his church, and raise it up into maturity, so to the church labors relentlessly in defense of the image and understanding that the world has of Jesus---insistent that when the world is dismissing him, it’s only because they haven’t gotten a good look at him. He’s way more beautiful than you ever thought! This reciprocity makes marriage is an unmatched privilege.

What I can’t strip away from my lithograph of marriage, though, is the disturbing level of humility that it demands from both parties Obviously, serving and being devoted to the well-being of another human being requires tremendous humility. It’s hard; this is true. But arguably harder is accepting that there is a someone you can become, only by the enabling and empowerment of your spouse. The arrogance of the human heart would clench its teeth in disgust, but pride is the mortal enemy of true love. It makes you too good to serve, as well as too good to be served: an irony that would be comedic if it wasn’t so pathetic.

Which brings me back to Ms. Bolick and her article, and perhaps my chief disagreement with all that she wrote. She evinces, in my estimation, a woefully inadequate---but entirely common---understanding of love. You see, love is unlike the other topics of her piece. It isn’t best known through statistics or research or even consultation with an expert as highly esteemed as the “biological anthropologist and perhaps this country’s leading scholar of love,” from whom Kate sought a love definition. Love is best known by lovers!!! What a facepalm statement of truth! Dr. Helen Fisher’s suggestion that “love comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part that craves that piece of chocolate or a work promotion,” couldn’t be more misguided. (I confess to not having read any of Dr. Fisher's work, and recognize she may well have more insight than this quote indicates.) To equate love with what we want to consume is to be far more wrong than right.

So let us consult some great lovers. Consider the eminently quotable Jesus, who said of love, “greater love has no one than this, to lay down your life for your friends.” Love, also, must be received---the lesson learned by ex-fisherman Peter who was too-cool-for-school when Jesus asked to serve him and wash his feet. But if looking at Jesus for pointers makes you feel awkward, just consider the best non-divine lovers you’ve ever known. Or if you’ve never personally known an inspiring lover; perhaps you could uncover some in literature (may I nominate : A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vaunaken). The testimony of such lovers, I humbly predict, will speak in concert. What permits love to blaze evermore is both becoming and enabling the other to become something more beautiful than you each could have been on your own. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really describe my relationship with chocolate at all.

If you still think the academy is the best place for empirically verifying relationship truths, then consider the research referenced in this New York Times article; it’s absolutely worth a read. A couple psychology professors designed a study to look at relationships themselves (see, love is best known by looking at lovers!), to see what made for the best long term relationships. Their conclusion is that the most powerfully bonded marriages are the ones in which each partner experiences self-expansion---the realization of goals, dreams and possibilities with instrumental assistance from the other. According to one professor, “[p]eople have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person . . . . If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.” I have almost nothing to add, except to say that in a successful loving relationship, your orientation is not on yourself. You don’t spend your days and nights contemplating the self-expansion that your spouse has enabled in you---you just know it and delight in it. Rather, you spend your days and nights contemplating your spouse’s self-expansion, and whether you’re laying down your life in every way you can to enable it.

Love can be mysterious, but it’s not all that complicated. We see it played out so tangibly each year at Christmas. Every December we try and persuade our children that the joy of Christmas is in giving, not receiving. And they look at us, as children are apt to do, studying our eyes to try and see if we’re joking. Because they know, for sure, how much fun it is to get. Over time, they eventually start to figure it out; it is fun to give. It’s fun to give because it’s fun to get. Then, consumed with the joy of getting, they need a reminder to think about giving again. And on it goes, around and around, back and forth---the joy of Christmas and the pleasure of love. So there you have it: built on love thus understood, marriage is like Christmas every fucking day of the year.

* * *

Still to come in my next (and final) post:

A married guy vamps on the single life
Some thoughts for Kate Bolick

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A Christian Responds To Kate Bolick’s All The Single Ladies. Who Cares. (Part I)

2011-11-17T09:41:00.001-05:00

Kate Bolick’s cover article on the present state of singleness and marriage for the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly has made quite a splash. Not only has All The Single Ladies reverberated throughout the blogosphere, and landed its author on the Today Show, but it is rumored to be forming the basis of a new scripted television series. To date, the article has generated over 1600 comments, and been shared on Facebook no fewer than 36,000 times. This makes it the second most popular Atlantic article this year, following only Lori Gottlieb’s July/August article on parenting: How To Land Your Kid In Therapy (shared 84,000 times).

Apparently, at least among the Atlantic’s readership, there’s a serious hunger to explore issues of gender, sex, family life and marital status in the modern world. In fact, when one considers the popularity of these articles against some of the Atlantic’s other recent covers, one wonders why the publication bothers to address other issues at all. A June 2011 cover on the Arab Spring was shared fewer than 300 times, and a December 2010 article on clean coal, only a thousand. But Hanna Rosin’s July/August 2010 article on The End of Men? It was shared 41,000 times. Not many topics inspire people to read, think, and talk as much as this.

It might seem funny, but extraordinary interest in these issues is something the Atlantic’s readership has in common with the modern American church. If this surprises you, it may be because the only message you’ve heard the church communicate about marriage in recent years is that it has to be “between one man and one woman.” Of late, the church has been sort of like a disciplined presidential candidate in a debate: when faced with challenging questions that it would not rather confront, it sticks to its talking points. The result is that Christians have garnered a reputation for staying on message about homosexual unions, but the notion that Christians, the church, the Christian Scriptures, and, dare I say God, might have nuanced and insightful things to say about these topics is met with a completely legitimate skepticism by the rest of the world.

The church has a reputation for closed-mindedness. While this notoriety may be partially the result of animus from the secular world, there are at least two causes that, as I see it, are completely within our control. First, as a rule, Christians are notoriously bad listeners, especially when it comes to issues like gender, sexuality, marriage, feminism, singleness and family life. Quite frankly, if you’re not also a Christian, we seriously doubt that you could have anything to say that we’d find valuable or insightful on these topics. Write a carefully researched, personally seasoned account of the modern state of marriage and singleness read by tens of thousands of people? You’re unlikely to generate so much as a nod of acknowledgement from the prominent figures in the Christian world. For all the blog-tastic reception Ms. Bolick’s article received, I was unable to turn up a single public response to it by a Christian voice, either positive or negative (though, feel free to point me to something I’ve missed). I kind of feel like tapping the church on the shoulder---did anyone hear what she just said?

