Rachel Held Evans - blog

Saturday Superlatives 5/18/2013 (and see you in Chesapeake, Virginia!)

Rachel Held Evans — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:14:05 +0000

Team Dan & Rachel go to the beach (OBX)

Once again, I’m posting early because this evening and tomorrow morning I’ll be hanging out with the good folks of Centerville Baptist Church in Chesapeake, Virginia. On Saturday evening, at 6:30 p.m., I’ll be sharing about my year of biblical womanhood, and on Sunday morning, at 10:30 a.m., I’ll be speaking on “the wilderness” in the morning service. Both events are free and open to the public. Childcare is provided. Let me know if I will see you there! (More info here.)

Now on to Superlatives…

Around the Web…

Funniest:
Lindy West at Jezebel with “A Great Gatsby Book Report By a Kid Who Only Saw the Movie”

“The Great Gatsby is a very important and famous book which tells its story through many pages, all of which I enjoyed reading very much. It was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived from 1896 to 1940 and truly wrote many books. Through its use of characters, garbage falling from the sky all the time, and black people constantly playing the trumpet on a fire escape, The Great Gatsby is truly a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald about how you shouldn't just buy a castle near your ex-girlfriend in the 1920s and then wait for her to fall back in love with you, because eventually you might get murdered by a poor person.”

Wisest:
Stephen Mattson at Sojourners with “Christians: It’s Not a SIN to Change Your Beliefs”

“But theology — our study and beliefs about God — should be a natural process involving change instead of avoiding it. Our God is too big and too wonderful to completely understand by the time we graduate high school, or college, or get married, or have children, or retire. Our life experiences, relationships, education, exposure to different cultures and perspectives continually affect the way we look at God. Our faith is a journey, a Pilgrim’s Progress, and our theology will change. And while we may not agree with a person’s new theological belief, we need to stop seeing the inherent nature of change as something negative.”

Coolest:
The National Geographic Traveler Magazine photo contest entries and winners

Bravest:
Jen Hatmaker with “Examining Adoption Ethics: Part One”

“There are very real orphans all over the earth, but most of us don’t pursue the kids there are; we pursue the kids we want, and these countries know the score. Older kids stay on waiting children lists, while the baby line is hundreds deep. It doesn’t take long for opportunists to figure this out… With much of the adoption pipeline supplied by corruption and confusion, we cannot possibly claim God’s sovereignty. We need to call it what it is: an injustice God would never endorse. It is time to stop participating in the type of adoption that encourages able-bodied parents to give up their children or get pregnant to supply a baby for a paycheck. We cannot be complicit in what amounts to trafficking.”

Smartest:
Laura Ziesel with “Was Jesus the Bible Incarnate?”

“My observation is that people read John 1 this way: ‘In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with God, and the Bible was God..... And the Bible became flesh and lived among us.’ And that, my friends, is not what John was saying.”

Most Surprising:
Scot McKnight (citing Ken Stewart) with “Calvinism and Women”

“…It is necessary for us now to recognize that portions of the Reformed world today fall well behind Calvin’s own demonstrated sixteenth-century readiness to capitalize on the then-expanding influence of women in kingdom work.”

Most Eye-Opening (and Frustrating and Infuriating):
NPR with “The Hidden Cost of the Drone Program”

“Bryant's second shot is another he won't soon forget. On a routine mission, he was ordered to fire a missile at a house with three suspected militants inside. Moments before the missile hit, Bryant says he saw something run around the corner of the building. ‘It looked like a small person," he says. "[There] is no doubt in my mind that that was not an adult’ The missile hit, and afterward there was no sign of the person. It was the end of Bryant's shift, and as he walked out into the early morning sun in Nevada, he says he didn't feel distraught like he did after his first shot. He felt numb…”

Most Helpful:
Kathy Escobar with “What Seems to Help in the Midst of Pain”

“less words, more presence. i have a theory that we often have an unconscious hope that if we could say the right words in the exact right way, it would radically help another person. most people aren’t one sentence away from feeling better when they are in pain. presence seems to matter more than words. long-haul-ness goes the furthest for those in pain. many people are eager to help and support g at the beginning of pain eruptions, but over time many people drop off and quit wondering how we’re doing. safe people don’t do drive-by pain relief. they are in it for the long haul, which i keep realizing is sometimes the hardest thing of all.”

Most Encouraging:
Emily Freeman with “12 Things Your Daughter Needs You to Say”

"2. Live with God rather than for God. It is common to tell young people to live their lives for God. And though I get the sentiment, I have seen how telling her to live for God can be confusing. The truth is the life she now lives, she lives by faith in Jesus. To tell her to live for God could lead her to try to perform for acceptance rather than living from the acceptance that is already hers in Christ. God isn’t sitting out in the audience of her life, waiting for her to get things in order. No, he’s standing with her on stage. Even better, he stands within her. Remind her of her kind, compassionate, powerful companion who goes with her wherever she goes."

Most Fun:
GeoGuess.com

Most Powerful:
Zack Hoag with “A False Gospel of Reconciliation”

“And this false gospel of reconciliation doesn’t stop here. It is not only reserved for churches fraught with sex abuse scandals. It rears its ugly head in all kinds of conservative evangelical circles, taking the similar shape of pain-denying theologies that counsel victims to get over it and get back together with those who harmed them. The gospel is about reconciliation, right? So if your spouse hits you, forgive them and reconcile. And if your kids are starving because of a father’s gambling, get some counseling from an elder and make it work, honey. And if some friends cheated you in business, or a church member is spreading vicious lies about you, or a family member won’t stop manipulating you into situations of terrible emotional pain, hey, it’s better than you deserve because you’re a hellbound sinner too, so just reconcile with them because that’s what grace means (i.e., subjecting yourself to present pains presumably less than the eternal pain of conscious torment in hellfire). This is all BS. And it’s BS because it twists the truth of the ministry of reconciliation into something that perpetuates the abuse of power instead of subversively stopping it.”

Most Relatable (nominated by Kelly Youngblood):
Caris Adel with “Paralyzed by the Slash”

“ I’m not called to complacency or ignorance, but I’m also not called to perfection.”

Most Heartbreaking (and Hopeful)
Registered Runaway with “Psalm 55: Betrayed”

“Instead he starts off the service with a word on the same-sex marriage bill that passed the house last week. And I drop my head because it sounds like an incoming train and I feel like I’m stuck to the tracks. From my chest to my throat to my eyes, I am busted up. I am entering into an anxiety attack and I know it. I know what’s coming. I hear him start with the disclaimer- that I matter to God… but then it is like I don’t matter to God. Like I hate truth. Like I don’t belong here. I’m alarmed when the crowd claps at the punchline and suddenly this megachurch compresses to a closet. I look over at my mom. She is fidgeting. Her head is tilted forward and her eyes are brimming with tears. I lean over and whisper, “I have to go.” I slip down the row and blow past the greeter. I throw open the doors until I am almost outside where there is Air. And it’s then that I hear my sister chasing me. She’s throwing her arms around me, holding me up because I can’t hold myself anymore. I’m still short of breath. I still feel that knife twisting in my gut. And then I see my mom marching out behind us..."

Best Imagery:
Christena Cleveland with “Searching for Pentecost”

“…In order to fully embrace the kingdom of God we must turn our backs on Babel and turn toward the Spirit of Pentecost. Only then will we truly live out our calling as the people of God. Paul, Peter, Luke, John, James and the writer of Hebrews repeatedly and emphatically make the same point: the unified church is the vehicle through which the kingdom of God is powerfully communicated to the world. A church that is still operating under the curse of Babel is a disempowered church.”

Best Insight:
Sarah Bessey with “In which they are overlooked in a sea of hipsters”

"A few months ago, I requested stories or anecdotes about how it feels to be a woman in the church. I was more than a little overwhelmed by the responses, both the sheer number and the content, but I did my best to respond to each one. Women filled my inbox with stories – beautiful and horrible, hurtful and empowering – about their experiences within the institutions of Christianity. After all my research, I thought I knew what to expect. And sure enough, there were the stories about women feeling marginalized because they are not married or do not/ cannot have children; stories about women who had men turn their backs when they stood up to preach their first sermon; stories about women who stayed in abusive marriages because of their church teachings; a lot of affirming women who found their voice and healing within church. But one theme emerged that I hadn’t looked for, over and over: Women, in the middle of their lives, who felt invisible and ignored by the church, the same way they feel invisible or ignored in our culture.”

Best Freedom Song (nominated by Jamie Bagley):
Likoko Eunice at She Loves with “I Want to Be Free”

“I want to be free. Free to be a child and not sell my body to fend for my siblings. Free to dream and have options, options that allow my dreams to be realized. Free to raise my children in normalcy and stability. Free to have a decent, legal, stable and honorable occupation. Free to tell my family what I do for a living—and not have my life shrouded in secrecy and lies. I want to be free."

Best Sermon:
Jonathan Martin with “Obscurity”

Best Analysis:
Kristen Howerton with “Six Reasons The #FitchTheHomeless Campaign in Problematic”

“It’s using the homeless a props and inviting others to do the same. This campaign is not social protest. This is a gimmick – an exploitive gimmick – that preys on the homeless as props. It’s cruel and dehumanizing.”

In My Headphones...

Matrimony: “The Storm & The Eye”

On the Blog…

Most Popular Post:
“Is God’s Presence Limited to Scripture?”

Most Popular Comment:
In response to “Is God’s Presence Limited to Scripture?” Allan wrote:

“At what point does the Bible become an idol and actually replace the Jesus we worship? This is my biggest frustration with the reformed movement. So many times in discussions people have said, "well I don’t know what you believe but I believe the Bible," as if that is the end of the discussion and the doubts and as if I don't believe the Bible. Reformed Evangelicals seem so scared that someone, somewhere is experiencing our infinite God differently than themselves and they can't seem to think that our God is bigger than our doctrines.”

***

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?

Ask a Recovering Alcoholic...(Response)

Rachel Held Evans — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:39:55 +0000

Our friend Heather Kopp did an amazing job responding to your questions for "Ask a Recovering Alcoholic..."

Heather is an author, editor, and blogger at HeatherKopp.com. She’s published more than two-dozen non-fiction books. Her recovery memoir, Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk (Hachette/Jericho) releases TODAY, May 7.

As a long-time Christian, Heather never expected to become an out-of-control alcoholic who kept private stashes of booze all over the place—tucked behind books in her study, zipped into a special compartment in her oversized purse, at the back of her closet stuffed inside her boots.

In Sober Mercies, Heather shares her journey into darkness…and back to the light again. Her story reveals the unique challenges and spiritual conundrums Christians face when they become ensnared in an addiction, and the redemption that’s possible when we finally reach the end of ourselves.

I had the pleasure of reading an advance review copy of Heather's book, and absolutely loved it. I was surprised by how little I knew about alcoholism, particularly how hard it can be for recovering alcoholics to be surrounded by social drinkers who aren't always sensitive to the challenges their friends in recovery face. I found Heather's chapters about her twelve-step group inspiring and challenging, a little picture of what the church is meant to be. Heather's story--honestly and beautifully told--invites us all to the table, baggage in tow, to confront our shared brokenness, our shared hopes, and our shared need for community, forgiveness, and grace.

I hope you learn as much from Heather's responses as I did!

***

From Paula: What is that you wish pastors knew about alcoholism? What can the church community do to walk along side those struggling with addiction?

I wish more pastors didn’t still view addiction in primarily moral terms. Yes, addictive behaviors often begin with a moral failing like selfishness or overindulgence. But full-blown addiction involves physiological and psychological components that go beyond sin or even choice. Trying harder, reading the Bible more, or praying more are rarely the solution.

I don’t think the answer is for churches to get more involved in diagnoses or administering recovery. But I do think they could do more to bring awareness to the issue, help people feel safe enough to admit to addictions, and help them connect with professional help or recovery groups. Thankfully, many already do this.

I know from personal experience that pastors can communicate shame or reinforcement of stigma without ever uttering the word “addict” from the pulpit. This is especially true when a church puts a strong emphasis on people being delivered from any bondage or weakness through repentance alone. When a pastor declares that “Jesus is the answer” to all our problems, he is implying that reaching for outside help is a show of weakness or lack of faith. We’re over that when it comes to appendicitis—alcoholism, not so much.

I spent more than twelve years trying to overcome alcoholism through prayer, repentance, doubling down on devotions, and begging God for miraculous deliverance. It didn’t get me sober. What it did, though, was make me doubt my own faith, doubt the Bible, doubt God’s love for me. An active alcoholic—that was me—who wants to get sober but can’t, and who is coming to believe that every good thing she once thought about God is a lie, is in a scary place.

I think we do people a huge disservice when our message is: If you’re truly a Christian, you should be able to pray and repent your way out of this! Or worse: If you can’t pray and repent your way out of your addiction, you’re probably not a Christian.

One concrete way many churches support recovery is to make their buildings available for meetings—even for recovery groups that aren’t exclusively Christian. Lots of churches and hospitals already do this and I’m grateful every single week.

Plus, simply listing in the bulletin that such a meeting takes place on the premises speaks volumes to the congregation about a church’s stance toward alcoholics and addicts and their families. What’s a few cigarette butts in the parking lot when you’re taking a stand as the community of Jesus on one of the great plagues of our time?

From Brenda: Could you talk a little about the work you do to maintain sobriety? In the media we hear about people going to rehab, but we don't hear as much about the work they continue to do 1, 5, 10 years down the road. I'm curious to know about the mix of practical and spiritual resources you use now.

Thanks to celebrities, we hear a lot in the media about in rehab—and about relapse. I guess we don’t hear much about the success stories because, well, there’s no headline there!

The reality is that few if any addicts will stay sober without a follow up program of recovery. I personally am part of a 12-step community, so I work these steps with a sponsor and I apply the principles on a regular basis. I sponsor other women who are newer to recovery than me. To stay spiritual fit, I observe a regular morning time of prayer, meditation, and reflection. I’ve found that sitting still is important, too—if for no other reason than to be intentional about feeling my feelings.

But this is just what I do. I’m a fan of any recovery program that works long term. A clean and sober person who is living fully is a miracle, however he or she got there. I wrote about two of the most well known approaches to getting and saying sober here.

Probably the most important thing for my continued sobriety is attending meetings. (I usually attend three or four hour long meetings a week—scant compared to the time I used to spend drinking!) I know that this behavior mystifies some folks, so I’ll share a few reasons most recovering alcoholics and addicts continue to attend support groups long after we’re “recovered”:

1. Recovery is the solution to alcoholism, but there is no cure. For example, once you become an active alcoholic, you’ll never become a “normal” drinker. People who can eventually resume drinking in a controlled way are by definition not alcoholic—or they’ve been miraculously healed. I’m told it happens, but I’ve never seen it.

The rest of us have to stay on our guard for that sneaky little voice that tells us, “Oh c’mon! Jeez. Look how you’ve changed! You could handle a drink or two.” This lie has killed untold thousands, if not millions. And the fact is, the longer we’re sober, the more likely we are to forget the truth. Meetings—and hearing the stories of newcomers—help us remember.

2. Meetings are part of our spiritual practice. They also help us stay healthy in our relationships with others and in our thinking. For me, they don’t replace church. But in the same way that I wouldn’t decide to quit church because I’ve been a Christian a long time, I wouldn’t quit my program of recovery, either. Besides, my closest friends are in my recovery community and can’t imagine how empty my life would be without it.

3. If everyone who got sober quit coming to meetings, there’d be no one there to help the newcomer. Part of how we stay sober and less self-centered is by giving away to others what we’ve so freely received. It’s a joy, not a burden, and most of us get so much more back than we ever give.

From Eric: In terms of helping an alcoholic to recover, how important do you think it is to call alcoholism a disease versus calling it a sin?

I’ve written about this important topic a couple times. I’d say that the number one reason I stayed stuck in my secret alcoholism for twelve nightmarish years is that I was convinced alcoholism indicated moral failure or a lack of will-power. Which didn’t make sense to me, since I was one of the most ambitious, “strong” people I knew.

I’d been taught in church that calling any addiction a disease is just a means to excuse the behavior. But now I think the opposite is more often true. An alcoholic who understands that she has a physiological condition that she can’t fix or control or manage on her own is way more likely to consider recovery.

When I first went to treatment, I too objected to the disease model. I asked a counselor, “How can you call something a disease if it could have been avoided had you not participated in a certain behavior?”

He calmly explained that alcoholism, like lung cancer caused by cigarettes or diabetes brought on by obesity, is a legitimate disease, even if it arises from an avoidable indulgence.

“And like other diseases,” he added, “alcoholism is progressive. It gets worse over time, never better. Left untreated, it often results in death.”

I had to admit his answer made sense. Things clicked into place for me even more when I learned that an alcoholic doesn’t process the enzymes in alcohol the way a normal drinker does. We have an abnormal, allergic-like reaction. A normal person thirsty for alcohol has a drink or two and is satiated. But the alcoholic has a drink or two and is exponentially more thirsty for alcohol than before. It would be like a person who gets hungrier the more he eats. This powerful reaction is commonly referred as “the phenomenon of craving.”

Today, I think alcoholism is not a matter of sin or sickness, but both. Honestly, though, I don’t care what you call it so long as people understand that it is a complex condition that isn’t about will power or being a good person. Arguing over labels may seem pointless, but unfortunately how we label a problem often influences how and when we’ll reach for help—or not. I wrote more about this here.

From Bethany: What can social drinkers do to help friends who struggle with alcoholism?

So glad you asked that. Someone new to recovery is likely to still feel fragile around alcohol and vulnerable to temptation. At that stage, I did. But they probably also don’t want their recovery to be an elephant in the room. The safest thing to do is ask, “Is it okay with you if I have a glass of wine?”