Our difficulty listening gives rise to an unsurprising second malady: namely, we struggle to appropriately and helpfully address people that don’t already agree with us. (Recurring theme alert: see the inside baseball discussion in my last post.) We can regale you with diverse accounts of the meaning of ὑποτάσσω (hupotasso - “submission” (seriously, google it)), or we can introduce you to Biblically-derived gender paradigms that read like political party platforms. If you aren’t already a member of the choir, though, you probably won’t sit through the sermon.

Notwithstanding this reputation, I think the church has a lot to say about the topics at hand. I’d like to help it find its voice. This is my goal over the next series of posts. I’d like to respond to Ms. Bolick’s account of recent changes and developments in the state of women, men, singleness and marriage, and to consider what she presents as implications for single and married life and sexuality, providing a Christian response to as much as I can. I even hope to offer something a response to the more personal components of Ms. Bolick’s article as well. After all, she is quite literally my neighbor (we live in adjacent neighborhoods), and she has crafted in this piece, an intensely personal narrative, worthy of a respectful and thoughtful reaction. In sum, my hope is to articulate what amounts to a valuable Christian response, disabused, as it is, of the fear of listening. So without further ado...

1. The Ascent of Women and Decline of Men

Ms. Bolick wrote her essay to address changes in the state of marriage and singleness that can be traced to overlapping success in the women’s movement and declines in male status and achievement. (I’m providing a link to an outline I put together of Ms. Bolick’s article. It won’t serve as a substitute for reading the original thing, but it might help jog your memory.) She cites many statistics demonstrating that growth in women’s earnings has outpaced growth in men’s earnings over the past four decades, that women out-earn men in certain demographics, and she attempts to discount those statistics that suggest women continue to lag men in compensation. She notes more women than men attend and earn degrees from college and graduate school, while more men than women hold only a high school diploma. Echoing the observations in Hannah Rosin’s The End of Men, she points out that men lost three-fourths of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the recent recession, and that in 2010 women comprised a majority of the American workforce for the first time ever.

When Ms. Bolick looks at the world in the wake of these economic and educational transformations, she sees an emergent gender imbalance. Specifically, in the highly educated and successful echelons of society, she sees quality women outnumbering quality men. To underscore the point, she compares the virtual gender imbalance of her experience with historical instances of real gender imbalances---like the kind that followed 620,000 Civil War male deaths in the United States, and the kind that followed a decimating 3-to-1 male-to-female death ratio in 1940’s Russia. When women outnumber men in a real gender imbalance, it generally spells bad news for marriage, monogamy, and commitment. Fewer people marry, and those who do, do so later in life. These effects have been studied, tested and confirmed, and found especially descriptive of life in more developed countries.

Statistics on the contemporary state of marriage in the United States read like a textbook example of a female > male gender imbalance. Ms. Bolick notes that while the balance of education and economic power has been shifting from men to women, the average marrying age has increased. So too have the numbers of people who aren’t marrying at all. She notes that women no longer feel as though they must have children, and those who still wish to, don’t need to have a husband to do so. Single motherhood is no longer seen as a disgrace, she says. Seeing these effects in a population evenly distributed between men and women, Ms. Bolick thus arrives at the conclusion that there is something of a virtual gender imbalance.

The first point that I think merits a Christian response is the overlapping phenomena of female ascent and male decline. Ms. Bolick’s broader point---that these phenomena have created a gender imbalance with implications for marriage and singleness---is really the thesis of her entire essay. As such, and because I have so much more to say about what remains, I’ll defer commenting on that point for now.

The church hasn’t always been on the best of terms with the feminist movement. Sure, some strains in the church have seen themselves as allies in female quest for equal education, equal rights, equal jobs and equal pay, but by and large, most people wouldn’t think of women’s rights advocates and the modern American evangelical church as peas in a pod. While there may be legitimate differences between members of these two communities, I’d like to suggest that the Church’s proper response to women’s educational and economic gains over the last 40 years is hallefreakinglujah, and amen! I can conceive of no reasonable argument to the contrary.

Christians, and Christianity at large, have no imaginable interest in educational and economic inequality. Period. In fact, we have quite the opposite: nothing less than a Divine calling to care about the most marginalized and disenfranchised members of society. And caring for the disenfranchised necessarily means supporting their enfranchisement, until such time as they no longer suffer from inequality and injustice. We’re to love and support and promote and believe in whomever might comprise “the least of these” at any given time, until such a time as referring to them as “the least of these” is inapposite, anachronistic and insulting, thank you very much.

I think it’s prudent to maintain a sober view of the state of women’s educational end economic success, and recognizing that there is still progress to be made on various fronts of inequality. There are plenty of people out there still sounding the alarm that leadership in government and industry remain disproportionately male. But that wasn’t the point of Ms. Bolick’s article. And as long as we make a mental footnote, and asknowledge that the work for equality may not be done, we need not belabor the point.

It might be argued that the gains and advances of women have come at the expense of men. If so, one might fairly query whether such staunch support for female success is warranted. The answer the church should give is an emphatic ‘yes,’ but perhaps not for the same reasons given by others. A dyed-in-the-blood feminist might rationalize that female success at male expense is justified after Centuries Millenia of oppression by the bastards, who are due their comeuppance. To the contrary, particularly through the last few years of recession, there are probably plenty of men whose experience warrants compassion. A true Christian response would not ignore the difficulties and pain associated with so-called “male decline.” But I think the more appropriate justification the church has for supporting female success, even if it has come at male expense, is that we know success is not a zero-sum game. While it may seem like it is, particularly during seasons of economic contraction, if populations and economies are both growing as they should, there are always more opportunities for people to succeed.

When Jesus was asked which of God’s commands was the greatest, he answered “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” And the second command is like it: “To not view success as a zero-sum game.” Well, he put it more poetically---“love your neighbor as you love yourself”---but the point is no different. At the heart of how to live as a Christian, lies this clarion command. We should love our neighbor as ourselves, and support and celebrate their success as if they were our own; we have nothing to lose when we do. So when women are succeeding in historically unprecedented ways, what is the response of a Christian who cares? “Well done.”

* * *

Still to come in future posts:

keeping hope when your individual experience is defined by forces beyond your control;
what to do about the prevailing male-female dynamics created by a gender imbalance;
and maybe... just maybe, a Christian defense of polygamy

Who cares!? Thoughts? Comments? Leave a comment or email the weblogger: footejm@hotmail.com.

Steve Jobs and the Kingdom of God, Redux

2011-11-04T00:08:00.000-04:00

As many of you may know, my previous post eulogizing Steve Jobs and reflecting on the goodness of his life’s work was the subject of a recent blog post by author and New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight. Scot was gracious enough to include a link to my weblog in his post. So welcome to you newer readers! For the rest of you, if you haven’t had a chance to see what Scot had to say, you may want to give it a read before you continue here. Having now had the chance to reflect on what he said, I’d like to offer a few thoughts in response.

Let me begin with an apology to my readers for whom this discussion will come across as profoundly inside baseballish. As you can see from the subtitle of my weblog, I intend to write in these pages certain things that I just can’t bear not to share with the world. That’s an intentional double negative, (kind of like ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’), but the emphasis is on ‘with the world.’ I’m not intending to write exclusively for a Christian audience, a male audience, a young audience, an audience of professionals, or quite frankly, an audience comprised of any other limited group to which I happen to belong. That said, I am a person whose entire life has been deeply affected by Jesus Christ. I am a Christian (and I have no fear of the label, save some concern that it’s come to be associated with a lot of things that don’t describe me). So if you keep reading, a lot of what you’re likely to encounter in these pages in the coming months and years will be influenced by that reality. This accounts for the thesis of my first post (about the life and work of Steve Jobs), the context out of which my second post (on sustainability) arose, and the not-so-veiled critique presented by my third post.

But in my last post and this post, my faith is not only informing what I have to say, but I’m actually turning aside to directly address some group of Christians on a particular matter. Why, if I’m writing for a broad audience, have I now done this in half of my weblog posts? Because *digital sigh*, as a friend of mine recently put it, the church often has difficulty saying things that the rest of the world finds appropriate and helpful. Or maybe more precisely, while the church has tons of appropriate and helpful things to say, it often just doesn’t say them, or has difficulty articulating them. So, world, if you’re reading a given weblog post in this forum, and I turn to say something to my fellow church, know that it’s because we have something to say to you, and it’s something quite important, but first we’re just trying to get our shit together resolve a few things. So thanks for your patience! And, I hope you don’t feel like you’re eavesdropping on a private conversation, or feel totally bored, but I rather hope you feel like a welcome house guest, who perhaps needs to politely sip your tea while the host couple negotiates a point of domestic contention in your presence. I hope you don’t feel awkward, and thanks for not leaving!

So with those caveats out of the way, now for some inside baseball.

* * *

Scot’s critique, as I understand it, is that I’m contributing to the paunchiness of the kingdom of God. I’m figuratively stuffing the term with empty carbs, refined sugar, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, and he’d like to give it a workout to shed the excess pounds. At the risk of mixing metaphors, he’s acting as a sort of spiritual referee, citing me for a technical foul, and attempting to set the record straight.

Scot is concerned that I have “abstracted the ethical ideals from Jesus’ kingdom vision, all but cut Jesus out of the picture, and then called anything that is just, peace, good and loving the ‘kingdom.’” He vigorously disputes the notion that because “kingdom means goodness, goodness [also] means kingdom.” Instead, he offers this definition:

[The kingdom of God] refers to a society in which God’s will is done, with Jesus as the King, where the Story of Israel finds its completion in the Story of Jesus and where that same Story of Jesus shapes everyone. Kingdom refers to that Davidic hope for the earthly world where God sets up his rule in the Messiah and where people live under that Messiah as God’s redeemed and liberated and healed and loving and peaceful and just people. . . . [And that] refers to that special society that does good under Jesus, that society that is buried in his death and raised in his resurrection and lives that Story out in our world today.

According to Scot, the kingdom of God can’t refer to other forms of “goodness or usefulness and progress in society,” especially when such goodness emerges from the life of “a Buddhist.” Instead, he would prefer that we refer to such goodness as “common grace” (see his Comment # 6), a theological term of unknown origin to this humble weblogger, but a term that nonetheless, is not found in the Bible (even if the concept, arguably, is).

So that’s what the dispute is about: the propriety of using the term “kingdom of God” to describe the work done by a non-Christian like Steve Jobs, as compared with the alternative of preserving the term to mean something much narrower and more specific. To most people, it’s an esoteric dispute, to say the least. But consider the triggering event: the soulful reaction of tens, if not hundreds of millions of people to the passing of a modern day icon. This is, I believe, an event that the church has something to say about, if we can settle our inside baseball disputes. So if I may, a brief defense of my invocation of the phrase...

What I wanted to tell the world, in the wake of Mr. Jobs’s passing, was that the soul connection so many people felt was not a strictly natural phenomenon. It was more than just human hearts brimming with appreciation for his products, or fawning over the supposed creator of modern life. It was instead a very spiritual kind of reaction that begged for language and categories beyond the lexicon of the average person to sort through it. It demanded, if you will, a pastoral and evangelistic response.

But what kind of response was forthcoming from the church? The only ones I could find were characterizations of Mr. Jobs as peddling a false gospel of technological salvation, and an attempt to wedge his work into a hierarchy of valuable behavior, just below raising children and working in a factory. (I’d like to add, I was later pointed to a blog post by Andy Crouch that eulogized Mr. Jobs poignantly, beautifully and succinctly.) But for the church to stare blankly at one of the more significant (non-mass-tragedy) global moments of the year, and have little more to say about it than that it’s an example of “common grace,” (which is just a spiritual euphemism for ‘good stuff that sometimes just happens’) was greatly disturbing to me. These responses from the church were only just less disturbing than some of the prevailing secular narratives of Jobs-as-demigod. The inadequacy of all these responses both on a pastoral and intellectual level motivated me to write.