Contrary to popular belief, most alcoholics don’t stay sober by continually resisting the temptation to drink. Very few of us would make it that way long term. Instead, at some point God relieves us of the obsession to drink. We become “neutral” concerning alcohol. It’s like it no longer exists for us. When Dave and I go to a restaurant, he often has a glass of wine or a martini and I don’t mind at all. I wrote about this issue here.

From Teresa: In the church, there is often so much pressure to appear godly, and hide all our secrets, addictions, and sins because we are ashamed of them. What ways do you think the Christian community can encourage openness and honesty so people feel comfortable sharing these things with each other? And what was the catalyst for you personally that got you to open up and talk about your personal struggles with alcoholism?

Shame played a huge role in my alcoholism. I bought the lie that told me that if I let my secret be exposed, my pride would be so crushed and the humiliation so great that I’d want to die. Really. But the opposite was true. The relief I felt once I exposed the truth was a stunning and wonderful surprise that I want to tell the world about.

The catalyst for me was a combination of things: I was exhausted from all the work it took to live a lie; I sensed that my ability to stay in control of my secret was lessening and I was getting sloppy; my life had become unmanageable. Thankfully, I had a moment of complete surrender that led to a huge spiritual breakthrough. I didn’t see it coming, but I broke through to a willingness to reach for help, which in turn required me to come clean.

It’s natural to want to hide the parts of ourselves that feel broken or ugly or sinful. We’d all rather show the world our shiny parts—and our egos make sure of this. Which is why one of the most important things we can do to help each other is to be honest ourselves. If I’m vulnerable with you, you sense that I am a safe person to share with in turn.

I honestly never dreamed I’d be so vocal about my recovery. But the longer I was in recovery the more I realized how helpful it was--not just to others, but to me--to be public about it. To the same extent that I found it hellish to live in secrecy and lies during my active addiction, I now find it liberating to live my recovery in plain sight.

Plus, just imagine how hard it would be for me now to try to convince anyone that I’m not really an alcoholic?! That feels like wonderful insurance to me, even as I live out my sobriety openly, one step and one day at a time.

I think one reason we struggle to get honest in church settings is that we all feel like we have to somehow protect God’s reputation. To admit to an addiction can feel like a betrayal of Christ’s work on the cross. (Why don’t I have victory in Jesus?) I wonder if we don’t value being “right” more than being “real.” We choose to bond over shared beliefs rather than over shared brokenness.

I know many small groups in churches work hard to create communities of intimacy, connection, and safety. What a gift that kind of true fellowship can be! My experience with that, though, was that I mostly focused on proving to others that I was a good Christian. I needed to become vulnerable, but unfortunately, I was determined to perform.

In our experience with addiction (not alcohol addiction) we've found a group of people who believe addiction can be overcome completely and victoriously without the need for a lifetime of recovery, and another group who see it is a lifetime process. Is there a way to reconcile those beliefs and live somewhere in the middle--as a person who no longer is enslaved to the addiction but is still a recovering addict?

Fabulous question! As a Christian, I think it’s possible for people to be delivered from an addiction “at the foot of the cross.” But that kind of deliverance doesn’t happen for most of us. Christians commonly believe it’s not healthy to continue to think of yourself as alcoholic or an addict for the rest of your life. To them, it seems like a victim mentality or like you’re not declaring your freedom and owning your healing.

This perception is furthered by confusion around why people in 12 Step groups continue to introduce ourselves as alcoholics in meetings long after we get sober. I so get it. I understand some people aren’t comfortable with such a declaration. But here are a few reasons why I (and many others) do this:

For me, saying I’m an alcoholic over and over again has helped remove the stigma attached to my addiction.
Introducing myself as an alcoholic in meetings reminds me that I am still an alcoholic—a truth my inner addict desperately wants to forget.
Recovery begins with, and hinges on, our willingness to admit the problem. Imagine how much easier it is for a newbie to finally say those hard words--“I’m Wendy and I’m an alcoholic”--when everyone else in the room is admitting the same thing.
Introducing ourselves in meetings this way doesn’t mean that we only see ourselves as addicts or alcoholics, or that it has become our main identity. That’s just silly. To the contrary, this practice is more like a declaration of freedom. We are no longer in denial, no longer ashamed, no longer afraid to say that we are mentally and physically different when it comes to alcohol.

From Adam: As you were (are) getting sober, do you find your addiction moving elsewhere? Is it an addiction to alcohol specifically for you, or is it an addictive personality that now shows up in other ways?

I think some of us are more prone than others to participate in “numbing behaviors” of some kind. Addiction is the extreme on the spectrum. But I think biology has more to do with serious addiction than personality.

Cross-addictions are common. A lot of alcoholics realize they have secondary love or sex or food addictions that have been hiding. Others develop new compulsions as a way to fill the empty space left behind when they got sober. This is one reason an ongoing recovery program is so helpful—we can continue to grow and change as more is revealed. We learn to embrace our feelings—even emptiness—and allow ourselves to experience them as a capacity for grace and Spirit instead of stuffing them with a substitute. And this is at the heart of what life in recovery is all about.

***

Be sure to check out Heather's blog and her amazing book, Sober Mercies.

You can check out every installment of our interview series—which includes “Ask an atheist,” “Ask a nun,” “Ask a pacifist,” “Ask a Calvinist,” “Ask a Muslim,” “Ask a gay Christian,” “Ask a Pentecostal” “Ask an environmentalist,” “Ask a funeral director,” "Ask a Liberation Theologian," "Ask Shane Claiborne," "Ask Jennifer Knapp," and many mor— here.

Is God's presence limited to Scripture?

Rachel Held Evans — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:37:44 +0000

"You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." – John 5:39

It has become something of a sport for folks in the evangelical, neo-Reformed tradition to take to the internet to draw out the “boundaries of evangelicalism,” boundaries which inevitably fall around their own particular theological distinctions and which seem to grow narrower and narrower with every blog post on the topic.

Pastor and blogger Tim Challies recently added a few more stones to the fortress wall in a blog post entitled “The Boundaries of Evangelicalism.” In it, Challies writes about his concerns regarding “the power and prevalence of mysticism” in the contemporary church and posits that true evangelicalism rejects all forms of this “mysticism” and instead embraces the doctrine of the Reformed tradition and its emphasis on knowing God through Scripture alone.

He concludes:

“God has given us his Word to guide us in all matters of faith and practice. When we commit ourselves to mysticism, we commit ourselves to looking for revelation from God and experiences of God that come from outside that Word. We reject his gift--his good, infallible, inerrant, sufficient gift--and demand more. Because God promises us no more, we quickly create our own experiences and interpret them as if they are God’s revelation. Yet the Bible warns us that we can do no better than God’s Word and have no right to demand anything else. The question for Evangelicals today is just this: Will God’s Word be enough? Because whatever does not lead us toward God’s Word will always, inevitably and ultimately lead us away.”

The post is so full of historical inaccuracies, theological problems, and contradictions that it’s hard to know where to start, but I want to make clear from the get-go that my response to this post should not be seen as an attack on Tim Challies himself, (who I respect and like), but rather a response to the general belief that God’s presence is limited to the pages of Scripture and that all forms of contemplative or experiential spirituality should therefore be dismissed out of hand or regarded with suspicion. As evangelicalism in the U.S. has been working its way through something of an identity crisis over the past few years, and as many young evangelicals like myself have reconnected with the spiritual disciplines, this seems to be a recurring point of contention, and therefore one that should be addressed.

Challies defines mysticism as “those forms of Christian spirituality which attempt direct or unmediated access to God” and mentions, generally, the popularity of books on spiritual disciplines and spiritual formation and, specifically, books by Christian authors like Sarah Young and John Eldredge. In the past, Challies has been highly critical of Ann Voskamp’s spirituality in One Thousand Gifts, chastising her for her experiencing the presence of God in nature and in a Catholic cathedral, and for being influenced by the likes of Henri Nouwen, Brennan Manning, Teresa of Avila, Brother Lawrence, Annie Dillard, and Dallas Willard. One of the commenters after Challlies’ post also mentioned Richard Foster, Thomas Merton, centering prayer, contemplative prayer, lectio divina, and prayer labyrinths, which the commenter describes as efforts to “access God in a pagan/occult way.”

According to Challies, mystics are those who experience “a direct inner realization of the Divine,” and an “unmediated link to an absolute.” He goes on to argue that mysticism is any connection with God outside the context of Scripture.

Challies writes, “Mysticism was once regarded as an alternative to Evangelical Christianity. You were Evangelical or you were a mystic, you heeded the doctrine of the Reformation and understood it to faithfully describe the doctrine laid out in Scripture or you heeded the doctrine of mysticism. Today, though, mysticism has wormed its way inside Evangelicalism so that the two have become integrated and almost inseparable.”

I have no idea where Challies got the idea that “mysticism was once regarded as an alternative to evangelical Christianity.”

While it is true that the Reformers occasionally used the word “evangelical” in their writings, most historians locate the roots of evangelicalism solidly within Wesley’s Methodism in England and in the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries. Evangelicalism was, at its heart, a movement, influenced not only by a strong emphasis on the authority of Scripture but also by a lively, impassioned, and deeply personal spirituality—an eclectic, ecumenical mix of elements from Pietism, Presbyterianism, Puritanism, and Pentecostalism. Evangelicalism’s mothers and fathers were mystically-inclined Christians like John Wesley, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, William J. Seymour, and A.W. Tozer—people whose “hearts were strangely warmed” by profound experiences with God, by “a direct inner realization of the Divine.”

And indeed, mysticism—which I would define as practices intended to help connect a person to God through experience, intuition, contemplation, the devotional reading of Scripture, ritual, and prayer—has been a part of the Church from the very beginning.

From the events of Pentecost, to the practices of communion and baptism throughout Christian history, to the writings and teachings of the desert fathers and mothers, to the Reformation, to the divine offices being prayed continually throughout the world today, to the Azusa Street revival, to the spread of Christianity in the global South and East, the story of Christianity is the story of regular people connecting in powerful ways to the presence of God.

Indeed, the history of the faith, and the teachings of Scripture itself, show that Tim Challies is dead wrong on one very important point:

He says at the end of his post that when it comes to our connection with the holy, “God promises us no more” than Scripture as a means to knowing and experiencing his presence.

This is absolutely not true. Scripture itself teaches us that God has promised us the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49, Acts 2:33, Ephesians 1:13).

As Peter exclaimed at Pentecost, “you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for your and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

The Holy Spirit has sustained the Church through good times and bad, through persecution and imperial power, through the centuries before the Christian Bible was fully assembled, through the assembling of that Bible, through the centuries when most Christians had very little access to the Bible, through the centuries when many American Christians have multiple versions of the Bible on their bookshelves and multiple Christian denominations in their hometowns.

And as Jesus told Nicodemus, “the wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

In other words, the Holy Spirit doesn’t have boundaries.

Furthermore, to limit the presence of Jesus to the words of Scripture, as if Christ’s presence is restricted to paper and ink, is to deny the resurrection of all its power. Christ is not merely an historical figure that we read about, a person from the past to whom we make intellectual assent. Christ is alive! Christ is present! Christ is directly accessible to all who believe!

Jesus himself said that we can expect to encounter his presence not simply in the pages of Scripture, but also among the least of these, where two or three are gathered, in persecution, and in communion. Paul experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus. Peter experienced Jesus in the home of Cornelius (much to his surprise). Stephen saw Jesus just before his death. I have encountered the presence of Jesus in fellowship with other Christians, among the poor and disenfranchised, as I eat the bread and drink the wine. And if this makes me a mystic, then count me in!

The whole point of Scripture is to testify to the Living Word, which is Jesus Christ. As Jesus told the Scribes and Pharisees, "You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life."

When we become more committed to the testimony than to the Person to whom it testifies, we are likely to miss the presence of Jesus even when it’s right in front of us. Probably because it took some form we weren’t expecting. Probably because it showed up outside of our boundaries.

But Challies says “we can do no better” than the Bible.

I’m not sure this is true. For what do we long for when we read the Beatitudes, when we meditate on the words of Christ through lectio divina, when we join with Christians past and present to pray the hours, when we climb Teresa of Avila’s “Interior Castle,” when we raise our hands in worship, when we eat the bread and drink the wine, when we walk the labyrinths, when like David we see that the night sky declares the glory of God, when we study the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, when we connect with a glorious line from Wendell Berry or Frederick Buechner, or Annie Dillard?

We long for consummation, for total union with our beloved Christ. For He is the source of eternal life, the fulfillment of Scripture, and the object of our desire.

Scripture points to Jesus, not the other way around.

And all of these practices—from prayer to communion to fellowship to reading Scripture— give us glimpses of the day when that union will be realized, when we will all gather at the marriage supper of the Lamb. But right now, even with Scripture, we see through a glass darkly. Right now, even with Scripture, we know only in part.

Only later will we see Jesus face to face and be known even as we are known.

Now, here’s where I suspect Challies and I may agree: Because we believe Scripture to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice and a trustworthy testimony regarding Jesus Christ, we would be right to be highly suspicious of anyone whose claims about their experiences with God run contrary to the teachings of Scripture. Our testimonies should harmonize. Mysticism that morphs into mere superstition, or that contradicts what we know about Jesus from the written Word, is not a faithful testimony and should be warned against in the sternest terms. There is obviously space here to "test the spirits."

But while we should be appropriately wary of anyone whose claims of personal revelation run contrary to Scripture, we should not discount, out of hand, all personal experiences with God that occur outside the context of Scripture...which is what Challies has essentially done with this piece.

Furthermore, any understanding of “sola scriptura” that totally divorces reason, experience, and tradition from the interpretation process is a misunderstanding of that principle. We never approach Scripture alone. It does not exist in a vacuum. We approach Scripture with our Helper, the Holy Spirit, with the influence of the great cloud of witnesses who have read and interpreted it before us, and—like it or not—with the subtle but powerful influences of our culture, our language, our background, our experiences, and our biases. This notion of total, exclusive reliance on Scripture is a fantasy; it cannot be done.

Challies says that “whatever does not lead us toward God’s Word will always, inevitably and ultimately lead us away.” But the point of Scripture is not to lead us back to Scripture. The point of Scripture is to lead us to Jesus Christ. And any student of Luther will know that this was central to the Reformer’s theology as well.

Finally, when Challies defines mysticism as “direct or unmediated access to God” and then essentially trashes it as heresy, he (probably unintentionally) communicates that Christians need some kind of additional mediator to access God— Scripture, he seems to think, or perhaps the pastor interpreting it. (This is a fine example of how many Protestants tend to simply replace the Pope with the Bible and priests with the pastors interpreting it.)

But once again, Scripture itself disputes this claim. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all people,” writes Paul. “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need,” says the writer of Hebrews.

Challies is wrong. We do have direct access to God. We need no additional mediator.

And if labyrinths and lectio divina and contemplative prayer and Annie Dillard help remind us of that, I see no reason why we should fear them.

A lot of young evangelicals are reconnecting with these mystical practices, and I count myself among them. I suspect we are drawn to ritual, tradition, contemplative prayer, and silence because these are things that give us a sense of history, identity, and communion with the universal Church that has perhaps been lacking in the evangelical church of late. Praying the hours provides a rhythm to my day that takes the focus off of myself and my schedule and puts it on God and the members of God’s Church who are praying along with me. Ancient liturgies connect me to followers of Jesus from the past. Reading St. Francis and Teresa of Avila and Dallas Willard and Madeleine L'Engle help put words to my experiences and stretch me to see God in new ways. Communion…well, I can’t explain exactly what happens in communion, and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe that’s the point. While none of these things should serve as replacements of Scripture; they can certainly function constructively alongside of it.

Honestly, the more Scripture I memorize, the more labyrinths I walk, the more prayers I pray and the more mystics I engaged, the sadder I become by all this boundary marking and fortress building coming from the more fundamentalist camps within evangelicalism.

For I have tasted and seen. I’ve felt this wind blow wherever it wishes, however it wishes, whenever it wishes. I’ve caught a glimpse of this God who is bigger than Calvinism, bigger than evangelicalism, bigger even than the Church.

And I have come to see that these boundaries designed to shut others out only serve to shut the builders in.

They’re missing out on all this space, all this freedom, all this fresh air we call grace.

***

So what do you think? Is mysticism helpful or harmful to Christians? Should we expect to encounter God outside the context of Scripture? Do we have "direct, unmediated access" to God?

Back Porch Theology

Rachel Held Evans — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:03:51 +0000

"You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands."
- Isaiah 55:12

Woodpecker works,
Breeze whispers its praise,
And all the trees of the field clap their hands.

Flycatcher sings,
Breeze sighs in delight,
And all the trees of the field clap their hands.

Fuzzy-tailed acrobat leaps from limb to limb,
Breeze gasps in surprise,
And all the trees of the field clap their hands.

Housecat hunts,
Breeze takes in breath,
And all the trees of the field clap their hands.

Rabbit runs,
Breeze exhales,
And all the trees of the field clap their hands.

Sun journeys through the sky,
Breeze whistles the world to attention,
And all the trees of the field wave and sway and clap their hands.

It’s nice to know—
How little this world needs me,
How even when the crowds fade and the publishers quit calling,
It will go on in endless applause.

Saturday Superlatives 5/11/13

Rachel Held Evans — Sat, 11 May 2013 22:31:41 +0000

I’ll be busy tomorrow hanging out with the folks at GracePointe Church in Nashville, so superlatives are early this week.

Around the Web…

Funniest:
“16 Reasons You Should Never Reenact Pinterest Photos”
[#16 nearly made me spit out my coffee yesterday morning]

Wisest:
Jen Hatmaker at Deeper Story with “Wherever It Rises”

"May I, too, celebrate the gospel wherever it rises. None of us will get all this right; better to herald the common places and extend the benefit of the doubt. God’s fingerprint is everywhere; none of us own the rights to His endorsement. If a believer on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum says something good and true, may I say without hesitation, “Amen.” I’m often afraid to identify with certain people lest I be labeled with their brand, but that is foolishness. The gospel is always beautiful, and I am not in singular possession of its power. That is so arrogant. May I bend my knee to Jesus wherever and in whomever He reigns."

Best Writing:
John Blase at Deeper Story with “Therefore”

“Now you may have buttered Mufasa’s circle of life and swallowed it whole, but from the porch I’m sitting on death is against the grain. I don’t like it. Clods are washed away from the main and we’re left here diminished. Triste. Sad. It is now acceptable in the Church to say I’m a believer but I doubt. I’m thankful for this, although it does reveal a bit of historical amnesia. But I’m still grateful for the reality. Maybe one of these days in the Church it’ll be acceptable to say I’m a believer but I’m sad. I’m not talking Eeyore-sad, where I’m nothing but a barely moving mass of mope, but more Don Quixote-sad, still itchin’ to fight windmills but faced with a woeful countenance. I find this to be dangerously close to Jesus-sad, snorting like a horse (wept) at the absence of his friend Lazarus. There, that’s what I’m talking about: Man of Sorrows-sad.”

Best Series:
Christena Cleveland with “Listening Well As a Person of Privilege”

“If privileged people want to avoid a mismatch between their good intentions to their behaviors, they must identify both their specific intentions and the specific behaviors that correspond with those intentions. A general attitude in favor of reconciliation won’t necessarily lead to behaviors that reflect that attitude. More specific attitudes like “It’s important to empower the women of color at my church” are needed. And the specific attitudes need to be matched with specific behaviors like developing leadership/mentoring programs that successfully target women of color and addressing cultural biases that discredit diverse leadership styles. In order to accomplish this task, both the privileged and oppressed people must work together to spell out the specific intentions and behaviors that are needed.”

Best Photoblog:
A Week’s Worth of Groceries Around the World

Best Analysis:
Richard Beck with “Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture”

“Now what is peculiar about all this is that we use the purity metaphor in an uneven manner. Most sins don't get the purity metaphor. True, generally understood sin is understood to be a purity violation. But particular sins aren't typically viewed as a purity issue. Most sins are framed, metaphorically, as mistakes or errors, as performance failures. Another common metaphor here is sin as a form of stumbling or falling. What is important to note about these metaphors--performance failures and stumbling--is that these metaphors aren't catastrophic in nature. That is, they can be easily rehabilitated. If you make a mistake you try again. If you stumble and fall you get back up. Inherent in the logic of the metaphor is an obvious route to rehabilitation. But not so with the purity metaphor. When the sin is framed as a purity violation the damage that is done is total and unable to be rehabilitated. A purity violation creates a state of irreversible ruin.”

Related: Kristen Howerton with “Shame Based Sex Education: We Can Do Better”

“No woman, ever, is a chewed up piece of gum. No woman is a cup of spit. No woman is a used car or a dirty rag or a used-up piece of duct tape or a plucked rose or a licked cupcake. No matter what she’s done. Didn’t Jesus come to tell us that?”

Most Insightful:
Ed Cyzewski with “The Heretical Meditating Father”

“It is a frightening thing indeed to gamble your authority, theology, and control by encountering a living God who doesn’t have to play by our rules. That encounter with God is where mysticism leads, and it’s rarely a tidy destination.”

Most Powerful:
Hyperbole and a Half with “Depression Part Two”

Best Response:
Rich Cizik at Faith Forward with “‘Burn it all down’ isn’t Christian: A Response to Mark Driscoll”

“It reminds me of the story often told about Martin Luther: When asked, “If Jesus were to return today, what would you do differently?” the finest theologian of his day and founder of the Protestant Reformation responded, “I’d finish planting this tree.” In other words, he regarded the care of creation and effort to continue striving to bring the world closer to the Kingdom to be our biblical duty and best way to prepare for Christ’s return.”

Best Conversation-Starter:
Sarah Arthur at Her.Meneutics with “Are Women Really Saved Through Childbearing?”

“During a panel discussion at my Christian college years ago, one scholar explained that bearing children is God's plan for womanhood, referencing 1 Timothy 2:15—"Women will be saved through childbearing." A graduate student stood up and addressed him tearfully, "I have just learned that I can never have children. Where is there room in your gospel for me?" The panelist paused for a long time. Then he said, in a broken voice, "I don't have a theology for that." There was no resolution, just pain.”

Also, Ellen Painter Dollar responded to that abortion post from last week with some thoughtful remarks and resources in “Progressive Christians Do Care About Abortion: A Response to Rachel Held Evans”

“We need to look more closely at how we frame adoption as one alternative to abortion, being honest about how adoption carries its own challenging complexities, nuances, heartbreak, and hope. We must consider the significant physical and psychological toll that carrying an unwanted pregnancy can take on some women, and that having an abortion can take on others. We must be ruthlessly honest about how our cultural legacies around race, poverty, rape, and disenfranchisement contribute to abortion decisions and policies. We mustrefuse to sit by silently when self-righteous Christians write off women who have unplanned pregnancies as unworthy of our care, as stupid or promiscuous or getting what they deserve or just not our problem. We need to remind our fellow Christians that abortion is far from the only reproductive issueraising serious ethical and theological questions, expanding our discourse to include technologies such as IVF, prenatal testing, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) that have vastly increased the number and types of available reproductive choices.”

On the Blog…

Most Popular Post:
“Seasons”

“And it’s easy, when I’m in a season of building, to look down my nose at my brothers and sisters who are in a season of tearing down. And it’s easy, when I’m in a season of throwing away, to look down my nose at my brothers and sisters who are in a season of keeping. “

Also, in case you missed it, we built a well!

Most Popular Comment:
In Response to “Elizabeth Smart, Human Trafficking, and Purity Culture,” Laurie wrote:

"I don't think the answer is to encourage teenagers to wait with the promise of, "It will be so beautiful when it's within marriage." And so far, that approach isn't working anyway.

In my own journey, I went from one of those evangelical Christian virgins until my wedding day, to going through a hard divorce, to questioning my spirituality (still on that journey) and redefining how I thought about sex.

The way Christians emphasize sex adds to the thrill factor. They make it dangerous, but thrilling after marriage. I believe that therein lies the problem. The emphasis placed is on the thrill, NOT on the relationship.

Sex is an outgrowth of a relationship. In order to teach the sacredness of sex, first, I think, we need to teach the sacredness of relationship. Even relationship to one's self. Sex isn't so much about the thrill as it is about the connection. And once young people can understand connection, I think the understanding of sex within that connection will follow. This may be a blasphemous thought to many of you here, but I wonder if encouraging the practice of masturbation would help with this. If sex is about connection, then can't masturbation be used as connecting to yourself (and NOT so much as a way to get a 'high' or to do something forbidden)? I would argue that it would help young people learn that idea, if practice was ENCOURAGED with focus NOT on the thrill but on self-connection and self presence? (Which, by the way, isn't easy) I also believe that self connection and being present to yourself doesn't necessarily start with masturbation and definitely doesn't end there. It needs to be a whole life practice; that of learning to relate to yourself. If someone can be connected to themselves, I think it exponentially increases the ability to connect to others."

On my nightstand…

The Story of Christianity, Vol 1: The Early Church to the Reformation

I’m loving this. Prepare for an onslaught of useless historical facts in my blog posts...

###

So, what caught your eye online this week? What's happening on your blog?

Wise Words from Pastor Jonathan: A Review of ‘Prototype’

Rachel Held Evans — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:42:48 +0000

This is what I do to books I like.

I like Jonathan Martin for a lot of reasons: he’s funny; he’s an excellent writer; he celebrates and affirms the equality of women and speaks highly of his wife; he’s humble; he’s whimsical; he’s quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

But one of my favorite qualities about Jonathan is his wisdom.

We got a little taste of this wisdom when we interviewed Jonathan for “Ask a Pentecostal…,” one of my favorite installments in our interview series thus far. And if you follow Jonathan’s blog or listen to his sermons online you will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I think of Jonathan as one of my pastors. I have many pastors in my life—from my local pastors here in Dayton, to my “remote” pastors like Nadia Bolz Weber, Brian McLaren, Eugene Peterson, and Greg Boyd who have influenced me through their writing, speaking, and correspondence. They are Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists, Mennonites, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Pentecostals, and I have benefitted from their insights and shepherding in ways too numerous to name.

Well today I am pleased to report that Pastor Jonathan’s wisdom is on fine display in his debut book, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You’re More Like Jesus Than You Think? In it, Jonathan explores what it means to be God’s beloved and to completely trust, as Jesus did, that God loves us.

I confess that, even as a fan of Jonathan’s, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. It is rare to encounter a pastor who is as good at writing as he/she is at preaching, but Jonathan is laugh-out-loud funny, thoughtful, well-read (expect quotes from Flannery O’Conner, Henri Nouwen, and Frederick Buechner), appropriately self deprecating (“I know it’s a huge cliché for a thirtysomething pastor to be a massive U2 fan. But I don’t care”), prophetic, and at times startlingly poetic.

A third-generation Pentecostal preacher and the founder of Renovatus: A Church for People Under Renovation in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jonathan has taken the Pentecostal heritage with which he was raised and made it his own in some surprising and inspiring ways. In Prototype, he writes about his childhood, about the South, about identity, calling, and community, about pulling together a ragamuffin group of liars, misfits, and dreamers to form Renovatus, about introducing weekly communion to his community. While the overarching theme of the book is indeed the love of God and the security and freedom we find in it, each chapter really stands on its own with insightful and challenging reflections on ideas like “obscurity,” “resurrection,” and “wounds.” (The chapter on obscurity is worth the price of the book. Really. I’ve read it three times over.)

But as good as the writing is, and as compelling as the stories are, you don’t walk away from Prototype thinking about Jonathan Martin. You walk away from Prototype thinking about your own relationship with God and with the Church. You walk away thinking about the people of Renovatus—Blake, Teddy, and Sally. You walk away thinking about Jesus.

And in a Christian culture bulging at the seams with celebrity pastors who seem as impressed with their own words as the words of Jesus, I can think of no higher compliment.

I underlined paragraph after paragraph in Prototype, and at times found myself wondering how someone from such a different background and with such different life experiences could know exactly what I’m going through, exactly what I hope for, exactly what I worry about, exactly what I fear, exactly what I love. Jonathan is Pentecostal, so there are indeed references to the devil and demons and healing and whatnot, (topics that sometimes make me squirm, I confess), but Jonathan puts a different spin on each. For example, he likens the cacophony of voices competing for our attention in our hyper-connected world to the demon Legion from the New Testament. And the comparison works.

I’ve already quoted from Prototype in a lecture at an event, and I suspect you will see more quotes appearing here on the blog and in future books. So the best I know to do is to share some of my favorite quotes here, in hopes they will encourage you to pick up the book for yourself:

From “Obscurity”:

“In our culture of constant access and nonstop media, nothing feels more like a curse from God than time in the wilderness. To be obscure, to be off the beaten path, to be in the wilderness feels like abandonment. It seems more like exile than a vacation. To be so far off of everyone’s radar that the world might forget about us for a while? That’s almost akin to death…[But] far from being punishment, judgment, or a curse, the wilderness is a gift. It’s where we can experience the primal delight of being fully known and delighted in by God.” (p. 50)

***

“Obscurity is where God sends all His favorite sons and daughters. Our society tells us that if and when we get ‘there’—the job or position or degree we’ve always wanted, the notoriety we’ve always dreamed of—that’s when all the important stuff will start happening. Not so. All the good stuff happens in obscurity.” (p. 65)

***

“If you haven’t been riled up about injustice lately, consider this: Around the world right now, every three seconds, an impoverished child is exposed to Nickleback.” (p. 46)

From “Wounds”:

“We have always been inclined to worship people or things we perceive as being great. So we exaggerate our own greatness, inflate our successes, downplay our weaknesses, and hide our scars. Thus human history is largely the story of people who say, ‘My god can beat up your god, my king can beat up your king, my army is more awesome than your army,’ and then attempt to prove the point to each other. All in the name of greatness….So what do we make of a God who is worshipped not for His might but for His weakness, even for His wounds? Not a human wearing the medals of military conquest to convince us He is a god, but a God who wears His suffering on His sleeve to convince us He is human? Instead of ‘my god can beat up your god, my king can beat up your king,’ Jesus’ path to kingship comes wrapped in a very odd strategy indeed: He is the King of kings largely because He lets himself get beat up. He is victorious not despite his scars but because of them…By allowing His own life to be taken, Jesus exposed the pitiful ‘power’ of the bullies and disarmed it.” (p. 92-93, 95)

***

“Because John’s apocalypse uses war imagery, people often mistakenly assume that somehow the victory of God was incomplete on the cross, that the real victory comes when Jesus arrives with a sword and finally fights fire with fire, finally overcomes force with even greater force. But a careful reading shows that this is far from the case. For example, when Jesus comes riding in on a white horse with a sword, wearing a robe dipped in blood, it is not the blood of his opponents—it’s His own. There is no battle scene, because Jesus has already defeated the powers (and all the bullies) through His sacrifice on the cross.” (p. 97)

***

When responding to the pain of others: “Sometimes, the sacred thing, the wise thing, the compassionate thing, the best thing, the anointed thing is simply to shut up. I learned a long time ago that there are some things in life so dark that if an answer is asked for, the only reply we are able to give is our tears or our presence. Sometimes the best response is in the courage and wisdom to say, ‘I don’t know,’ but then don’t walk away. Some questions are not opportunities; they’re temptations—to play God, to play the expert, to play doctor, to build a platform or reputation. If there is anything that would scare me, it would be to utter words in a scenario where God Himself would not speak.” (p. 103)

I’ve been quietly mulling over these words since I first read them in Prototype, and am so very grateful for the wisdom of Pastor Jonathan. I hope you will learn as much from him as I have.

Get your own copy of Prototype here. Find Jonathan's blog here.

Also, be sure to check out our interview with Jonathan for "Ask a Pentecostal…"

We built a well!

Rachel Held Evans — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:46:26 +0000

As you may remember, back in 2011, we held our Rally to Restore Unity—a little online celebration of Christian civility, complete with posters, photos, a synchroblog, guest posts, and a fundraiser for Charity Water.

You made some pretty awesome signs:

Between the rally and my birthday, we raised $5,000, enough money to help fund a major water project for Charity:Water. And this week, I received notification from Charity:Water that our project has finally been completed!

It’s a drilled well, located in Machelot village in northern Ethiopia. (You can actually check out the GPS coordinates here.)

The well serves about 500 people who have been trained by Charity:Water’s local partners in safe hygiene practices and basic maintenance of the well. Each family using the new water source contributed toward their project's construction and will continue to pay a small amount to use the water; the community will save this money for any necessary maintenance and repairs.

According to our contact at Charity:Water, “The people here, especially women and children, used to walk up to two hours to collect water for their families. Even then, each family member had to make do with about five liters of water per day for drinking, bathing, cooking and everything else. The water wasn't safe to drink and often made people sick. Thanks to your help, people here are walking significantly less every day to collect water. This means each family now can use up to 15 liters per person per day! Most importantly, the water they bring home each day is safe enough to drink.”

Members of the community decided to build the fence and door to prevent animals from contaminating the area.

Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses. In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely contaminated. Time spent walking and resulting diseases keep them from school, work and taking care of their families. Along their long walk, they're subjected to a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault. With safe water nearby, women are free to pursue new opportunities and improve their families’ lives.

You can learn more about the community at Machelot here, and more about how Charity: Water turns a fundraising campaign into a completed water project here.

I cannot thank you enough for your donations, which ranged from $5 to $500. It’s such an honor to be part of this community, which has connected with another community, many miles away.

As we think of the women and children in these pictures, and all the ways in which this water will nourish and cool and cook and clean in their community, two prayers from Jan Richardson (In the Sanctuary of Women) come to mind. I hope you will pray them with me sometime today:

When you come
to the depth of your thirst—
Its dryness, its dust;
when you arrive at the far reaches
of a desert within,
may the God of the wilderness
bring forth a well;
may you open wide to the drenching
of the water of life.

***

From every hardship, let there come honey.
From every struggle, sweet.
Let angels. Let manna.
Let wellsprings. Let rest.
To the hungry, let food.
To the thirsty, let drink.
Clothes to the naked, care to the sick.
To the stranger, let welcome.
To the prisoner, let company.
Let honey. Let honey. Let honey.

Learn more about Charity:Water.

"God does not 'love' us without liking us..."

Rachel Held Evans — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:00:22 +0000

From Dallas Willard:

“We must understand that God does not 'love' us without liking us - through gritted teeth - as 'Christian' love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core - which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word 'love'.”

― The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

Willard died today after losing a battle with cancer. He will be profoundly missed.

Do you have any favorite books, quotes, or memories from Willard you wish to share?

Seasons

Rachel Held Evans — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:46:53 +0000

When I first started asking questions about my faith, I was terrified. In my loneliness and fear, I tried desperately to drag the people I loved most along with me on my journey through doubt. I was in a season of deconstruction, of uprooting, of tearing down. And like a spoiled child, I ran about the Church, knocking down every theological block tower I could find, delighting in the destruction.

I was asking good questions, worthy questions—about creation, science, biblical interpretation, gender, religious pluralism, heaven and hell— but I was angry with those not asking these questions along with me; I wanted to force them into my season.

But there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to plant and a time to uproot,

A time to kill and a time to heal,

A time to tear down and a time to build.