As to the charge that I’ve porked up the term kingdom of God, and tried to use it to describe something Jesus never meant to describe, I plead not guilty. To the contrary, what I tried to do was to separate and unwind a single thread from the beautiful tapestry of what it means for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Why would I do such a thing? Because I regard lack of imagination as to what it would be like for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven to be an unparalleled, and potentially fatal, liability. I’m with C.S. Lewis on this one (see his mud pies line from Weight of Glory). There are so many people who have no idea how unnervingly, mess-with-your-mind, disturb-your-sleep, leave-you-ravenous-for-more good it is to have things go God’s way.

So what is the evangelist in me to do? (I’m not afraid of that label either!) If I see a moment in which a huge segment of the world, for all its diversity and complexity, is coalescing around real, deeply felt goodness... If I see hundreds of millions tasting and seeing real goodness, even just a grain of it... You better believe I’m gonna take to the digital streets, and proclaim at the top of my virtual lungs that the goodness they’ve tasted belongs to the kingdom of God. “You know what you’ve seen?! You know what you tasted?! It’s a taste of the kingdom of God! It’s nothing close to the entirety, but it is a slice. And you saw it and tasted it and knew that it was good. And if you want to know more about it, you might want to look and see what else Jesus had to say about his kingdom, and look to taste and see some more.”

So, Dr. McKnight, in conclusion I’d simply like to offer up a few questions, with an honest solicitation for one more response from you (as well as an invitation to those who are so inclined, to join the conversation).

1) If the kingdom of God is, in fact, God’s kingdom, why is it incumbent on us to explain the places that it does not get established? This seems to me a fool’s errand. Is this any different than trying to circumscribe those sources through which God can’t speak? I agree and understand that when Jesus uses the term “kingdom of God”, he is invoking, as you say, a “Davidic hope for the earthly world where God sets up his rule in the Messiah.” But why couldn’t such a future reign be characterized (in part) by a revolution in human communication and access to information? And if those could be characteristics of such a world, why can’t such characteristics break into the here and now, just like all sorts of dimensions of God’s coming kingdom do?

2) I could summarize our conversation this way. I said the kingdom of God is X. You said, no that’s wrong theologically. Now I’m trying to point out that I had compelling pastoral/evangelistic reasons for saying it was X. Clearly, pastoral and evangelistic efforts should be subordinate to theology, and not the other way around. But I’m not a theologian, so I need some help! (I couldn’t explain the difference between being Reformed and being anabaptist to save my life.) I understand that you didn’t want what you wrote to be about my post, or about Steve Jobs, but about the theological concept of the kingdom. But the subtitle of your blog is “exploring the significance of Jesus and Orthodox faith for the 21st century.” Can we do that for a second? What appropriate and helpful theological things do you think the church has to say to a 21st century world mourning the loss of Steve Jobs? Supposing his life had nothing to do with the kingdom of God, surely the church has something more consequential to say than simply acknowledging his importance to the business and tech communities, right? Surely we can say more than just that Steve Jobs “did good” or “did benefaction,” right? Or maybe you can explain why the exhibition of God’s common grace through Jobs’ life is a bigger deal than it sounds like, and why a non-believing mind shouldn’t just regard the term as a spiritual euphemism? I’d really love to hear how you’d approach these questions.

Consider this a loving and sincere entreaty for applied theological assistance. Perhaps I can yet join you in your quest to rid the kingdom of its corpulence.

A Guy Walks Into a Church...

2011-10-30T17:05:00.002-04:00

(a vignette of contrasting gender-domestic theory)

At a community group gathering with a few men from his church, Jamey, a 31-year-old newlywed, shares candidly about the challenges of early marriage. In particular, he talks about the hazards of working through the division of domestic duties with his wife. He loves, he tells us, a clean kitchen. It is perhaps his highest domestic priority, which he ascribes to his father’s love of cooking. His wife Christine, however, spends much of her day stacking boxes at work, and can think of little she’d rather avoid in the late afternoon than cleaning and stacking dishes.

He brings this up one recent evening, (over dishes, no doubt), raising the question of why the mound of plates and glasses in front of him can’t seem to be vanquished before he arrives home. Needless to say, this does not go over well. His wife uses the moment to bring to his attention that each day he enjoys a miraculously spotless bathroom, without ever so much as laying his hand to a toilet brush. And she further notes that his clothing miraculously reappears in his drawers, cleaned and folded each week, similarly without effort! She speculates that in the course of their brief married life, he may have never folded his own clothing. To which he responds with an explosion of incredulity, which, in turn, precipitates tears, and then regret and eventually apologies, and ultimately... peace.

But Jamey shares the anecdote looking for a bit of encouragement. This is normal, right? Sure they’re doing fine, he says. But fights like these aren’t fun. And so, one of the guys from this small group, a follower in the way of Jesus turns to him and says:

(A) “Ah, Jamey thanks for sharing! You know, I think it’s great that you’re trying to lead your wife through this. It’s important to recognize that what you’re working through are the practical challenges of learning to live in accordance God’s design for men and women. God created you each with specific roles to play: you’re to be Christine’s leader, and she’s to be your helper and completer. God gets more glory when men and women live in accordance with that design, but it can take some time to work out all the kinks in practice. As her spiritual head and leader, what Christine needs from you is direction, encouragement and empowerment so that she can thrive within her primary sphere of engagement---which will ultimately be in the home.

As a man of God, you have an extraordinary call on your life to pursue the dreams God has given you. In particular, I know you have great vision to accomplish important work and create beautiful art through your career as an actor. And now that you’re married---in fact, probably a significant part of the reason why you got married---you need the support that only your wife can provide you. This will become all the more apparent once you guys have kids. In all the beautiful chaos of having babies, for you to continue to be successful in your work, more than anything, you’ll need to have someone who can manage things on the home front. They say that behind every great man is a great woman, and it’s true. As much as you need her support, she needs to support you; it’s innate in the way you were both designed.

It may take some time for Christine wrap her head around this because she spent several years in college and pursuing her career, but that’s okay. It can be an adjustment to become fully devoted to maintaining the home, but eventually, she’ll discover the freedom in living in submission both to you and to how God created her. She’ll find that she has purpose and meaning and value in her life by being fully devoted to supporting you, submitting to you, and enabling you to do what you’re called to do. And even though it can be difficult to communicate to her about things like what your domestic priorities are, it’s essential that you do so.

If Christine isn’t prioritizing domestic duties in the way that you really need her to, you should patiently and lovingly lead her to an understanding of how she can best meet your needs. Of course, it’s also important to encourage her and to express appreciation for the other household responsibilities she manages, but you need to make clear what your priorities are. In so doing, you’ll actually be helping to ensure that both of your needs will be met: your present need to have a better kept kitchen will be satisfied, and so too will her much deeper need of embracing God’s design for her as your wife. Just like a company can’t have two CEOs, and a dancing duo can’t have two lead dancers, someone needs to be the bottom line decision maker between you two. And you’re marriage will be immeasurably better once you both fully embrace that this is your role.”

-OR-

(B) “Ah, Jamey thanks for sharing! I’m so excited for you both to be working through this stuff early in marriage. Not only is it good for your character and your wife’s character, but working through this grit is essential to building a foundation for your relationship, your family life and your dreams.

Hammering out the details of domestic life is kind of funny. On one hand, domestic arrangements are the essence of triviality. In the scope of human life and achievement and aspiration and labor and values, deciding who’s going to keep the kitchen clean, and who’s going to keep the clothes clean are petty, inconsequential details. But on the other hand, they constitute a slice of the inescapable in life. The domestic details of life are something that everyone has to do something about, and that universality makes them oddly important.

For example, all adults make plans to deal with their soiled dishes and soiled clothes. Whether you wash all your own dishes and clothes on a daily basis, or your apartment is filled with piles of dirty plates and shirts, or you outsource everything to restaurants and dry cleaners, everyone addresses these domestic responsibilities, and does so while balancing them against the truly important things of life (i.e., earning money, pursuing dreams, fulfilling responsibilities, enjoying free time, working out, hanging with friends, etc.). However you choose to deal with your domestic responsibilities, you’re balancing it against what you regard as a more important use of your time and effort. And what you and Christine have been working through, and what all married couples work through early on, is finding what how to balance what you both prefer to have done, what you’re good at, and the demands of your respective important obligations. This presents an inescapable clash on some detail or another, and it can take enormous effort to find an equilibrium that will hum.

But finding a humming equilibrium is worth it! If and when the size of your family grows, the volume and importance of domestic responsibilities will grow exponentially. Especially once you have children, everyone in your family will be immeasurably benefited by you choosing to view yourself as an equal partner in domestic responsibilities. .Moreover, as life goes on, whatever domestic duty you haven’t together figured out how to expel will present itself again and again for expulsion. What lurks as a little disunity in your domestic arrangements early in marriage can mushroom catastrophically down the line. So cheers for tackling this stuff now!

But there is a risk that is perhaps even greater than the risk of some colossal future conflict. Namely, there is a hazard that for one of you (and if it’s going to happen to anyone, it’s most likely to be your wife), the important things of life will eventually entirely succumb to domestic drudgery. This danger is real and profound, and there is no better way to avoid it like having the conversation you just had.

There are a lot of things to say on this point, but I’ll limit myself to one. God gives everyone, your wife included, dreams about work. The dreams may be slow in unfolding, or they may be crystal clear from a young age, but the dreams are real and the work can be done by no one else. And over the course of your marriage, the greatest threat your wife will face to possessing her dreams and accomplishing her work will be than the weight of domestic responsibilities---the ones we all face, and are all obliged to take care of. So while it doesn’t matter one lick who does what, know that it matters enormously for you to reach an equitable division of labor. Because in so doing, you’ll help preserve your wife’s dreams and you’ll help ensure she has the space she needs to accomplish her real work.”

Thoughts provoked? Putting off domestic duties? Exploding with incredulity?
Leave a comment or email the weblogger: footejm@hotmail.com

Fetishizing Sustainability

2011-10-19T12:50:00.003-04:00

Last weekend, my church played a brief video at the start of the service about a young woman in our congregation who has recently made some dramatic and admirable changes in her life. At 22 years old, “Erica” is a recent graduate of NYU who had a promising job in a lucrative industry. Although she had found professional success very early in her career (and in the middle of a recession, no less), Erica felt called to do something more with her life. Through a variety of circumstances she ended up moving to an impoverished neighborhood in the South Bronx. Here, after work and on weekends, Erica began to spend time with the kids who lived on her street. She invited them over to her house, to play and get help with homework. When they were hungry, she cooked them dinner. When they seemed stressed by the weight of their world, she talked to them about life and faith. And when they went home, she prayed for them, and found herself deeply, deeply moved.

As Erica tells the story, her after-work endeavors made her professional engagements seem trivial by comparison. But as her job demanded 70 and 80 hours from her week, she found herself with less and less margin to devote to these marginalized children. And so, after much wrangling, Erica decided to quit her job, and the generous paycheck that came with it. Instead, she would ask her friends and family to chip in and help her meet her financial obligations, so that she could devote more of her time to mentoring and caring for the kids on her block. She relayed her story with the goal of soliciting volunteer mentors to help her in her work.

As I watched Erica tell her story, I had some mixed feelings. On the one hand, what’s not to love about someone who becomes so intoxicated with loving and caring for poor and neglected children, that she’s willing to make enormous personal sacrifices to give them the gift of her consistent presence? But on the other hand, I found myself rather worried on her behalf. To me, Erica came across as a deep, idealistic, and intense 22. Which, if you’ve ever encountered it, is a beautiful and frightening combination. (If you can’t recall what this is like, conjure me c. 2003, and you’ll have a pretty good idea.) When she spoke, she still sounded more enamored by the prospect of living out a dream, than sobered or embittered by the difficulties and challenges presented by her ambition. And all I could do was wonder about was the sustainability of her new arrangement.