Since then, I have come to see that the attentive soul cycles through these seasons. Wintery seasons of deconstruction, uprooting, questioning, and tearing down are often followed by exciting, spring-like seasons of reconstruction, creativity, healing, and building.

A time to mourn and a time to dance,

A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

A time to search and a time to give up.

And it’s easy, when I’m in a season of building, to look down my nose at my brothers and sisters who are in a season of tearing down.

And it’s easy, when I’m in a season of throwing away, to look down my nose at my brothers and sisters who are in a season of keeping.

A time to keep and a time to throw away,

A time to tear and a time to mend,

A time to be silent and a time to speak.

Some of us are in seasons of speaking, and some of us are in seasons of silence. Some of us are in seasons of mending, and some of us are in seasons of ripping apart. Some of us are in seasons of mourning, and some of us are in seasons of dancing. Some of us are in seasons of searching, and some of us are in seasons of giving up.

Let’s not forget that we need one another.

We need wildfires for new life to grow. We need scraps for our quilts and jackhammers for our remodels.

We need the sounds of laughter and the sounds of crying. We need baptisms and funerals, confirmations and AA meetings.

We need both the systems and the reforms. We need the theses, the hammer, the nail. And we need the door.

Let’s not forget that we need one another, if only to acknowledge that within every season a new season awaits, swelling and splitting like a seed in the soil, about to break through.

***

So, what kind of season are you living through these days? Do you find yourself struggling to love those in a different season?

Ask a recovering alcoholic...(+ a book giveaway)

Rachel Held Evans — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:08:49 +0000

Our "Ask a..." series continues today with Heather Kopp, a Christian alcoholic in recovery.

Heather is an author, editor, and blogger at HeatherKopp.com. She’s published more than two-dozen non-fiction books. Her recovery memoir, Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk (Hachette/Jericho) releases TODAY, May 7.

Even as her writing work and marriage teetered on the brink, she desperately hiding the true extent of her drinking from the rest of the world—her husband included. During the day she wrote about God and prayer and family. At night she’d locked herself in her bathroom to guzzle chardonnay.

For her, as for many Christians who struggle with addiction, overwhelming shame and confusion only made things worse. Why wasn’t her faith enough to save her? Why didn’t repentance, Bible reading and prayer work? Where was God?

Meanwhile, her grown son descended into his own nightmare of drugs and alcohol. She feared for his life, yet she couldn’t stop drinking long enough to help him—or find a way out for herself.

Until the day everything changed.

I wanted to introduce Heather's story to you, and she graciously agreed to be interviewed as part of our "Ask a..." series!

You know the drill. If you have a question for Heather, leave it in the comment section. Be sure to utilize the "like" feature so we can get a sense of what questions are of most interest to you. After 24-hours, I'll pose seven of the most popular questions to Heather and post her responses next week.

In addition, if you leave a question in the comment section, you will automatically be entered to win a free copy of Sober Mercies. Contests will run through the end of the day (May 7) at midnight, EST. I will choose three winners via random.org.

Ask away!

(You can check out every installment of our interview series—which includes “Ask an atheist,” “Ask a nun,” “Ask a pacifist,” “Ask a Calvinist,” “Ask a Muslim,” “Ask a gay Christian,” “Ask a Pentecostal” “Ask an environmentalist,” “Ask a funeral director,” "Ask a Liberation Theologian," "Ask Shane Claiborne," "Ask Jennifer Knapp," and many more— here.)

Elizabeth Smart, Human Trafficking, and Purity Culture

Rachel Held Evans — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:04:56 +0000

We’ve spoken in the past about the harmful effects of a shame-based purity culture that treats women (and men) who have had sex before marriage as “damaged goods.”

Many of us who grew up in the Church sat through at least one or two horrific object lessons reinforcing the idea that premarital sex ruins a person for good. Perhaps everyone in the youth group spat into a cup, or perhaps a rose was trampled and torn to pieces, or perhaps a construction-paper heart was ripped to shreds.

Kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart recently spoke at a Johns Hopkins University human trafficking forum about her own experience, and said she understood why some victims of trafficking stay with their abusers.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn't run “because of that alone.”

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I'm that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.' And that's how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value," Smart said. "Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value."

Obviously, there are many other reasons a victim might stay with his or her abuser, and Elizabeth was certainly not placing the blame for her abduction on the purity culture, but before we dismiss those speaking out against these sort of shaming tactics that have become so prevalent in the Church, we must consider the effects the “damaged goods” narrative can have on young hearts and minds.

I am so grateful to Elizabeth, who has dedicated much of her time to protecting and educating children about violent and sexual crimes through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and spreading the good word that “ you will always have value and nothing can change that.”

Talk about a woman of valor!

So what’s the alternative? How can we teach young people to value the sacredness of sex and the importance of responsibility without resorting to shame-based, fear-based tactics?

A Letter to LGBT Student Groups (and Allies) at Christian Colleges

Rachel Held Evans — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:22:30 +0000

I don’t know much about what it’s like to be you, but I figure it can’t be easy.

Many of you face discrimination and double standards. Others are forced to operate “underground.” It must be painful to watch when faculty members who support you face investigations and threats, or when your presence seems to divide the community you love. I know many of you fear expulsion for simply telling the truth, and I suspect that as your high school classmates beam out “It Gets Better” videos from their state school dorm rooms, you can’t help but wonder sometimes when things will get better for you.

I’m sorry for the way you have been treated. It’s unfair, and it’s wrong.

I also know that in some cases, your groups are thriving…which can be both thrilling and terrifying. There are growing pains involved, and those of you in leadership know that growth too can be hard. You are making mistakes, I am sure—perhaps pushing too hard in one situation, or not hard enough in another. You are wondering when it’s right to raise hell and when it’s right to hold back. You are navigating some tricky territory, speaking the truth in love while trying to figure out the truth yourself. You probably feel exposed sometimes, overwhelmed sometimes, alone sometimes.

But you are not alone.

And I want you to know that I’ve got your back.

I fully support your desire to fellowship, to wrestle, to debate, to discuss, to pray, to cry, and to worship together publicly, out of the shadows of secrecy and into the light of truth. Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, the presence of Jesus is there…no matter what anyone else says, no matter whether you are officially recognized as a group.

I want you to know that I pray for you. Often.

I pray that if you lack wisdom, you will seek it in the God who “gives generously to all without finding fault.”

I pray you will find those friends, those professors, and those quiet places on campus that make you feel safe and at home.

I pray you will come to know Jesus better, even when he seems so far ahead you’re not sure you can follow any longer.

I pray you will learn to love yourself and take care of yourself—resting when you need to, laughing when you need to, STUDYING when you need to (!), saying “no” when you need to, crying when you need to, speaking up when you need to, and listening to the wise counsel of others when you need to.

I pray you find a community of faith that gives you room to stretch and grow and screw up and start over.

I pray for you. Often.

But most of all, I want you to know that your love for a Church that doesn’t always love you back astounds me.

It challenges and inspires me.

It moves me to push past my own petty grievances against the Bride and just show up—even when it’s hard, even when it’s not all figured out.

I want you to know that I look up to you.

I have seen in you the sort of faithfulness, persistence, honesty, forgiveness, and patience I long for in my own life. May I wrestle through my own questions of identity with the same integrity and courage as you do. May my love for those with whom I disagree be as remarkable as yours.

I don’t know much about what it’s like to be you. But I value those times we’ve spent talking over coffee and exchanging emails. We always seem to find one another when I’m on a college campus, and I’m beginning to think it’s because we’re the same kind of people—broken, wrestling, hopeful, brave…ragamuffins and misfits just taking it one day at a time.

I love you, and I am honored to be your sister in Christ.

Hang in there.

I’ve got your back.

- Rachel

Sunday Superlatives 5/5/13 (plus, I’ll see you in Nashville on Mother’s Day!)

Rachel Held Evans — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:15:26 +0000

IRL…

Best Book Club:
It’s such a rare pleasure to spend time chatting, eating, drinking, and laughing with readers who are working through one of my books together. But I did just that in Seattle last week with Olivia Lenz, Lynn Russell, DeHeavalyn D. Pullium, Stephanie Rubesh, Hannah McMillen, Kali Wagner, Liza González, Sarah Kyle, Danni Reaves and Samantha Fisher—Seattle Pacific University grads who are working through A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Let me tell you, these are some TRUE women of valor. Learned so much from them! (Also stayed up WAY too late and ate WAY too much food.) I hope they make good on their plans to start a blog together, because it will be awesome. (Olivia is, for real, a rocket scientist ballerina.)

Best Husband in the Whole World:
Dan Evans, who surprised me by taking care of two weeks worth of meals through Person Chef To Go! We’ve never done this before, and just got our first meal today, so we’ll let you know how we like it.

Coming Up:
I’m headed to Nashville! First, I’ll be a guest on Nashville's Super Talk 99.7 WTN, Open Table LIVE, Sunday morning (May 12) from 7-9am. The show is hosted by my friends Matthew Paul Turner and Pastor Stan Mitchell. Should be fun! Next, I’ll be giving the Mother’s Day sermon at Grace Pointe Church in Franklin (522 Franklin Road, Franklin, TN 37069.) Services are at 9 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. Feel free to stop by and say hello!

Speaking of Mother's Day, A Year of Biblical Womanhood is 40 percent off at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble this week. (Hint, Hint.)

Around the Web…

Best Video:
“Baby Duck Can’t Stay Awake”

Best Headline:
Donald Trump’s Hair Discovered Crawling in Amazon

Best List:
Beth Woolsey (and her readers) with “20 Things Every Parent Should Hear”

“Look for joy. You’ll find it in the middle of the busy. Or under the ridiculous. Or hanging from the overwhelmed in its underpants. Joy’s like that. It’s in the middle of everything. It’s completely unpredictable. And it will surprise you when you’re not expecting it. Like vomit and diarrhea, except good.”

Best Reflection:
Jonathan Martin with “Feeling at Home in My Smallness”

“But because I am so prone to buy into my own little act, I need the gift of mountains and sea to protest my disproportionate sense of scale, to make me feel smaller and less necessary. Like Job, I need to be reminded of mountain goats and sea monsters to help me get my place in the cosmos. There is so much weight assigned to us to be special, to be unique, to distinguish ourselves. There is a great deal of pressure to be “great.” But what if, today, I want to enjoy my status as my Father’s awkward, backward son, absurdly treasured and irrationally loved?”

Best Analysis:
Daniel Kirk with “Does Paul’s Christ Require a Historical Adam?”

“…What is a ‘given’ for Paul is the saving event of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other things he says, especially about sin, the Law, and eschatology, are reinterpretations that grow from the fundamental reality of the Christ event. Recognizing this relieves the pressure that sometimes builds up around a historical Adam. Contrary to the fears expressed by Douglas Farrow, we can now recognize that Adam is not the foundation on which the system of Christian faith and life is built, such that removing him means that the whole edifice comes crashing down. Instead, the Adam of the past is one spire in a large edifice whose foundation is Christ. The gospel need not be compromised if we find ourselves having to part ways with Paul’s assumption that there is a historical Adam, because we share Paul’s fundamental conviction that the crucified Messiah is the resurrected Lord over all.”

Best Sentence:
Emily Maynard (at Kelley Nikondeha’s place) with “Only a wildly free God could be that funny.”

Best Paragraph:
Aaron J. Smith in “When I say I’m a feminist” -

“When I say I am a feminist, I am saying I want to listen. The women in my life have their own conflicts, their own struggles, their own victories, and their own defeats. The narrative of their life as a human belongs to them. I want to hear their stories, their wisdom, their fear, their pain. It is not my story to steal and turn into something else. If I believe women can and should speak up on any and every topic they choose, then I must listen when they speak.”

Best Response:
Justin Lee responds to a question about those hyper-sexual gay pride parades

“But it’s important to recognize that when you turn on the news and see a guy in a thong simulating sex acts in a pride parade, he’s not representing the entire gay community. In fact, he’s in the minority. I know lots of gay people, and as far as I’m aware, I don’t know anyone who has ever danced in a thong in a Pride parade.”

Wisest:
Tim Kreider with “The Power of ‘I Don’t Know’”

“My least favorite parts of my own writing, the ones that make me cringe to reread, are the parts where I catch myself trying to smush the unwieldy mess of real life into some neatly-shaped conclusion, the sort of thesis statement you were obliged to tack on to essays in high school or the Joycean epiphanies that are de rigueur in apprentice fiction — whenever, in other words, I try to sound like I know what I’m talking about. Real life, in my experience, is not rife with epiphanies, let alone lessons; what little we learn tends to come exactly too late, gets contradicted by the next blunder, or is immediately forgotten and has to be learned all over again. More and more, the only things that seem to me worth writing about are the ones I don’t understand.”

Coolest:
Poor Carpenter Builds An Incredible Treehouse In The Wilds Of Canada

Truest (nominated by Hannah):
Kimberly Pendleton Bolles with “A Book of Uncommon Prayer: On Losing”

“She looked at them and said, 'The God I believe in knows what it feels like to lose a child.’"

Most Thought-Provoking:
T.F. Charlton at Religion Dispatches with “Why Jason Collins’ Faith is Ignored…and Tebow’s Isn’t”

“This is the world as many on the religious right see it: not one in which Tebow is famous precisely because he’s a mediocre white quarterback who is vocal about his faith, nor one in which Collins and other black athletes who are also “avowed Christians” routinely get passed over by the media and the public—and certainly not one in which gay, lesbian, and bisexual people face systemic discrimination. Instead, they live in a world where Tebow, who according to Barna has a 73% favorability rating with the American public when it comes to his discussion of religion, is being vaguely persecuted for being a straight, white, Christian conservative man.”

Most Relatable:
More Beans with “17 Problems You Haven’t Had Since the 90s”

“What if her mom or dad answers first?”

Most Surprising:
Paul Miller at The Verge with “I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet”

“What I do know is that I can't blame the internet, or any circumstance, for my problems. I have many of the same priorities I had before I left the internet: family, friends, work, learning. And I have no guarantee I'll stick with them when I get back on the internet — I probably won't, to be honest. But at least I'll know that it's not the internet's fault. I'll know who's responsible, and who can fix it.”

Most Exciting:
One Voice for Change: a movement seeking gender equality in Churches of Christ

Most Encouraging:
Helen Lee with “Yet Another Reason to Love Trader Joe’s”

“As much as I love my local Trader Joe’s, and as much as I appreciate that they clearly value their crew members, a part of me wishes I could see Christian organizations making the news for their extraordinary people practices and for being the trendsetters in this area. As Cavanaugh asks, shouldn’t Christian companies set the example as places where employees are treated well? I believe so, absolutely.”

Most Likely To Make You Proud to Be a Feminist:
Jackson Katz with "Violence & Silence"

Most Likely To Be Shared With a Teacher of Valor:
Jen Hatmaker with “Dear Teachers Everywhere…”

“Teachers, when you instruct our kids that struggle, I know you have, yet again, patiently pulled up a seat next to their desks, 24 other kids still in the room, and kindly helped them toward mastery. I know you modify, adapt, adjust for their success, which takes so much time and energy. Children with emotional or physical challenges, kids with language barriers and personal turmoil, those who struggle to learn and retain, test and succeed, they require so much of you in the midst of your regular responsibilities, and your patient attentiveness cannot possibly be overcelebrated. As a mom whose children blossomed under the weight of your investment, I could throw myself at your feet and weep with gratitude.”

Most Likely To Be Such a Teacher of Valor:
Abby Norman with “On the Eve of Testing”

“The test is not going to tell you about my English as a second language kids. It won’t tell you how their first year in ninth grade was also the first year in the general population of the school. It won’t tell you about the way they work twice as hard as everyone else, complain less, and watch out for each other. It won’t tell you about the poetry they can write if you just give them permission to use five words in their original language. It is beautiful. And the test is not going to tell you about my favorite triumph this year. It won’t tell you about my student on the autistic spectrum who says hi to me in the hallway. It won’t tell you about the way he works in groups voluntarily. It won’t tell you about his peers who accept him for who he is and how he won their hearts by fixing their cell phones. It won’t tell you about the peace of mind his mother now has, because of the work he and his teachers have put in this year. It won’t tell you anything about him or the mountains he has climbed. The test will only tell you that he is proficient in English. There is so much more I need you to know about him and how hard he tries.”

Best Insights:
Peter Enns with “Reading the Old Testament: You Gotta Have Attitude”

“…The gospel forms our basic ‘attitude’ toward the Old Testament–a ‘hermeneutical posture,’ which is that point of view from which we read and by which the Old Testament can be accessed.”

Best Reminder:
Amy at The Messy Middle with “A Non-Mom Speaks About Mother’s Day”

“Fast forward several years to Mother’s Day. A pastor asked all mothers to stand. On my immediate right, my mother stood and on my immediate left, a dear friend stood. I, a woman in her late 30s, sat. I don’t know how others saw me, but I felt dehumanized, gutted as a woman. Real women stood, empty shells sat. I do not normally feel this way. I do not like feeling this way. I want no woman to ever feel this way in church again.”

Best Point:
Nate Pyle with “Why Mark Driscoll’s Theology of SUVs matters”

“To say that when Jesus returns he is simply going to burn it all up (meaning earth and all that is in it) is to disregard a theology of resurrection, restoration, and shalom. At running the risk of sounding combative, Driscoll’s tweet is more infused with Platonic philosophy than Biblical theology.”

Best Conversation-Starter:
Abigail Rine at The Atlantic with "The Pros and Cons of Abandoning the Word 'Feminist"

"Every semester, young women come into my office in tears. Much as I did, they are first becoming conscious of how terribly the world views and treats women. In this vital, fragile stage of life when they are just beginning to craft a self and envision a future, these students are simultaneously bombarded with damaging cultural myths about gender. They feel silenced, unheard, diminished.In moments like these, feminism feels like a gift than I can offer, a word that represents the antidote to what wounds them…"

Best Writing:
Hilary at The Wild Love with "If we were having coffee"

"I spent high school and college being enough which wasn’t enough which was never good or beautiful or sexy or gracious or holy or poised or funny… enough. I did the ache in my closet among my mismatched shoes. I did the late nights skipping dinner, the later night disappointments. I did the look of dismay at myself over a less than perfect grade or comment or conversation. And I say, enough of that. If we were having coffee, you and I, I’d want to tell you that. I want to shore it up in us. I want to wedge it so firmly our ribcages that we walk around singing a freedom-song so loud we can’t catch our breath. Free of the worry that comes with enough. Free of the fear. So gloriously free."

Most Informative:
Scot McKnight with "The Pharisees"

"It’s time to revisit the Pharisees, in part because their story needs to be told so we don’t forget and in part because some like to use the “Pharisee” in ways that concern me. It is a standard procedure to say “Pharisee” and mean “legalist, bigot, hypocrite, or picayune meddler into other people’s religious business.” Look at any dictionary. But this is in and of itself a caricature and stereotype, for no one (I hope) would think that all Pharisees have always been religious bigots. Paul, after all, remained a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). Such language spells danger down the road in ways that might surprise us. Even more, we have tended to download anger or extreme disagreement with others onto this term “Pharisee.” So, when I call someone a Pharisee I do not mean anything nice or even charitable. Which, in and of itself is dangerous because no group (well, there are exceptions) is always wrong and always bad."

Most Thoughtful:
Kristin Lucas with “Transformation, Prophets, and Brueggemann”

“It’s a hard and vulnerable thing, to suddenly see your sin. To be aware of the places in you that are prideful and hateful and bitter and angry. And to know that they are that way because you fundamentally don’t trust God as much as you trust yourself. But in the midst of sure death, the prophets start prophesying. And their message is not one of punishment and condemnation, but one of hope. It was true for Israel, and it is true for me.”

On the blog….

Most Popular Post:
Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion

Most Popular Comment:
In response to the above post, Jason wrote:

Rachel, an excellent and well thought out post on a difficult issue. I myself have a checkered past with abortion, and I cannot imagine what it would be like as a woman... I just have no frame of reference.

Experiences come to mind, and what could only be the terror of each woman behind them, each person involved, each life that touched another. In college, I had a girlfriend who had an abortion when she got pregnant by another man while dating me. We broke up because of that... and that was tough, and personal. I'm still conflicted 18+ years later about that situation and my heart still breaks for her and her baby. But after college, abortion became a different issue for me... I was a paramedic in a busy urban 911 system. And I ran 911 call after 911 call. I saw poverty. I saw hopelessness. I saw despair. I dealt with it daily. I twice responded to abortion clinics for failed abortion attempts that endangered the life of the mother. One woman went from my ambulance straight into surgery. I responded hundreds of times to women who were 1 day to 2-weeks post-procedure, for everything from depression and suicide attempts to post-abortion side effects and signs/symptoms.

Twenty years as a Paramedic has taught me that all life is precious, complicated, and worth it. I am pro-choice because I've read the US constitution. I'm pro life because I have delivered babies, held parents in my arms after their stillborn babies have been born, and helped women who have had abortions. I learned quickly that to judge another is to do them the greatest disservice... because you don't have to live with the consequences of their actions.

Love and Crave Justice... Give Endless Grace... Pour out Mercy.... Love Jesus... and Love Others....Thank you for your heartbreaking post that resulted in my trip down memory lane..

###

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog? And will I see you in Nashville next week?

Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion

Rachel Held Evans — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:33:49 +0000

I knew what abortion was before I knew where babies came from.

Growing up in the evangelical subculture of the 80s and 90s, I was well versed in the language of the pro-life cause, as familiar with Roe vs. Wade and the silhouette of a tiny fetus as I was with Disney princesses and contemporary Christian music. My young mind grasped the essence of the pro-life argument—that all of life is valuable, no matter how small or vulnerable—but mistakenly reduced the solution to abortion to a single step—vote for a pro-life president, and abortion will go away. A Republican president meant no more dead babies. It was as simple as that.

…Until it wasn’t.

The first president I voted for was George W. Bush. My dad dropped me off at the polling station and I marched into the Rhea County Courthouse to cast my vote for life. While President Bush endorsed the 2005 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which I supported, he also championed a pre-emptive war in Iraq that costs hundreds of thousands of lives. His presidency did not make much of a dent in the abortion rate, and even though he appointed conservative judges, Roe vs. Wade remained intact. By the time W finished his second term, I had graduated from college, come to terms with the fact that the criminalization of abortion is highly unlikely no matter the party in power, expanded my definition of “pro-life” to include Iraqi children and prisoners of war, and experienced first-hand some of the major problems with America’s healthcare system, which along with poverty and education issues, contributes to the troubling abortion rate in the U.S. I remained pro-life idealistically, but for the first time, voted for a pro-choice president, hoping that the reforms I wanted to see in the healthcare, the economy, immigration, education, and for the socioeconomically disadvantaged would function pragmatically to reduce abortions. A couple of my conservative friends called me a baby killer. Several questioned my salvation.

As I advocated for the election (and re-election) of President Obama, I confess I grew somewhat embarrassed by the pro-life cause. I hated those cars that boasted a “Choose Life” sticker on one bumper and a “You’ll Have to Pry My Gun From My Cold, Dead Hands” on the other. The stubborn commitment to abstinence-only education among many evangelicals struck me as counterproductive to the cause, and those awful statements about how a raped woman has a “way of shutting that whole thing down” to prevent pregnancy were shameful and ignorant. Plus, sometimes it seemed like abortion was the only social justice issue my evangelical friends cared about, so they turned a blind eye to the ways in which Republican politics might hurt other disadvantaged groups, or turned my advocacy on behalf of other causes (like gender equality, trafficking, peace, healthcare reform, gun control, etc.) as an opportunity to make a statement about the horrors of abortion in comparison. It was all picket signs and prayer walks. But I wanted more conversations, and action, around poverty, adoption, and healthcare.

For a lot of pro-lifers, it seemed, abortion was all about the baby.

The woman, and the factors that might contribute to her decision to terminate her pregnancy, didn’t seem to matter much.

But how can we end abortion if we don’t examine why women seek out abortions in the first place? Making it illegal won’t stop it from happening, and yet so many of our efforts are directed toward that end. Aren’t we wasting our time and money by simply throwing it at politicians who wave the pro-life banner, but then do little, practically, to address the underlying issues related to abortion? And why on earth oppose access to birth control and reforms in the health care system when those will likely make the biggest difference in actually curbing abortions in this country?

(For an interesting look at the problem of categorizing the pill as an abortifacient, check out Libby Anne’s piece on the topic, where she notes that “if your goal is to save ‘unborn babies,’ and if you truly believe that a zygote – a fertilized egg – has the same value and worth as you or I – the only responsible thing to do is to put every sexually active woman on the pill,” because the pill actually reduces the number of zygotes naturally rejected by a woman’s body. Also, this month's Christianity Today includes a short article on how the morning-after pill does not inhibit implantation, but rather blocks fertilization.)

Furthermore, as I became more involved in the feminist conversation (some feminists are pro-life, of course, but many are pro-choice), I began to understand some of the arguments against the criminalization of abortion, like that banning abortion does not necessarily reduce the abortion rate, that enforcing a ban on all abortions would be impossible, and that women would likely seek out abortions through unsafe, illegal procedures anyway.

I also began listening to heartbreaking stories—from women like Cecily and Tamara who had to terminated wanted pregnancies for their health.

And when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that I don’t know exactly when life begins (at fertilization? at the first heartbeat? at the existence of brain waves?). Does the Bible, or Christian tradition, really make this abundantly clear? There is even disagreement among Christians about this, (and historically, even among evangelicals), so was it really my place to deny a woman who has been raped, for example, access to a morning-after pill?

And so I remained pro-life in my personal conviction, but I began to question my position that all abortions should be criminalized. I could be against abortion personally, but ambivalent about its legality, right? I could have my own convictions about this issue without making a scene. It was as simple as that.

….Until it wasn’t.

Under President Obama’s presidency, the overall abortion rate has indeed seen a decline, but he overturned some of Bush’s restrictions on late-term abortions, and there are these drones in the sky that don’t seem very pro-life to me. I squirmed on the couch when, during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, cheers erupted upon every mention of a woman’s “right to choose.” A lot of pro-choice folks like to say that “no one is pro-abortion,” but when celebratory concert series and festivals are organized around the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I can’t help but question the degree to which we have desensitized ourselves to the reality that abortion means the termination of, at the very least, a potential life, something that should never be celebrated with balloons and rock concerts.

What frustrates me about the pro-choice movement is the lengths to which advocates go to de-humanize unborn children and sanitize the abortion procedure, reducing life to nothing more than a cluster of cells and the implications of pregnancy to little more than a choice. The word “fetus” is used instead of “child.” Efforts to encourage women to receive counseling prior to an abortion are stubbornly opposed. The argument is framed around the woman’s body exclusively, as if the fetus is inconsequential, and pro-life advocates are characterized as being “against” women’s rights. (Frankly, as a woman, and a feminist, I don’t like people invoking my “rights” to unilaterally support abortion.)

For a lot of pro-choicers, it seems, abortion is all about the woman.

The unborn child, and all the complicated, terrifying, and beautiful things its life represents, don’t seem to matter much.

So just as I grew irritated with the pro-life movement for its inconsistency and simplistic solutions, I grew irritated with the pro-choice movement for its callousness and disinterest in discussing the very real ethical concerns surrounding the termination of a pregnancy.

And then the Kermit Gosnell story blew up.

The story involved dead babies and dead women, the exploitation of poor and marginalized immigrants and minorities, filthy conditions, racism, and multiple governmental failures.

"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women,” the Grand Jury reported, “What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths… Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

In response, pro-life made the (accurate) observation that it is a mere technicality that separates the legal termination of late-term pregnancies from the illegal termination of late-term pregnancies so gruesomely exposed by the photos from Gosnell’s clinic. Pro-choice advocates made the (accurate) observation that Gosnell is being prosecuted precisely because what he did was illegal and warned that, should abortion be criminalized, practices like his would likely flourish. I was pleased to see many pro-life advocates acknowledge that the story highlights the role poverty plays in abortion, admitting that the women in this case were marginalized and vulnerable, and that their needs ought to be talked about more often. I was pleased to see many pro-choice advocates acknowledging that the stark reminder of what happens to a fetus in a late term abortion was rightfully unsettling. (It should be noted that late tern abortions make up a very small percentage of abortions, as do cases of rape and incest…so both sides tend to appeal to rare cases in debates.) Kristen Howerton, among others, had the good sense push past all the pointless rhetoric about a supposed media conspiracy to ask why on earth the state of Pennsylvania didn’t shut this place down sooner.

Here was abortion—in all of its heartbreaking complexity, with all of its ties to life, death, poverty, exploitation, fear, loneliness, politics, and propaganda—sprawled out on the front pages of our newspapers, and no single side “won.” It was an indictment on our shared apathy, on our shared callousness, on our shared simplistic political solutions.

“…Because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. I was, truly, speechless.

My conservative friends took the opportunity to chastise and pester me, convinced my delay in writing a post on the topic revealed my participation in some vast media conspiracy and my unwarranted preoccupation with “minor” issues like gender equality in the church. When I explained on Twitter that a post about abortion isn’t simple enough to fit into 600 words, a guy tweeted back, “Sure it is. I can fit it in three: It’s always wrong.”

Is it?

When the life or health of the mother is at stake?

In the case of rape or incest?

When a woman’s body naturally disposes of a zygote?

Meanwhile, my more liberal friends begged me not to write anything at all. It’s too complicated, they said, too controversial, too complex.

Is it?

When the life of the weaker is taken by the stronger?

When one out of five pregnancies in this country end in abortion?

When places like these fail to get shut down in part because we’ve turned abortion into such a political issue?

I think a lot of progressive Christians like myself, eager to distance ourselves from some of the rhetoric and policies of the Republican brand of the pro-life movement, shy away from talking about abortion, when our call to do justice and love mercy demand that we speak and act to address this issue, even though it may be more complicated than we originally thought.

In fact, I wonder if an appreciation of the nuances in the debate, and of abortion’s connection to traditionally “progressive” issues like poverty and healthcare, may actually make those of us who are “stuck in the middle” especially effective agents of change. Let’s face it: We are unlikely to find a single party that truly represents a “culture of life,” and abortion will probably never be made illegal, so we’ll have to go about it the old fashioned way, working through the diverse channels of the Kingdom to adopt and support responsible adoption, welcome single moms into our homes and churches, reach out to the lonely and disenfranchised, address the socioeconomic issues involved, and engage in some difficult conversations about the many factors that contribute to the abortion rate in this country, (especially birth control). It seems to me that Christians who are more conservative and Christians who are more liberal, Christians who are politically pro-life and Christians who are politically pro-choice, should be able to come together on this and advocate for life in a way that takes seriously the complexities involved and that honors both women and their unborn children.

In other words, instead of focusing all of our efforts on making “supply” illegal, perhaps we should work on decreasing demand. And instead of pretending like this is just an issue of women’s rights, perhaps we should acknowledge the very real and very troubling moral questions surrounding a voluntarily terminated pregnancy.

I am still unsure of exactly how to do this. I don’t even know where to start, really. The more I learn, the more complex this issue becomes. But the Gosnell case does in fact point to something simple: that we are failing to care for the most marginalized and helpless among us, be they unborn children or women whose desperation sent them to Gosnell’s clinic. And we won’t be able to promote a “culture of life” until we are willing to advocate on behalf of both.

Perhaps God has called those of us who feel “stuck in the middle” to do exactly that.

###

What do you think?

How has your thinking on abortion changed and evolved through the years? What was your response to the Gosnell story?

And what sort of PRACTICAL steps can Christians take to to both address the complexities of abortion and actually curb the abortion rate?

Note: I'm closing the comment thread, just because once you reach 600+ comments, it's a bit too much to manage. Most were civil and thoughtful, so thank you for engaging!

Ask Jennifer Knapp...(Response)

Rachel Held Evans — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:43:22 +0000

So Jennifer Knapp did an amazing job responding to your questions from last week! I am so excited for you to hear what she has to say.

If you were anything like me, you spent many a weekday morning singing along to Jennifer's “Faithful to Me,” “Hold Me Now,” and “A Little More” as you got ready for another day of high school. The Grammy-nominated folk rock musician’s earthy, raw music has always given shape to my hopes and frustrations. Jennifer’s first three albums—Kansas, Lay It Down, and The Way I Am—sold over a million copies. After taking a 7-year hiatus, Knapp announced in September 2009 that she was returning to music. On May 11, 2010 she released her newest album Letting Go with the single "Dive In".

Jennifer spent her Christian music career challenging religious cultural stereotypes both on and off stage. Candid and compassionate in heart, rock-n-roll in her confrontational style, Jennifer’s impact on Christian audiences took a new turn in 2010 when she made public her long-standing same-sex partnership. The revelation sparked much public debate amid cries for immediate rejection from Christian music leaders, retailers and fans alike. Jennifer currently advocates on behalf of LGBT Christians through Inside Out Faith. Having experienced, first hand, the devastating effects of rejection and judgment, Jennifer knows full well the challenges of being “out” in certain faith communities. However, it is in the sharing of her journey through story, music and conversation that she has discovered the healing that comes from breaking the silence.

You asked some fantastic questions, and Jennifer responded with depth, wisdom, and grace. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did!

From Ouisi: I picked up your new album a few months ago and love it. You've gone through so much maturation, and the wisdom and pain you sing about sound familiar to me, just like the eager words you sang in the first part of your career sounded when I was in high school. If I understand correctly, your journey took you to a point where you now own the fact that you can't not be gay and you can't not be Christian. For the second part of that - What were some of the moments, the thoughts, the experiences that brought you to the point of claiming your faith as a Christian?

There are times in our lives where we are witness to certain events and happenings that radically alter how we will move about our world. We have experiences where we are forever changed in how we see the world around us, how we see ourselves and how we will react in navigating our individually unique journeys. I am grateful that the Gospel spoke to me in such a way. I saw, I experienced, I left altered by a grace that I knew I could never merit nor repay. To this day, my life has never been the same.

Try as I might, the message of Christ continues to inspire and move me, even when no one is looking, even when others insist that I am “doing it wrong” or not acting ‘Christian enough’. Being in a church every Sunday isn’t why I identify as Christian. It is by my experience in ‘seeing’ Christ I am compelled to act out the mercies given me. I have been introduced to concepts like grace, redemption and love. I am a living, breathing human being whose life has been profoundly changed having experienced these acts first hand.

Over the years I have continued to question what calling myself a ‘Christian’ implies. There’s a lot to unpack there in terms of religion, tradition, history, theology--but honestly, in the end, it doesn’t matter what anyone calls me. I am and continue to be inspired by my experience with Christ. No one can take that away. The moment that any of us allows another human being to push us off of the meaningful experiences in our lives, we begin to erode in spirit.

From Rachel: Jennifer, thank you so much for your music. It's been a big part of my life, and I am so grateful for you. I'll try not to fan out too much as I ask my question: I'm reading a book by pastor Jonathan Martin in which he discusses the fact that, in our current culture, fame and notoriety are treated as necessities, while obscurity is considered the kiss of death. He writes "Our society tells us that if and when we get "there"--the job or position or degree we've always wanted, the notoriety we've always dreamed of--that's when all the important stuff will start happening. Not so. All the good stuff happens in obscurity." Is this how you feel about your seven-year hiatus from the music industry? What are some important, valuable things you learned during that time away from the spotlight? Thank you!