I wondered how long Erica would be able to keep at this. I wondered whether it had already sunk in that she had abandoned a well paying job in an economy where finding any job is an accomplishment. I wondered whether she recognized that none of her neighbors had the luxury of “raising support” like she does. I was curious whether she was sensitive to the fact that if any of her neighbors quit their jobs, even on the pretense that they wanted to spend more time with their kids, that such a decision would probably land them on welfare, if not lead to outright homelessness. I wondered if any of her neighbors might be offended that, in order to take care of their kids, she had quit her job, and was taking donations from her friends and family to provide for herself. I wondered whether and how things might change for her over the coming months and years as her perspective and life develop. While I suspect the kids on her block will be better off with a flurry of investment in their lives for a possibly short span than they would have been with no investment at all, I did wonder about it. And I wondered how they’ll handle it if she is ever unable to continue what she’s doing. I wondered if Erica recognized how many people have dedicated their professional lives to trying to break cycles of poverty and other systemic injustice, and whether she has learned anything from those who have gone before her. I wondered, I wondered, I wondered.

And so I found myself, not for the first time in my life, picking apart the seriously noble and heroic wagers of another person---in this case, a twenty two year old girl who had done absolutely nothing to me! Except to ask if I wanted to help mentor some kids in the Bronx. Come on man! What is wrong with you? Get a grip! But because I’m a weblogger now, I decided I should push past this brutal judgment (and the corresponding self-flagellation) to figure out if I can make some sense of my reaction. And I believe I have; I think I’m guilty of fetishizing sustainability.

* * *

Sustainability generally refers to the ability of something to be perpetually maintained at a certain level. Often, the term is used in reference to the viability of production or a system relative to the availability of natural resources (e.g., if we want to manufacture cell phones using coltan, how long will it take until we’ve wiped out all easily accessible reservoirs of it?). Similarly, in reference to our lives, sustainability has to do with the viability of our endeavors, relative to our available resources.

If you’ll indulge me a universal proclamation, I’ll assert that everyone loves sustainability. Everyone wants a life that is sustainable in its goodness. We don’t just want a life that’s good for now, we want a life that can keep being good, come what may. This is proven even by counterexample --- show me someone who is relishing in the pleasure of their clearly unsustainable lifestyle, and I’ll show you someone who’s doing so either because they think it is sustainable, or because they know it isn’t, wish it was, and recognize that if they don’t indulge now, the chance to do so may soon be gone. Either way, it seems like that yearning for sustainability is inescapable---like it’s embedded in the human heart.

And this is a good thing! Or, at least, our appetite for sustainability plays an important role in the process of maturing. In fact, if you look at the journey of life through the lens of “the desire for sustainability”, life appears as a series of stages that are only sustainable in the short term, and through which we can only pass once we process a few conceptual “moments”. Before we’ll ever intentionally transition out of a stage of life that we find ourselves in, we first have to comprehend the unsustainability of our present reality. Second, we have to see the possibility of a more sustainable future. And third, we often must choose to move into a seriously unsustainable stage before broader sustainability becomes possible. Let me try to unpack these moments with a few examples.

Take toddlers, for instance. At some point, kids realize that it’s not sustainable for them to keep wearing diapers, because they lack the resources to do so indefinitely. Eventually, they come to recognize that getting dirty every time they have to relieve themselves just isn’t worth it. If they thought about it, they might also recognize that continuing to wear diapers by the time they’re school age would take an emotional toll that they just aren’t interested in paying. Not to mention the cost of diapers, or the awkwardness of changing their own diaper, once parents aren’t around to provide such services. Even if these things aren’t a matter of conscious awareness, successful potty training involves some appreciation of present unsustainability. Equally a part of the equation, however, is catching a glimpse of the more sustainable future that is using a toilet---of that incredible perk that is having your refuse whisked effortlessly away, at the touch of a lever. With movements one and two under their belts, toddlers are then poised to go through the transition. Whether it’s a couple days of household pantslessness, or spending 15 minutes out of every hour sitting on the pot, toddlers generally have to go through some seriously unsustainable transition stage before being fully potty trained. But those are the key moments of a transition toward maturity: recognizing present unsustainability, the possibility of future sustainability, and committing without reservations to a season of unsustainable training.

The same pattern holds true for other stages of development (moments noted in parentheses). Teenagers come to recognize (1) the unsustainability of depending on other people for transportation, and choose, often enthusiastically, to work towards (2) the more sustainable future of having a driver’s license, by (3) logging long hours with mom or dad as an nagging omnipresence in the minivan. Young professionals often recognize that (1) being dispensable to their employer does not make for a sustainable work situation. So, (3) they’ll labor incredibly long hours in the hopes of (2) securing their future, and making life more sustainable. The same pattern holds true for pursuing a romantic relationship, or quitting smoking, or losing weight, or moving overseas, or starting a service project. Maturing demands that we pass through these three moments, repeatedly.

Depending on the specific transition at issue, the three moments may not be equally challenging. The act of retirement, for instance, (a 3) does not usually call for much in the way of a seriously unsustainable transition. But it can be extremely difficult (1) for an aging worker to recognize the unsustainability of his continuing to work, or (2) to have hope for a more sustainable life in retirement. For older individuals who can no longer live independently, often the second moment is the sticky point. It’s easy enough to recognize (1) that you’re too infirm to live by yourself, and you may even have (3) family members prepared to assist you in making the transition as painless as possible, but if you can’t muster (2) the hope of a sustainable life in an assisted living facility, you’ll fight against the transition with all you have.

Which brings me to an interesting point. If we can’t manage any one of those three moments, our appetite for sustainability, ironically, will cripple us. It can have the opposite effect of what it should have, leading us to avoid changing (and maturing) at all costs, in the perverse and worthless effort to preserve a fading sustainability. Consider the mother who cannot emotionally release her children once they’ve reached adulthood. If she can’t tell that parenting them the same way she did when they were school aged has become unsustainable, or can’t imagine that relating with them in any other way could be sustainable, or simply can’t bear to go through those initial months of empty nest syndrome, she’ll cling to a dying sustainability. She’ll be one of those “helicopter” parents that they write about in Time Magazine. Why? Because she loved the sustainability of her former life, craves the goodness that it was, and will create it by imagination if she has to.