Retrospectively, one thing I’d say is that while it is possible to learn from the experience of being ‘in the spotlight’; it is not the most fertile soil for significant growth. The spotlight is where we celebrate and commune with what we’ve learned. The growth, the creation, self-exploration and processing, I just can’t see how we can possibly do that effectively with an audience. It’s too exposed. Being observed inherently shapes the outcome. We usually talk differently when we are being observed. We perform. That’s not bad; it’s just not the entire purpose or the end game.

The spotlight is a fickle beast. It’s rewarding to find avenues to express our mastery over what we’ve learned. Reaching for achievement is a great motivator when you’re breaking your back perfecting your trade. To complete, sell, and talk about a book. Or sing, record and perform a record to a cheering crowd. I can’t lie. It’s powerful, fulfilling stuff to be able to be ‘the guy’ responsible for moving the room. But I think there’s a backside if you go into those situations looking to be the object that is celebrated. Being observed is often too great a temptation to imitate the style of characters we want to be rather than investing in the hard work of mindfully becoming our unique selves. Save the spotlight for the celebration, for the moments where connecting MUST occur to move forward.

Maybe it’s the difference between performing as a kid and getting older, but I view ‘the spotlight’ as a far more public property that I ever did earlier in my career. I learned that some things, you just have to learn in private. That what you say in those public spaces becomes a shared portion of our gathering together. It’s a public trust.

So what did I learn? I learned that I must find a way to nurture my spirit in solitude, away from the audience. It’s important for me to spend time in contemplation, discovery, and in practice, learning what I purpose or intend when I am afforded that sacred public space. The celebration, if there is any to be had, is simply being able to come to a point where we are capable of sharing that experience with the outside world without prejudice toward or fear of others. The personal journey evolves into an ability to be hospitable, if not hopefully, loving toward others. I didn’t know that I was learning anything while I wasn’t performing all those years, but learned to describe it later, when I tripped onto Nouwen’s depiction of the differences between loneliness and solitude. (Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out) It is in those (thankfully) obscured places where we have the opportunity to objectively better ourselves, make peace with who we are without the fear of failure or judgment. It seems incredibly self-centered, but surprisingly, it can lead to an amazing reaching out toward connecting with others.

I'm sorry if that all sounds too esoteric. But it underpins so much of where I’m at today. On one hand, if all you want is some kind of recognition for how awesome you are at your particular skill or level of intelligence, then the only option is to be undeniably good at what you do. So yeah, practice happens out of the spotlight. You practice what you do until you are flawless at that one phrase, that one act--perfect in your descriptions of one event or area of expertise. But I think there’s more to life than just the executables.

The spotlight or the communal exhibitions of our human experience are necessary. It allows us to connect with others, build and reaffirm community. It can be a healing process or practical act of human expression in being ‘known.’ It’s a point of celebration of our achievements and passions. But it must be put into perspective. These are but moments-glimpses; a poem, a song, a photographic still frame in what is the long and rich story of our lives. To aspire to only that moment is to miss out on all the extravagance of life. It’s what we do into the lead up and aftermath to those moments that says more about us than fifteen minutes of fame ever will.

From Kristin: Hi, Jennifer! I think you are great. I would like to know: what is the most encouraging (and maybe surprising) thing said to or done for you by fellow Christians since your coming out?

I don’t know if I could boil it down to one thing said or done, but rather a couple of surprising salient points I didn’t recognize until my sexual orientation became a public conversation.

First, is that there is theological, ritual, community and leadership support inside nearly EVERY denominational tradition of Christianity that actively affirms and upholds LGBT faith inclusion. Before you write off an entire denomination, you have to recognize that even among the leadership of some more conservative traditions (read ‘evangelical’ if you like), there are active support groups and organized churches openly affirming, welcoming and engaging LGBT people and those who would see themselves as allies. It is simply a lie that coming out means the end of finding a spiritual community in which to worship and grow. Yes, it is true, that the support you need may not be inside the present four walls where you live, but there is a great big old world out there of people who love you. Start here.

The second surprise is the obvious need for many inside the Christian community to well and truly get this all out in the open. There is some very serious wounding going on here that is incredibly important not to minimize. It’s not just for LGBT people, but for an entire generation of Christians who believe that the faith we inherited--the Gospel we have experienced-- may still be relevant. I did not expect that I would be a witness to the severity of need for the ‘church’ to find some kind of peaceful resolution to this horrible religious cultural war. I can’t help but think that many Christians recognize how often we abuse perfectly innocent, seeking individuals and ostracize them for failure to live out the prescriptions of orthodoxy. To me it’s a generational questioning of religious relevancy. When we acknowledge there are experiences in our lives, in our nature, that we cannot change, do not wish to change, may never fully grasp or comprehend its need for change? How then will my faith be relevant if God cannot love me just as I am, when all I have left to cry is ‘have mercy on me?’

From Eric: Jennifer, thanks for doing this! One thing that bugs me on a regular basis about Christian music is that so much of it seems incredibly derivative with regards to secular music trends. In other words, we see a secular band with a distinctive sound (Mumford and Sons is a good example) and perhaps six months to a year later, there's a band that sounds an awful lot like Mumford and Sons singing generic praise and worship lyrics instead of whatever the secular artist was singing about. As an artist, what pressure was put on you to conform to popular music trends versus spending time cultivating your personal sound? Do you know of any other artists who struggled with the kind of "six months behind the times" issues that seem to prevalent in Christian music? Are there other ways being a Christian music artist feels like it pigeonholes you as an artist?

It seems simple enough to say, but I think it’s often overlooked, is that CCM’s genre is not a style of music, but rather it is a very specific message. With that perspective in mind, I think it becomes easier to see why CCM often defaults to reflecting the musical trends of the time rather than encouraging artistic growth. When I’m confronted with people who don’t know what CCM is, I describe it like this: Music made for Christians (cultural expression), by Christians (quality control/consumer confidence) with an added purpose of making more/stronger Christians (evangelism/discipleship). That’s not to say that there are not incredibly talented individual artists, writers and producers contributing to the genre; there are. It’s just that the ultimate obligation is to the mission of message and not culturally significant art.

Every artist working in that vein has a certain obligation to fulfill the contract of message first and at whatever means necessary when it comes to style delivery, and frankly, shouldn’t be surprised if it ever comes up. I still don’t know if it was unusual or that I was fortunate, but I worked with a label that protected my space to explore, create and convey my Christian experience with little interference. Honestly, I never expected to have a career in CCM. I just couldn’t bring myself to abbreviate my faith experience into a resolved representation of what Christianity was supposed to look like. Ironically, much of my writing was an expression of how I just couldn’t find peace in using the same language as everyone else. And when I did overtly talk about the Jesus I saw and experienced, it seemed ‘unmarketable’ that I started to feel like both a spiritual and artistic failure.

It’s ridiculous for me to simply blame the CCM industry for this. I hate always feeling like CCM is a genre to criticize. What other genre on the planet affords such a space to freely and unabashedly celebrate God with such enthusiasm? It has no choice but to be classed apart from other kinds of music. But there in lies the rub:

If CCM is nothing more than a marketing tool for Christianity, then it will never allow for the full cultural expressions of human failure that true artistry demands. This is why, time after time, those artists who actually write about the experience of being human in the sight of Christianity reside near the fringes, dancing with the secular world that is fluent in the art of self-expression. It is why we recoil when asked to conform. It is a suspicion that those who express the truth of our darkness are on some mission to distract from the victory of the Cross rather than liberate it.

In this sense CCM reflects our Christian culture very well. It is our Christian culture to invite those to tell only the story of victory and spare the gruesome details of the scarring war. We can reside if we are made clean and presentable, those who are still writing their story must wait for absolute victory before they can share it with others.

From Matt: Jennifer, I have had the pleasure of interacting with a few Christian musicians through the years that have gone public with their same sex partnerships - like Sean Doty and Ric Alba - as well a few insiders in the CCM business. It seems like these public revelations are not really that surprising to most people paying attention. In your opinion, are most Christians truly ignorant of the LGBT Christians in their midst, or are they trying to ignore them hoping they will just go away? Also, I get the impression from Doty, Alba, and others that there are many more LGBT Christian musicians than we know about - as long as they just don't go public, they will be accepted. But if they go public, the reaction becomes pretty harsh. Thoughts on this, and maybe could you share your experience?

Listen, the fact is there have been, are and will continue to be gay people who contribute to CCM both on and off the stage. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ can be an acceptable working environment for some, but has also been used as legitimate financial weapon at times to enforce individual silence in exchange for job security. The reality is that any artist, clergy, youth pastor, Christian radio station DJ or worship band drummer who dares comes out in our current Christian climate will suffer some kind of loss. The extent to how devastating those losses can be range from catastrophic to survivable. What’s most frightening about it is that you can never fully predict just how bad it could get. Does one tell the true story of where their faith sustains hope? Do we manufacture a deflection, or worse--lie?

For what it’s worth, I think the marketplace is only an economic reflection of what has been playing out in our faith community for decades. It’s unfair to only blame the retailers, program managers and clergy for executing a troubled theology of qualified Christian membership. At some point, even I have been guilty of following along, thinking I was doing my Christian duty. We’ve been encouraged to distance ourselves from ‘backsliding’ Christians. We’ve been encouraged to abandon churches that are 'too liberal'. We've been taught it is an evidence of our Christian faith to boycott businesses who profit from artistic contributions of these same kinds of characters. The problem is that the result of wholesale rejection and silence seems to delay the inevitable need to deal with the real issues.

Being gay in this climate is almost guaranteed to bring about this socio-religious phenomenon, but we’ve been perfecting it for years through much less obvious differences of opinion. We all have some character trait, physical attribute, or even theological heresy we don’t fully express in our faith communities for fear of being treated this same way. It’s not until the cost of that silence overwhelms us that we take the risk to find communion with others and hope to survive it. To the outside world and those who fall victim to this behavior it seems that Christians have no love for those who don’t ‘measure up’. The struggles, differences, joys and sorrows of our genuinely lived lives cannot hope sustain the accomplishment of utterly flawless holiness. To me, the saddest exhibitions of these kinds of acts are when they are perpetrated against those who cannot change who they were born to be.

The good news is that this mode of operation is clearly unsustainable. As more and more people ‘come out’, the more and more allies we find. I truly believe that one day a Christian artist will find national success having started their career as openly gay. And it will be so because that artist had the undeniable support of their local church from day one.

From Iris: How has being gay helped you serve Christ better? Can you tell us of one experience where your coming out has served as an encouragement or life-changer for someone else?

I don’t know that I’d use the language ’to serve Christ better’. If anything, my reticence in using a phrase like that today is probably evidence of the fact that I’ve had a lot to process about what it means to be ‘Christian.’ I don’t think I’m by any means unique, when I say that as a gay person taught from an evangelical tradition, you have little choice but to seriously evaluate your position as ‘Christian’. My sexual orientation just isn’t up for debate, but my faith was definitely a choice that I could make. If homosexuality is in any way an evidence of spiritual failure, then the conscientious Christian must examine the possibility. I did, sincerely. And while I’m keenly aware that there are those who theologically oppose my person being fully celebrated in the narrative of the Gospel, the undeniable fact remains: I am still here. I don’t know if this makes me ‘better’ in any sense, but it makes me aware that divinely prescribed grace cannot be earned. In that case, I’m back where I started, when I first got on my knees. The best that I can do is start by recognizing that what measure of grace I have received is only repaid by passing that grace onto others. I don’t think being gay has taught me this, but rather, I’ve always wanted to be willing to accept the parts of me that I cannot change and still have the courage to accept grace.

It’s a strange circle indeed. Because I’ve had to run the gauntlet where many Christians would proclaim there is no fruit that could come from such a rotten tree, but I’m convinced otherwise. I used to spend hours after a show signing autographs on t-shirts and CDs. I felt like I was a pin-up girl for Jesus, supposedly a model of what a Christian woman was to look and act like. No wonder why people were disappointed, I was destined to fail, as I am hopelessly human. But now, after a concert, or a meeting in a church where I talk about what I’ve been through...I don’t sign autographs that much any more. Instead, I find that I’m listening for hours to so many other people whose stories are similar to my own. We are drawn together because each of us is reaching out for evidence that our faith might still be relevant to our daily lives. Some are gay or have stories of someone gay they know who have been deeply wounded by the church, but mostly, we’re just folks who know that our faith is significant. We have been altered, hopefully for the better, by our experience with the Gospel. And now that we see just how human we really are, we’re grateful. I’m grateful. I honestly don’t know how much more life-changing an experience you hope to discover than love.

Thanks to Jennifer for these thoughtful responses! Check out her latest album, Letting Go, and consider visiting Inside Out Faith. You can read the rest of our "Ask..." series here.

On Mixed Orientation Marriages: Four Stories

Rachel Held Evans — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:28:01 +0000

Leigh Ann Taylor, Joe Cobb & Family (Read their story below)

As we’ve been discussing homosexuality as part of our yearlong series on Sexuality & The Church, I’ve been surprised by how many readers have contacted me about their mixed orientation marriages, both past and present. So today I wanted to yield the floor to several people with first-hand experiences in this area, each with a different story.

Leigh Ann Taylor – Divorced (& Remarried)

I had the privilege of meeting Leigh Ann when I visited Blacksburg, Virginia a few months ago and was struck by her warm, encouraging spirit. She and her ex-husband, Joe Cobb, have co-authored a book entitled Our Family Outing, which tells the riveting, heartbreaking, and hopeful story of a family that must face the reality that their husband/father is gay. When Leigh Anne met Joe, she never imagined that thirteen years into their marriage he would come out as a gay man. When Joe came out to Leigh Anne, he never imagined that thirteen years after their divorce, he and his partner James would choose Leigh Anne to be the godmother for their second child. I recently spoke with Leigh Anne:

First, share with us your story. When did you find out that your husband was attracted to men, and what happened after that?

Joe and I met when we were in seminary. We fell in love shortly after we met and were married less than a year later. Although I told him my whole dating history after we were engaged, he was vague about his. Thinking that there might be some abuse in his past, I didn’t probe. If I had, I would’ve learned that he’d been attracted to men since he was 10 years old and that he’d been in a sexual relationship with a man while he was in high school and college.

He kept his secret and we were married for 13 years. We became parents to two children, and we both had active careers in ministry. In our twelfth year of marriage, both of us were on the staff of a large church in Kansas. I was perpetually exhausted from juggling work and caring for two preschoolers, Joe was absent and totally focused on work. I became depressed. I got myself to the therapist and asked Joe to go too, so we could work on the emotional chasm in our marriage. I was completely unprepared for what he said to me after his first visit: "I don't know if I'm gay or straight and I've been with a man."

After I recovered from the shock of his confession, I was surprisingly relieved. I finally understood why our marriage was suffering, and it wasn't me. I said to Joe, "I'll stay with you as long as you’re in therapy to figure out if you're gay or straight. When you come to some peace about that, we'll figure out what to do about our marriage." I was hopeful early on that we would be able to continue our life as a couple, but as his therapy progressed, Joe became certain that he had to be with a man to be whole and I became certain that I could not stay married to gay man. Soon after we divorced, the kids and I moved to Virginia so I could have the support of my family as I started a new season in my life. Joe stayed in Kansas for two more years until he was asked to surrender his credentials as a pastor. He moved to Virginia and has been a regular part of our kid’s lives ever since.

Tell us about your current relationship with Joe and his partner.

In the 15 years since our divorce, we’ve both remarried. Joe and James and my husband Hugh and I make a pretty awesome parenting team for our two children, who are now 19 and 21 years old. We get together in each other's homes for the kid's birthdays, milestones, and for holidays. Joe and James have two children, a son, 3 and a daughter, 5, who are James' biological children, born through a surrogate and an egg donor. I am James’ son's godmother. The older children adore the younger children and visa versa. My husband Hugh is a champ about it all, "I don't get it, but I don't have to. They're great guys and we're all part of the family."

One thing I loved about your book, Leigh Anne, is how you shared with readers some of the prayers you prayed as you journeyed through this experience of finding out your husband is gay, struggling through therapy, divorcing, and remarrying. They are beautiful prayers, applicable to all of us, even if our circumstances are different from yours. Tell us, what are some important things you learned about self-care through all of this?

For the first time in my life, I learned that I really did have to put my own oxygen mask on before I could assist anyone else. I still remember that moment in the produce aisle, when I said to myself, "Avocados....I like avocados." I started in the vegetables aisle and moved right on up to a new bicycle and a fancy coat with a faux-fur collar! I stopped waiting around for someone else to "make me happy” and found that I was quite capable of doing that for myself. I was single for a long time and struggled with loneliness, but I learned from experience that I was far happier at home reading a novel than I was dating the wrong person. When I took care of myself, I was able to be more calm and loving toward the children and best of all, when I met my husband Hugh, I had a lot more to offer to our relationship than just my need.

The most important thing I did to take care of myself was daily journaling and prayer. I literally wrote my way to mental health in my prayer journal.

And do you have a favorite, go-to prayer that helped especially during this journey with Joe?

"God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my ears and in my listening. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my heart and in my thinking. God be at my end and at my departing."

I prayed this at the beginning of the day, taking a deep inhalation when the first half of each sentence and a deep exhalation on the second. I imagined Jesus breathing peace into me, just as he did the disciples. This prayer was and is a lifeline for me.

Another memorable part of the book is when you share the letter you wrote to your children explaining to them why you and Joe were getting a divorce. It was touching, heartbreaking, and (surprisingly) hopeful. Are there any words of encouragement you can offer to parents in mixed orientation marriages for whom divorce seems inevitable?