Perhaps even more ironically, when the hunger for sustainability, which animates our very maturation, morphs into something more than hunger, like an obsession or fetish, will wreak all kinds of decidedly unsustainable havoc on our lives. At best it will stunt our growth, and at worst it will cause us to grow into an unbearable presence. Consider my self-confessed sustainability fetish described above. I was so preoccupied with the sustainablity of Erica’s arrangement (or the lack thereof), that I floated unchecked into an eddy of critique and misguided judgment.

My ill-advised response arose, in part, because I forgot that from a distance, it can be hard to tell which moment someone else is inhabiting. At first, I thought Erica had just arrived in an unsustainable arrangement, but didn’t know it yet (moment 1). But to hear her tell it, she walked through all three moments. Upon catching the vision of a more sustainable future (2), she left the unsustainable arrangement, passing through (3) a potentially very difficult interim, of quitting her job and asking her friends and family for support. Trying to gauge these things from a distance is notoriously tricky. What if someone tried to assess me in the same way? Someone could easily see a pair of 2000+ word weblog essay-posts and conclude, dismissively, that the weblogger in question is nuts, is in a clearly unsustainable moment 1, and has bit off way more than he can chew. But the weblogger might tell you he’s jumped into a temporarily unsustainable moment 3, because he has a vision of a more sustainable future that calls for it.

But enough about Erica and me. Let’s talk about you for a minute (particularly if you also were privileged to hear Erica’s invitation). The whole reason she shared her story was to invite people to join her in her work: to serve, love, and give of our lives in the service of some people who could really use it. Perhaps it would be useful to reconsider your response to her request through the framework I’ve provided.

Do you recognize that if your life has no reliable outlet to serve other people, it is legit unsustainable? Because if not, it seems you could use some moment 1 revelation. If we never have occasion to do things that don’t directly benefit our careers or our lives, we’re missing out on a profound opportunity for goodness. The truth is, it’s just not sustainable not to be serving in some capacity. That could be the subject of another blog post in its own right, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Second, do you realize that, as busy as you are, a life in which you regularly carve time out of your schedule to serve other people is more sustainable? If you doubt this, you should take the bet, and give it a shot. Consistently serving will round you out, make you more human, and satisfy your soul. I’d try to sell you on it more, but serving other people isn’t all about you, and I wouldn’t want you to be misled.

Last, and most importantly, are you willing to step into an arrangement that may be temporarily unsustainable in order to arrive at a more sustainable future? Maybe you recognize that making a weekly commitment to a 12-year-old in the South Bronx until the week that kid turns 18 is more than you can follow through on. Why not just commit to doing it for some temporarily viable (even if ultimately unsustainable) period of time, like through next spring, before you re-evaluate. The transition season may be incredibly taxing, but the payoff in maturity is totally worth it. Just ask a potty training toddler.

Thoughts? Feedback? Find yourself floating into an eddy of critique and misguided judgment? Leave a comment or email the weblogger: footejm@hotmail.com

Mourning Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T20:57:00.004-04:00

Steve Jobs has been widely and deeply mourned in his passing. In fact, to the extent you can gauge such things, his death seems to have been one of the most deeply felt events of the last three or four years---at least by the younger segment of the population. Subjectively, it certainly has been my experience. I'm not usually one feel celebrity deaths too profoundly, but I certainly have with Steve Jobs. And apparently, my experience is not an isolated occurrence. While it's clearly not a perfect measure, no other event has provoked a Twitter response on anywhere close to this magnitude. In the time shortly after his death was announced, Twitter users were firing off over 10,000 tweets per second about it. Steve's death apparently struck a chord with a broader audience than the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011 (just over 5,500 tweets/second), or the death of Osama bin Laden (roughly 5,000 tweets/second). In the history of this social media giant, the only event that came close to inspiring a response on this magnitude was Beyonce's pregnancy announcement at the MTV video music awards (8,800 tweets/second). Okay, so it's not exactly a metric of the most important events of recent years, but it is a window into what people have found most provocative.

So, what is one to make of this? There have been no shortage of voices to eulogize him. (For a nice collection of high profile reactions, take a look at this or this.) Most reactions are appropriately respectful, and even reverential of the man and his incredible life’s work. But more than a few reactions seem to really miss the mark. Some people can apparently think of no one they’d rather worship. Steve Jobs is the man who “invented our world,” raved Slate’s Farhad Manjoo; he “created modern life.” Okay, maybe not. On the other hand, plenty of people also recalled his humanity --- that he was known for being difficult to work for (with a penchant for “caustic” and “humiliating” criticism), and more than a bit egotistic.

Surprising to me, however, was that the most negative reactions came from Christian sources. Christianity Today’s website recycled an article from January, 2011 written by Andy Crouch called “The Gospel of Steve Jobs.” The thesis of the essay? That Steve Jobs is the “perfect evangelist” for a kind of godless hope that depends on neither revelation nor dogma, in the line of “Socrates, Buddha or Emerson.” According to Crouch, Jobs’s genius was found in his ability “to persuade us, at least for a little while” that the “cold comfort” of technological devices is enough to satisfy our souls. That’s a pretty blunt assessment. And if you take it seriously, might be enough make you question how you feel about the man. (Jobs, that is. Maybe Crouch too.)

Or consider the reaction of Dr. Albert Mohler, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Honestly, I don’t know what one should expect from someone who holds that title (I really don’t), but consider his take. Jobs was “one of the most innovative cultural creatives of all time,” who demonstrated the incredible “power of an individual life,” each of which is imbued with “massive creative abilities.” So far so good. Mohler even hails Jobs for his impeccable “sense of taste,” but then reminds us that “unerring taste, aesthetic achievement, and technological genius will not save the world,” and that “Christians know what the world does not — that the mother tending her child, the farmer planting his crops, the father protecting his family, the couple faithfully living out their marital vows, the factory worker laboring to support his family, and the preacher preparing to preach the Word of God are all doing far more important work.”