Joe and I actually made a new vow when we signed our divorce papers, "to speak and act in loving ways toward one another and about one another," for the sake of the children and for our own wholeness, for the rest of our lives. We released each other from the vows we made at our marriage with a blessing as we opened ourselves up to the possibility of new relationships, in which we could be whole. To those for whom divorce seems inevitable, is there a way you can release each other from your marriage vows but hold on to the love that drew you together in the first place? Can you imagine what your lives would look like if love and honor remain the cornerstone of your relationship?

What advice do you have for other women (or men) who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

If you’ve recently learned that you’re in a mixed orientation marriage, please reach out with the truth of your story to someone you trust. A therapist is a good place to start. Be gentle with yourself and do the things that bring you comfort. Though this feels like a death, and it is in some ways, it’s not the end of everything. It’s a transition and there is life on the other side. It may not be the life you thought you were going to have, but it has the potential to be better than you ever dreamed. Pray. Pray. Pray. You are not alone.

Be sure to check out Leigh Anne and Joe's book, Our Family Outing.

###

John – Married

John and his wife Anna are both 30 and live in the Denver area. (Additional details have been withheld to protect their privacy.) You can follow John on Twitter here.

Share with us a little of your story. How did you and your wife meet, how long have you been married, and did you both know ahead of time that you were entering a mixed orientation marriage?

My wife and I have been married for almost seven years. We originally met in high school. We were involved in the prayer club at the public high school and ended up going to the same youth group and church. At that point in my life I was aware of my sexual attractions for guys, but I was of the belief that it was sinful. I was "saved" when I was 14 and immediately starting sharing my testimony of "being set free from homosexuality". I was very enthusiastic in my newly found faith and really loved opening up, especially with other "on fire" Christians my age, about my story and my "struggles" with homosexuality. So my wife, Anna, knew this about me before we were ever involved in any kind of romantic relationship.

After knowing each other and being involved in the same church for several years, we started dating and got married. Basically, as a charismatic evangelical, I had an "ex-gay" paradigm for understanding my own homosexuality. My wife was of a similar faith at that time and I was able to communicate what I believed about this particular issue. So all in all, we sorta knew what we were getting in to, but neither one of us understood it or labeled it as a "mixed orientation marriage". We thought of it as a marriage between a man and woman as God intended, accomplished through his grace even in the midst of my "same-sex" attraction. It is probably important for you to know that about three years ago, our understanding and beliefs about homosexuality underwent a major shift. Our "faith" has also recently been deconstructed.

What are the biggest challenges of a marriage like yours? What are the biggest rewards?

We have had several challenges along the way. They have ranged from my struggles with compulsive sexual behaviors at times (though I have never had sexual contact with anyone outside of our marriage nor have I put my wife/family at risk for any STDs), to run-of-the-mill communication problems. My wife has endured long seasons of dealing with my anxiety, depression, and detachment. I have at times felt stuck and unable to really be me.

On the other hand, we have also enjoyed so many things together. We have created three amazing and beautiful children. We have shared the joy of life's accomplishments together, we've faced questions and doubts together, we have had each other to cry with. I think our marriage offers us the unique ability to have a marriage that really doesn't have to follow some of the "heterosexual" rules and expectations--especially when it comes to gender roles. The best part, and bottom line, is that we love each other and enjoy "doing life" together.

What do you most want us to know about you, your marriage, and your spouse?

What I most want people to know about me, in regards to my marriage, is that I am not living a lie. At the time we got married, I was as truthful with myself, my wife, and with everyone else, as I knew/understood to be at the time. Even now, my marriage to my wife is just as real and a part of me as my being gay. Sometimes I get asked why I remain married, and again, in addition to loving my wife, the truth is we are committed to each other. I understand true love to be the kind of love that endures all things and doesn't end. What I want everyone to know about my wife is that she is the most kind, loving, patient, gracious, intelligent person I know. I think she is beautiful, and I very much want to and enjoy spending my life with her. And no, my wife is not gay! We get asked that a lot. Also, we are aware that our marriage is not "typical" when compared to a heterosexual norm, and we are really okay with that and mostly really enjoy it.

What advice do you have for other couples who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

I think in most cases, I would strongly discourage anyone from getting into this kind of marriage, if they aren't already in one. There are so many contributing factors for how folks end up here and, in my experience, it's usually because the gay spouse believes their homosexuality to be wrong and something they are either ashamed of and hide altogether or something they believe will change or go away. There is no reason at all, that I can think of, for a healthy whole gay person to enter in to a marriage with someone of the opposite sex.

It's a bit harder to offer advice to folks who have just discovered they are in a mixed orientation marriage, or are coming to terms with being in one, because the circumstances are always so different. What I have found is that each couple in this situation really has to do what is best for them...whatever that might be. I know some couples who continue to live together but sleep separately. Some have "open marriages," while others truly have no better option, given their circumstances, than to divorce. Basically, do the best you can with what you have. I happen to have an amazing wife, a beautiful family, and the best I can do is remain here with them and do my best to love them better and better each day.

###

"Doxy" - Divorced (& Remarried)

"Doxy" is a longtime reader of the blog.

Share with us a little of your story. When did you find out that your husband was attracted to men, and what happened after that?

Some background may be helpful. My ex (I’ll call him “Paul”) and I attended the same fundamentalist Christian school and church, although we only began dating toward the end of college. (We both went to a large, urban public university in the southern city in which we grew up.)

I want to say up-front that Paul was my soul mate. We shared so many loves—ideas, music, politics. He always treated me as if he thought I was the smartest, most amazing person on the planet. He was firmly convinced that I could hang the moon if I wanted to—and because he believed so strongly in me, I slowly learned to believe in myself. This was a great gift, especially given what I would term the “anti-woman environment” in which we had grown up.

When we were dating, Paul confessed that he had had some sexual experiences with an older, male relative. He framed these experiences as “just playing around,” and the only reason he even confessed them was because this relative had become bitterly jealous of our relationship and was engaging in stalker-like behavior.

As part of my studies in college, I had read the Kinsey studies about how common homosexual experiences were among straight men—and I fancied myself something of a sophisticate at the ripe old age of 21. I figured Paul’s experiences were just a blip on the radar screen, and he did nothing to discourage that perception. We talked about fidelity and monogamy, and we seemed perfectly in sync on the need for both in marriage.

We were married in our home church in front of 400 people we had known for most of our lives. Then we promptly moved away so that he could attend law school and I could begin graduate school.

Over the course of the next three years, he became more open about the fact that he was attracted to men. He admitted that people in the church with whom he had discussed his same-sex attractions had urged him to get married and to avoid both gay people and pornography. They were sure that he would be “cured” if only he would commit himself to heterosexuality and ask for God’s guidance—but it wasn’t working.

At the same time, Paul was also very clear that he loved me and was happy in our marriage. But I began to feel more and more worried about our relationship—especially the sexual aspect of it. Our sex life had always been good, but I was increasingly troubled by the notion that maybe he was fantasizing about men when he was with me, that maybe he HAD to fantasize about men in order to be with me...

And then, as law school graduation loomed and we were planning our post-school life, the inevitable happened.

Paul fell in love with another man.

I started hearing a certain name more and more in his conversation. He got that glow you only have when you are newly enraptured with another human being. It seemed as if his feet hardly touched the ground, and he was distracted and giddy.

I had never asked Paul point-blank if he had been faithful to me during our marriage. I had gotten a law school education by osmosis, and one of the first things law students learn is “Never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer.” The truth is that I hadn’t wanted to know—but I knew I couldn’t remain in a state of willful ignorance any longer.

So I screwed my courage to the sticking place and said: “How have you managed to remain faithful? Or have you?”

The answer hurt worse than I believed possible. Not only was he having an affair with the object of his affections, but it turned out that Paul had been having sex with other men the entire time we had been dating and throughout our marriage.

This was in the late 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was decimating the gay community. An AIDS diagnosis was still considered a death sentence then, because there was only one treatment at that time (AZT) and it was more of a stop-gap measure than anything else. I had been having unprotected sex with my husband all the while. (For the record, both of us were—and continue to be—HIV-negative.)

I was devastated. I had honestly never suspected him of anything until he fell in love and couldn’t hide it anymore. The fear of getting AIDS paled next to the realization that I had been betrayed by the man I loved most in the world.

For the next few months, I teetered back and forth between the belief that we could somehow repair the damage and make our relationship work and the urge to bolt out the door and never look back. One minute I was tearfully begging him to stay with me. The next, I was feeling anger for which the word “rage” was a very pale description.

Paul actually didn’t need to be begged. He wanted to stay married—but he also wanted to have his boyfriend too. He had always been something of a sunny optimist, and he truly believed that the three of us could take a house by the sea and be happy together.

As much as I loved him, I could not be that person. I took a job in another city on the other side of the country, and our marriage was over.

What do you most want us to know about you, your marriage, and your ex?

My marriage was a real marriage, and it was a very good relationship in many ways. My husband loved me. We had a good sex life. We were good for each other. Paul believed in me so much that he made me believe in myself, and I tried to return the favor. He was—and is—a sweet, kind, and generous man who is beloved by many.

But none of that was enough. Because no matter how much we wanted to make it work, the very core of his heart could never belong to me. He could not love me the way I needed and deserved to be loved by a husband. And I could not give him what his heart, soul, and body cried out for.

I was—and remain—angry at religious leaders who tell same-sex-attracted people that they can, and should, “choose” heterosexuality and marry an opposite-sex partner. I have no idea how my life would have been different if Paul had not been steered to marry me as a means of “becoming normal”—but I suspect that the heartbreak of another failed marriage 15 years later might have been avoided. In trying not to repeat the mistakes I made with Paul, I went too far in the opposite direction and found myself in a relationship that nearly drove me to suicide before God stepped in and helped me find my way out.

The price we both paid for our mixed-orientation marriage was high—and so much of the damage was caused by the church and by people claiming to speak for God. In all things, however, God was gracious—turning our personal tragedy into something redemptive and healing.

I came to recognize that being gay was not a choice, so I delved deeply into biblical scholarship and theology to find what the Bible had to say about homosexuality. The answer was: very little. Certainly nothing like the extent to which it talked about loving your neighbors and recognizing those who love God by the way they live their lives. Since I saw LGBT Christians being faithful to God, and I saw their relationships bearing such good and holy fruit, I could no longer sit by and let the whole world believe that all Christians think being LGBT is sinful. So I became an ardent LGBT ally and advocate. I hoped that social acceptance of LGBTs would lead to an acceptance of their relationships—and prevent anyone from ever again being coerced into a marriage to appear “normal.”

I may have lost a husband, but I did not lose my friend. Over time, Paul and I managed to build a very strong friendship on the wreckage of our marriage. We are still in regular touch with one another. We call, e-mail, and visit, and my children call him and his partner of 20 years “Uncle Paul and Uncle Steve.” We still joke—as we always have—that we will end up in the nursing home together, racing our wheelchairs down the hallways.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we did.

What advice do you have for other women (or men) who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

If you are a same-sex-attracted person who is considering entering a mixed-orientation marriage, I would say “Please don’t!” Being married will not make you straight. If you are primarily attracted to people of your own sex, you will be denying yourself the possibility of being TRULY known and loved, for all that you are.

And you will be denying your opposite-sex spouse the same thing. No matter how much you love each other, there will always be something missing for you both. Marriage is hard enough—entering into it when you cannot honestly commit to it mind, heart, soul, and body is a recipe for heartbreak for the two of you, your families, friends, and any children you may have.

(I am well-aware that there are bisexual people who can and do commit to an opposite-sex partner and remain faithful in marriage. My advice is directed to people who are primarily attracted to members of their own sex.)

If you are a straight person who is considering knowingly entering a mixed-orientation marriage, I would caution you to reconsider. You may not have experienced the terrible feelings of insecurity you can have when your spouse is out with other people of the same sex, while you sit at home and stare at the clock. You might not know how it can feel to be in an intimate moment with your spouse and to suddenly wonder if you are truly desirable. Both of those things were soul-crushing for me, and for other straight spouses I’ve talked to since then.

But mostly, I caution against it because you will be denying yourself the possibility of knowing the kind of all-out, no-holds-barred love I believe that God wants us to experience in marriage. You deserve that. We all do.

Finally, if you have recently discovered that you and your spouse have different orientations, my advice is: “Take your time before making any big decisions, and try to be kind to one another.”

Recently, I told a friend that, if Paul and I had been married for over two decades before I found out that he was gay, the decisions I would make might well be different. It was (relatively) easy to walk out at age 27 without any children. Would I do that now, at age 49 with two kids, two dogs, and a mortgage? I honestly don’t know.

I would ask: Do you both want to remain in the relationship? What matters most to both of you about your marriage? What will you do if your spouse says that having sexual relations outside the marriage is a part of the bargain? What can you live with? What is completely off the table?

These are not easy questions to answer. You will need a lot of support, whether you choose to stay together or not. There was no Internet when I learned my husband was gay, and I had to walk through the dissolution of my life by myself—now you can find thousands of others who are in your shoes and who are also looking for help and understanding. I would say the most important thing at first is don’t rush into anything. You need time to think, to weather those first storms of emotion, and to seek help.

###

Josh and Lolly Weed – Married

In addition, you may be familiar with Josh and Lolly Weed, a Mormon couple that has been open with the press about their mixed orientation marriage. They recently participated in an extended interview with the Mormon Stories podcast, which you can watch here.

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Note: I realize each of these stories is about a gay man and a straight woman. I reached out to several couples, and these were the ones who responded. Check out the comment section for links to additional resources.

Sunday Superlatives 4/28/13

Rachel Held Evans — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:14:57 +0000

IRL…

I had a lovely time hanging out with the good people of Fairfax Community Church at The Blue Conference this weekend, including Kyle and Loretta Cooper who hosted a meal at their home.

Before that, I was in Ft. Smith Arkansas, where I had the pleasure of experiencing 1) the incredibly gracious congregation of First Presbyterian Church, Ft. Smith, which included several 80+year-old-ladies who expressed interest in marrying Dan should I be open to a sister wife, 2) the famous, award-winning restrooms at the Ft. Smith airport (for real; they are ranked among the Top 10 Airport Bathrooms in the U.S.), 3) amazing conversation with a group women at Miss Anne’s Pie Place.

Mmmm….Pie….

On Tuesday, I’ll be speaking at Seattle Pacific University at 9:30 a.m. Let me know if you will be there!

On the Web…

Best Video:
Cat, On Roomba, Dressed As Shark, Chases Duck

Best List:
Brian McLaren lists the “one anothers” found in the New Testament

Best Response:
Ed Stetzer with “Evangelicals and Adoption: An Evil Obsession?”

“Joyce does get right that there has been a boom in evangelical adoption; shockingly, Christian parents do want to raise their children (adopted or natural-born) to one day know Christ as their savior; there are corrupt adoption agencies; and trafficking does happen. I also appreciate her recognition of some positive situations, such as the involvement of Saddleback Church in Rwanda. But based on the testimonies I've heard and read from those who are leaders in the evangelical adoption movement, these incidences of corruption are not normative, and this should have been acknowledged even more than it was. So I'd like to use my blog today to open the discussion beyond the fringes. I've asked some of the most well-respected evangelical authors and leaders involved in adoption to share their response to the claims made in the NPR interview, the Mother Jones article, and Joyce's book.”

Best Conversation:
Yale Divinity School hosts “The Future of Faith”

Best Observation:
NeoPrimitive with “People Are Not Topics: A Problem in Biblical Interpretation”

“My concern is that we go to Scripture looking for guidance on “topics,” be it the role of women in the assembly, household structures, the role of elders in the church, or even the big scary bugaboos of our day like gay marriage. We want to draw a line between the “topic” addressed in the Bible and the analogous “topic” that confronts us now. The danger is, we cease to view other people as people, and view them as a “topic,” which gives us a certain detachment. We then feel justified in making lofty pronouncements on the basis of “for the Bible tells me so,” without pausing to consider the human factor in it all. I don’t know that this is a positive development for the witness of the church. For one thing, it’s a lot easier to dismiss a topic than it is a person. You don’t worry as much about “as much as depends on you, live at peace with all topics.” Have you ever tried to “love your topic as yourself”? Furthermore, you can’t witness to topics: you witness to people. And people are not topics.”

Best Analysis:
“Hey John Piper, Is My Femininity Showing?”

“Women today, particularly Christians whose communities are influenced by men like Piper, may find their voices stifled when their influence and participation in so many spheres is limited to activities dubbed indirect and impersonal. Additionally, to view the opposite sex solely in these gendered, bodily terms tends to make women ashamed of their bodies, while men fail to see women fully, as human beings with bodies as well as souls and minds.”

Funniest:
The Onion with “Professor Deeply Hurt By Student’s Evaluation”

“'Maybe I’m just no good at this job,’ said Rothberg, recipient of the 1993 Jean-Foucault Lacan award from the University of Chicago for his paper on public/private feminist deconstructive discourse in the early narratives of Catherine of Siena. ‘Chad’s right. I am totally boring.’”

Coolest:
“Fish With Transparent Head Filmed”

Most Helpful:
Kristen Rosser with “Silencing Techniques”

“I think we all need to learn to recognize these techniques, so that when someone attempts to silence us, we can simply point it out and then get back to the substance of the issue. And if we're responsible for attempting to silence someone else, we need to see that we're doing it and back off. Issues need to be addressed on their own merits. Trying to shut someone up ultimately doesn't solve anything, and it's actually just another weapon in the arsenal of spiritual or verbal abuse.”

Most Honest:
Abigail Rine with “The Mother Wound”

“I know one thing: that would not have been me up on the mountain, knife raised high. I would have called God’s bluff from the start. And, if need be, I would have turned my back on him. That might make me a terrible Christian, but I don’t even feel like I’d have a choice in the matter. Motherlove is in my veins, and the force of it is as overpowering as God must have seemed to Abraham. This Motherlove is ruthless and all-consuming, in an Old Testament kind of way.”

Most Thoughtful:
Kristen Howerton with “The Kermit Gosnell Trial: We’re Asking the Wrong Questions”

“I think it’s time to stop questioning the media, and start questioning the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Pennsylvania Department of State, and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health for their failure to shut this place down. Why are we focusing on what the media supposedly ignored when the very entities in place to assure this kind of thing never happens totally failed? There were numerous alarm bells on the way that should have warranted investigation, and yet he continued to practice. Is it because these departments were underfunded? Is it because the women involve were poor and uneducated and therefore effectively mute? What happened in the chain of accountability that allowed this to continue?”

Most Relatable:
Ava Neyer with “I Read All the Baby Sleep Books”

“ Co-sleeping is the best way to get sleep, except that it can kill your baby, so never ever do it. If your baby doesn't die, you will need to bedshare until college.”

Most Practical:
Sarah Bessey at Micha Boyett’s place with “Calm Your Heart”

“The funny thing about the simple and basic things is that they are true. If it’s true for a toddler, it’s probably true for most of us. It’s true that I need to go to bed at a reasonable hour, and I need to pray, and I need to eat real food, and I need to share, and I need to make time to rest. It’s true that I need to make quality decisions, and I need to use my words to love people. It’s true that I need to guard my gates from lies and evil and fear. And when storms and frustrations come, when I am suffering – imagined or real, when I am whiny or overstimulated or just plain ornery, when I am angry and feeling unsafe, when I am panicking and my heart is pounding and I can’t seem to get through the cloud of anger and fear and scarcity, I need to take a deep breath and I need someone to physically be present with me and I need someone to kneel on the kitchen floor, deep breathing, and I need to calm my heart to begin again, all over again.”

Most Insightful:
Zack Hunt with “An Angry God vs. a God Who Gets Angry”

“Now, when Edwards, or anybody else speaks of an angry God it is likely, hopefully, that at the beginning they only mean that God gets angry from time to time. However, what has happened, whether intentionally or not, is that over time this repetitive and never ending emphasis on God’s anger has become so ingrained in our minds that we can’t separate God from anger. An angry God becomes the dominant narrative of faith, and anger, rather than love, becomes the core characteristic of God’s nature. Worse yet, this God seems bound by his anger, as if he has no choice but to constantly be angry at mankind. But the diversity of God’s interactions with humanity in the Bible, not least of all the story of Jesus, shows us definitively that anger is not God’s fundamental nature.”

Most Likely To Be Called Women of Valor:
The Women of the Freedom Climb

On My Nightstand…

Prototype: What Happens When You Discover You're More Like Jesus Than You Think?

I LOVED this book! Look for a review soon.

On My TV…

“Beauty is Embarrassing”

Saw this on Netflix. Fascinating profile of artist Wayne White. Loved the connection to Chattanooga! (Language Warning)

On the Blog…

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?

A Cloth of Many Colors

Rachel Held Evans — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:11:29 +0000

I thought this was beautiful:

“Out of the leftovers of the fabric of history, women will make a cloth of many colors. This cloth will force both church and society to notice the variety of ways there are to be women. Women will demonstrate that the wonderful diversity of human character, accepted in the case of men, also exists among women. All women are not from one mold. Women do not have a common eye or voice or language. Out of the poverty of women’s presence in history many creative portraits of women’s history are coming alive…”

“…Power sharing is a prerequisite for the realization of co-responsibility. Created equally human, God made women and men stewards of creation and gave us authority to jointly fill the earth and manage it. The present state of the partnership of men and women in all cultures, on all continents, and in all churches, is in a state of sin. The one-sided development of the source of human authority has reduced stewardship to dominion, husbanding to control, and complementarity to the paternal determining the scope of being for the maternal. Patriarchy has distorted partnership…”

“…Women’s struggle for presence has gone on for centuries. Now the churches are being called to participate in the endeavor….The churches will show their solidarity with women when they demonstrate a new understanding of power and their willingness to share its exercise with the whole community of people. “

- Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Discovered in Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writings, edited by Shawn Madigan

Read anything beautiful lately? Feel free to share!

“God is pissed off and so am I”: Pastor Phil Jackson on Gun Violence

Rachel Held Evans — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:30:15 +0000

I ached as I stood over the casket preaching Marcus’s eulogy. I had known and worked with Marcus for 15 years before he was killed when four bullets found his body while stopping to buy diapers for his child. Sometimes in life, you are in the right place at the right time — and other times you find yourself in the middle of gun fight.

I told the family and friends who had gathered, “GOD IS PISSED OFF AND SO AM I. We are not supposed to be here today! We are to be celebrating college graduations, birthdays, and weddings, not mourning at the funeral of a 24-year-old son, dad, nephew, and cousin.”

The reality of my ministry in Chicago is that I have story after story of young men who have been a part of my world and life who have been both victims and shooters. Yet, every time tragedy strikes, the pain is the same.

If you have never held a mother, father, or crying child who has had to bury a family member because of gun violence, you might not understand the need to make the tough changes. If you have never seen the eyes of a student looking to you for hope as life seeps from their body or sat with a mother asking God why her child is gone — why her child had to die — I doubt you will understand the pain and the effect of what guns are doing on the streets of Chicago. If you have never had these experiences, you might not understand my sense of urgency when I say that I want to see the end of cheap and plentiful guns in my neighborhood.

There is a passage in Luke 7:11-16 in which Jesus stops a funeral and heals a child from death, brings him back to life, and gives him back to his mother. How I dream of that moment. But, I also believe I can work to stop the funerals in the first place and bring our young men and women back to Christ, back to their families, and back to their communities. This means working for personal transformation of young people’s lives. But it also means looking at the structures we live in and asking how they can change to make our streets a safer place to grow up.

There is an important theoretical discussion to be had about the Constitution and the application of the Second Amendment in our country today. But, I live in a world in which I cannot solely base my actions on constitutional theory. My thoughts about the protection of constitutional rights are always accompanied by my thoughts of protecting the young people in my neighborhood. My words about the kinds of legislation we should or should not have in our country must be words that I can speak to friends who might own guns and the parents of children who have been shot. I understand that there are responsible and law abiding gun owners in our country — and I want to respect that — but I hope they understand the stories of my neighborhood and my efforts to stop the shooting.

As a pastor, I know that simply passing laws isn’t going to end all violence. That’s why I do the work that I do to introduce young people to Jesus so their hearts and their lives can be transformed. But our sinful natures feed on opportunities to act on anger and lash out in violence. It is easier for human sin to take the form of a violent shot when you can walk through my neighborhood of North Lawndale on the Westside of Chicago and buy a gun in about 15 minutes. Right now, Congress is considering steps that could make this a little harder to do. Enforceable universal background checks, an end to gun trafficking, and prosecution of straw purchasers (when someone with a clean record buys a gun legally and then sells to someone who would pass a back ground check) are all commonsense measures we can take with action from our elected officials.

After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, more than 4,000 pastors signed on to a letter initiated by 12 clergy in Newtown calling for commonsense solutions to reduce gun violence. You can join them.

If you’re not convinced by my words here, then I want to challenge you to take the next step. Come visit my neighborhood, come walk in my shoes, stand at a funeral with me — and then lets talk and pray together to see what God might be calling his church to do in the light of all these deaths.

- Pastor Phil

Pastor Phil Jackson, is part of the Emerging Voices Project and a pastor at Lawndale Community Church & The House Covenant Church

The House Development Corporation
Red Letter Christians

Christians and Humor: Thoughts on Making It Work

Rachel Held Evans — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:01:19 +0000

photo credit: Scott Gries (PictureGroup)

“It is a test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”
– G.K. Chesterton

My favorite writer of all time is Mark Twain. The man was not only a brilliant humorist, but also a wise, prophetic, and at times searing cultural commentator. I often wonder what Twain would think about today’s culture of blogging, Twitter, and reality TV. He’s been dead my entire life, and yet somehow I miss him.

One thing Twain always got right was satire.

Satire, or any sort of humor for that matter, is tough to do right. But it’s too important not to do it at all, and I think Christians in particular can do a better job of using humor as a prophetic, yet disarming, method for sharing with vulnerability, challenging the powerful, and tearing down idols. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses on this— from the prophets, to Chaucer, to Swift. Jesus too was a brilliant humorist, with a penchant for hyperbole—planks in the eye, camels through the eyes of needles, straining gnats and swallowing camels. (I love that God seems to find camels especially comical.)

So maybe we need to practice humor and satire a bit more often. As a writer who has attempted some satire myself, I’ve observed a few things about when satire works and when it doesn’t.

1. Humor works when it's directed toward yourself

Before I wrote Evolving in Monkey Town, I re-read the best books from my favorite memoirists—Anne Lamott, Sara Miles, Donald Miller, David Sedaris, Ian Cron, etc.—to see what they all had in common. I jotted down notes as I went along, and among the four or five commonalities I observed was that each of these authors were consistently self-deprecating.

“I started writing sophomoric articles for the college paper,” writes Anne Lamott in Bird By Bird. “Luckily, I was a sophomore.”

Self-deprecating humor is disarming. It sets the reader at ease. It lets her know that you’re not the high-and-mighty-writer who has everything figured out; you’re just like her, taking it one day at a time. Self-depreciation, (without indulgent self-hatred, of course) makes you approachable, as a writer and a person.

So instead of writing a scathing blog post against your ex entitled, “10 Reasons You Can’t Get a Date,” try writing a funny, self-depreciating post about yourself entitled, “10 Reasons I Can’t Get a Date.”

2. Humor works when it's directed toward your own community or culture

You can get away with a bit of humor when you're picking on your own community or culture, so long as it’s gentle and wry. This is why Jon Acuff’s “Stuff Christians Like” blog works. It’s why “Portlandia” works. It’s why Ian Cron’s chapter on growing up in Catholic school in Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me works.

Laughing at the idiosyncrasies of a shared culture bonds us together and helps us avoid taking ourselves too seriously.

While we can pick on our culture a bit, we should avoid picking on other people’s cultures. It makes sense, for example, for me to joke about the elevation of the Proverbs 31 woman in evangelical culture. [“In the evangelical Christian subculture, there are three people a girl’s got to know about before she gets her period: 1) Jesus, 2) Ronald Reagan, and 3) the Proverbs 31 woman. While the first two are thought to embody God’s ideal for all mankind, the third is thought to represent God’s ideal for women.” – A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 74] It would not, however, make sense for me to pick on interpretive biases within, say, Mormon culture or Jewish culture.

Humor about one’s community both strengthens that community (by pointing to shared experiences) and challenges it (by gently poking at its blind-spots and assumptions).

3. Humor works when it’s directed toward the powerful

This is the true purpose of satire: to mock power. It is, truly, the language of the powerless. From the biblical prophets, to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, to Swift, to Twain, to Orwell to our beloved Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, satire works best when the targets are the powerful and elite—be they institutions or people.

Jesus’ sharpest comments were always directed toward the politically or religiously powerful. Always. Indeed, you could argue that Jesus’ entire life—from being born in a barn in the midst of a genocide, to hanging out with prostitutes and drunks, to healing on the Sabbath and touching the untouchables, to riding into Jerusalem on donkey rather than a war horse, to healing the ear of a Roman soldier after it had been cut off by Jesus’ allies—was a stinging indictment of religious and political power.

In this sense, I believe the book of Esther too can be read as satire, (or at least as including some fantastic instances of satire). King Xerxes epitomizes the imperialism, greed, excess, and senseless violence that Jews in exile were up against. And yet, routinely, the king and his court are portrayed as directionless buffoons, with no real substance. The emperor—the one that determines the timing of a genocide by casting lots— has no clothes. Power, even the scary kind, is an illusion. (And somehow, that makes it a little less scary.)

Satire only works when its most stinging indictments are directed toward the powerful. This is why attempts at satire fall on their face when they make the weak their target. For example, the writers at The Onion are usually great at satire, but they blew it with the Quvenzhané Wallis tweet, because it just doesn’t work when the subject of a c-word joke is a nine-year-old girl. Same goes for Daniel Tosh, who is a funny guy and all, but who probably should avoid making jokes about rape.

The rule of thumb: Pick on someone your own size, or bigger…never on someone smaller. And don’t take cheap shots.

In the tradition of Jesus, Christians should feel free to wisely, carefully, (and perhaps sparingly) employ satire to poke holes in our culture’s obsession with power—be it in the form of religious oppression, patriarchy, violence, fame, or corruption. And we should be eager to share the good news that, in the Kingdom that lasts, the guy on the donkey is Lord.

4. Humor works when it tears down idols

As a kid, I loved the part of the story of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal when Elijah taunts his rival prophets and the lack of response from their gods by asking if perhaps Baal is busy traveling or sleeping or going to the bathroom. (It was one of those rare, delightful moments when bathroom humor was allowed in the Sunday school classroom. I think even the teacher was excited!)

Our culture is full of false gods and packed with idols: fame, notoriety, power, money, food, workaholism, legalism, “real men,” “true women,” the perfect body, the perfect home, the perfect relationship, the perfect life. And humor may very well be the most effective idol-smashing weapon we’ve got. Through humor, we can ridicule these idols of greed or indulgence or legalism, cut them down to size and expose them for what they are: empty promises, impotent objects of our worship. If ever there was a time to make our humor especially biting, it should be when it is directed toward idols….and our own propensity to bow to them.

Now, the opposite of mocking idols is mocking that which is truly holy. And this is where cynicism comes in. Cynicism perceives everything as fake and therefore mocks everything as fake. Cynicism begins with the assumption that there is nothing good or pure or holy in the world, that any form of sincerity should be regarded with suspicion. My generation is great at satire, but it is also pretty great at cynicism. I sense this within myself and struggle daily to keep my cynicism in check by cultivating the fruit of the spirit, nurturing my sense of wonder and gratitude, and practicing grace.

It would be awesome if I could get it right more often.

But there is grace…

As I said before, these are just general observations I’ve made about humor and satire through the years, and some principles I worked really hard to incorporate into A Year of Biblical Womanhood, which included quite a bit of both.

Rachel Held Evans - blog

Saturday Superlatives 5/18/2013 (and see you in Chesapeake, Virginia!)

Around the Web…

In My Headphones...

On the Blog…

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?

Ask a Recovering Alcoholic...(Response)

Is God's presence limited to Scripture?

When we become more committed to the testimony than to the Person to whom it testifies, we are likely to miss the presence of Jesus even when it’s right in front of us. Probably because it took some form we weren’t expecting. Probably because it showed up outside of our boundaries.

Scripture points to Jesus, not the other way around.

Challies is wrong. We do have direct access to God. We need no additional mediator.

And I have come to see that these boundaries designed to shut others out only serve to shut the builders in.

So what do you think? Is mysticism helpful or harmful to Christians? Should we expect to encounter God outside the context of Scripture? Do we have "direct, unmediated access" to God?

Back Porch Theology

Saturday Superlatives 5/11/13

Around the Web…

On the Blog…

On my nightstand…

So, what caught your eye online this week? What's happening on your blog?

Wise Words from Pastor Jonathan: A Review of ‘Prototype’

From “Obscurity”:

From “Wounds”:

We built a well!

"God does not 'love' us without liking us..."

Do you have any favorite books, quotes, or memories from Willard you wish to share?

Seasons

So, what kind of season are you living through these days? Do you find yourself struggling to love those in a different season?

Ask a recovering alcoholic...(+ a book giveaway)

Elizabeth Smart, Human Trafficking, and Purity Culture

So what’s the alternative? How can we teach young people to value the sacredness of sex and the importance of responsibility without resorting to shame-based, fear-based tactics?

A Letter to LGBT Student Groups (and Allies) at Christian Colleges

Sunday Superlatives 5/5/13 (plus, I’ll see you in Nashville on Mother’s Day!)

IRL…

Around the Web…

On the blog….

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog? And will I see you in Nashville next week?

Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion

Ask Jennifer Knapp...(Response)

On Mixed Orientation Marriages: Four Stories

Leigh Ann Taylor – Divorced (& Remarried)

First, share with us your story. When did you find out that your husband was attracted to men, and what happened after that?

Tell us about your current relationship with Joe and his partner.

And do you have a favorite, go-to prayer that helped especially during this journey with Joe?

What advice do you have for other women (or men) who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

Be sure to check out Leigh Anne and Joe's book, Our Family Outing.

John – Married

Share with us a little of your story. How did you and your wife meet, how long have you been married, and did you both know ahead of time that you were entering a mixed orientation marriage?

What are the biggest challenges of a marriage like yours? What are the biggest rewards?

What do you most want us to know about you, your marriage, and your spouse?

What advice do you have for other couples who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

"Doxy" - Divorced (& Remarried)

Share with us a little of your story. When did you find out that your husband was attracted to men, and what happened after that?

What do you most want us to know about you, your marriage, and your ex?

What advice do you have for other women (or men) who are either considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage or have recently learned that they are in one?

Josh and Lolly Weed – Married

Sunday Superlatives 4/28/13

IRL…

On the Web…

On My Nightstand…

On My TV…

On the Blog…

So, what caught your eye online this week? What’s happening on your blog?

A Cloth of Many Colors

Read anything beautiful lately? Feel free to share!

“God is pissed off and so am I”: Pastor Phil Jackson on Gun Violence

Christians and Humor: Thoughts on Making It Work

1. Humor works when it's directed toward yourself

2. Humor works when it's directed toward your own community or culture

3. Humor works when it’s directed toward the powerful

4. Humor works when it tears down idols

What about you? When have you seen humor/satire done well, and when have you seen it fall flat? What are some other principles to keep in mind.