If you can manage to look past the gender stereotyping of Mohler’s final commentary (one might be forgiven for wondering how he feels about the father tending his child or the mother protecting her family), is he right? Is it true that parenting a child, or planting a crop, or working in a factory to provide for your family are fundamentally and inherently more important than Steve Jobs’s life work? Without denigrating any of those other important actions, I can’t help but think that Mohler’s missing something big here.

There are hundreds of millions of people who can trace a tangible improvement in their lives directly to the labor of this man. In reflecting on that, without adequate mental categories for it, erroneous conclusions abound. Whether one concludes that Steve Jobs was a demigod, or that his life’s work to revolutionize the way people can interact with information was a petty and trivial waste of time, there seems to be a lot of confusion. I decided to write this essay because I think that the reflexive eulogizing of those hundreds of millions of people has roots in something more profound than delusional worship of the creator of the smartphone.

Why did Steve Jobs’s life work strike such a personal chord with so many people? I’d like to suggest that the answer has to do with the kingdom of God. Jesus had a lot to say about the so-called “kingdom of God,” and I won’t try to summarize all or even very much of it right here. But you’ve probably heard the phrase before, as in: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This was how Jesus taught people to pray.

At the risk of over-simplification, the kingdom of God is the realm where God’s will is done---where things work the way God wants. It requires some vivid imagining for people stuck in a bitterly broken world to conceive of such a kingdom. But if you let your mind roam, you might be able to sketch some outlines. Start with the obvious: no more meaningless suffering, no more inexplicable pain. No more sickness, no more death, perhaps not even any decay. Purpose and meaning are woven into the fabric of all experience. Work is productive. Love is the prevailing character of all interaction. Everything works the way it’s supposed to, for everyone. And at the heart of it all, there is perfect goodness---a person of inexplicable beauty and wisdom and perfection, sustaining the economic, social, physical and spiritual dynamics of all that takes place. In other words, words can’t do it justice, but it’s good.

But what does Steve Jobs’s life have to do with this kingdom? One of the things that Jesus taught was that the kingdom of God was “at hand.” Again, this probably means a lot of things, among them that people are called to participate in bringing the kingdom of God with us, “on earth as it is in heaven.” To labor with the goal of making things work the way God wants. Whether by taking a stand for social justice, or by fighting oppression and poverty, or by opposing all things that set themselves up against the way of God. By unlocking the spiritual and psychological chains that stunt people, or by pointing people to the path of freedom and maturity, or by working for the restoration of the natural world. By pleading with God to set things right in individual instances, and once and for all. The way I see it, Steve Jobs did this type of work.

For the immensity of his impact on modern life, he participated in the work of the kingdom in a small, but noteworthy, manner. He recognized the importance, and profound good, of having access to information – for solving problems, for connecting with other people, for experiencing music, for creating. You might say he recognized that, in the kingdom of God, the barriers to information and communication would be dissolved. And he realized the poignancy of creating truly beautiful tools for people to use for these purposes. Jobs was, to borrow a phrase from philosopher Dallas Willard, “free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good.” On Tuesday night people publicly recognized, at the rate of 10,000 per second, that this was the story of Steve Jobs’s life.

I understand that some Christians might regard my perspective as provocative. After all, how can a man, who is clearly more influenced by Eastern philosophy (and by his own account, LSD) than by anything in the Christian tradition, have been an ambassador for the kingdom of God? A follower of Jesus might fairly ask, given the profound centrality of the spiritual freedom Jesus offers, does anything else even matter? Allow me to respond.

There’s an age-old (Christian) question about whether, if something profoundly good comes from a source that doesn’t recognize Jesus, it is profoundly good. I fall squarely in the camp of “good is good, no matter the source.” There are people who will tell you that if you go to a famine stricken region and dole out life saving food and medicine to thousands of people, but fail to do so from a posture of Christian faith, you haven’t done any real good, and you certainly haven’t advanced the kingdom of God. I think that’s nuts. I don’t care if you’re a grouchy humanist or a vindictive satanist, whether you’re feeding the hungry out of a sense of guilty compulsion or selfish ambition. You cannot make feeding the hungry any less good, and your work is no less a component of the advancement of the kingdom of God. Why? Because God stands firmly in favor of people not starving. Period.

There are also people who will maintain that if you’re feeding hungry people, but failing to simultaneously evangelize them, what you’re doing really isn’t good at all. In this case, I fall squarely in the camp that recognizes different goods aren’t mutually exclusive. Consequently, I don’t have a problem calling things good when they are. The existence of other good things, or are even more important good things, doesn’t negate goodness in the first instance. Feeding the hungry is always good. It is not made any less good by the fact that spiritual freedom is also good (or better). It is simply a piece of the puzzle. A component of what ought to happen. A microcosm of what should happen, and what life is like in the kingdom of God. Among other things, people don’t starve in God’s kingdom.

Jesus made a big deal about the paradox that the kingdom of God is both now and not yet. I think he meant that no matter how much of an instrument of goodness you might manage to be in your life, there will always be fundamental problems --- more fundamental than you can do anything about. Sometimes bringing the kingdom of God feels like a game of cosmic whack-a-mole. Just when you see one person set free from addiction, an economy is torn apart by recession. Just when you’re mentoring someone into maturity, someone else is being tutored in a life of crime. Just when urban renewal is starting to show signs of endurance, global warming brings ecological catastrophe. Just when you make progress halting sex trafficking, someone is clubbing baby seals for skin. Just when you invent a breakthrough in the way people can communicate, someone is using it to exploit women and children. And on it goes.

Followers of Jesus are those who recognize, in faith, that God has done something about the stuff we can’t do anything about, and that there’s a future coming in which the kingdom of God will be fully realized. It will come. And it will be good. But for now, our call is to join God in the renewal of all things. And if we’re willing to follow God to such a destiny, we get to play a role.

Thus lived Steve Jobs. His life resulted in amazingly widespread good, the effects of which will be felt for generations. But he would have made for a miserable savior. It almost seems silly when you say it out loud (or that you have to say it at all), because he didn’t scratch the surface of the good we need. There are problems, both global and personal, that he was powerless to address, not least of which was death itself. But as hundreds of millions of people instinctively and reflexively recognized, the fruit of his labor bears the hallmark of the kingdom of God. It was good.