All posts from "October 2011"

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Halloween and the Werewolf Within

Two new Christian books embrace monster stories as ways to understand the human heart.

Caryn Rivadeneira

I snuggled up close to my daughter as we each cracked open our brand-new books, ready for some quiet reading time. It lasted about 30 seconds.

“Listen,” Greta said. “You’ll love this.” She launched into the description the narrator—a 10-year-old boy named Zach—gave of himself:

And I guess I’ve always been sort of interested in weird stuff. Stuff like werewolves and vampires and zombies and houses where you go into the bathroom and turn on the faucet and out comes blood. Stuff like that.

“He’s just like you, Mama!”

My children know me well. Indeed, I share Zach’s interest in weird stuff. Not so much the blood out of the faucet, but the monsters and spooky houses? Yes. Love it. At least in stories. In fact, I’ve written about my love of the “ooky-spooky” here at Her.meneutics, and have defended my love of Halloween and all the accompanying creepiness as things that actually draw me closer to God.

So you can imagine my delight discovering that not one but two new books— Night of the Living Dead Christians: One Man’s Ferociously Funny Quest to Discover What It Means to Be Truly Transformed (Tyndale House) by Matt Mikalatos, and The Zombie Killers Handbook: Slaying the Living Dead Within (Thomas Nelson) by Jeff Kinley—were hitting the shelves this month, and also propose that monsters can play a key role in our spiritual development. In Night of the Living Dead Christians, Mikalatos—a Portland-based speaker, writer, and Cru staff member—takes readers on a fictitious journey through days in the life of narrator Matt and his troubled friend and neighbor, Luther the Werewolf. In this funny, campy quest to rid Luther of his wolfiness (without out-and-out killing him, the way yet another man wants to do), Matt discovers a neighborhood and church full of other monsters, including out-of-control, life-sucking vampires and believe-whatever, brain-dead zombies.

In The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook, Kinley—pastor and founder of Main Thing Ministries in Little Rock—mixes fiction with nonfiction to point out the “zombies” in our lives. Instead of using zombies as “brain-dead” churchgoers, as they are in Mikalatos’s book, Kinley uses zombies to symbolize the sin that eats us alive. Kinley intersperses didactic chapters—explaining the power of sin as well as the need to confront it—with the gory tale of Ben Forman and his family’s quest to stop a global zombie epidemic. The book’s target audience is teenagers, so it should not surprise that I—someone two decades beyond teenage-dom—related to and enjoyed it less than Mikalatos’s book.

Both books compel readers to take a hard look at the monsters that lurk deep—or not so deep—in each of us. And each offers a glimpse at the good that ultimately can come from doing this, of examining our own souls. As Kinley writes,

Until you look in that dungeon soul mirror and see the grotesque image staring back, you will never really understand what Jesus did for you. . . . To rappel down to that pit of your heart is the best field trip you could ever take. It’s where you truly come face-to-face with your sin-self. But the good news is that it’s also where you find your desperate need for a Savior.

At the end of an otherwise gore-free book, Mikalatos dishes up the gruesome in a scene where Luther the Werewolf learns what dying to Christ can really feel like: “He took hold of my snout and forced his fingers between my teeth, and with a terrifying speed and surprising strength, he yanked my jaw open, then pushed it further until I felt my jay begging to crack. I tried to shout, to tell him to stop, but he kept going until my jaw snapped like old firewood . . . I felt a hand in my side where they knife had wounded me, and then the excruciating pain of the tearing there.”

Later, we see Luther literally rising from ashes, reborn, a werewolf no more. And yet before the book ends, we also see Luther huddled against his house in the rain, trying to wrap his former wolf pelt around himself. “He was crying . . . saying that he wanted [his wife] back and he thought that everything would be wonderful when he was born again, but he was wrong. It’s not all wonderful. It’s worth it, but it’s not wonderful.”

If more of us told these stories about ourselves—about our own rappelling trips down into the dungeons of our souls, or about the nights we too tried to tie our own, sin-fueled lives back on—we wouldn’t be so disturbed by the creepy stories and images so prevalent this time of year. With enough honesty and grace, we might begin to see that the real monsters are often the ones looking back at us in the mirror—and that, as Luther the Werewolf learned, Jesus alone is the one who can make beauty out of our beasts.

I say let’s welcome Halloween and the creepies of life as ways to help us talk about and confront the darkness that lurks within ourselves. Because if we can’t face and admit what lurks about the dark, it’s hard to appreciate and talk about the One who shines the light.

Caryn Rivadeneira is the author of Grumble Hallelujah: Learning to Love Your Life Even When It Lets You Down (Tyndale, 2011) and a regular contributor to Her.meneutics. Visit Caryn at http://www.carynrivadeneira.com.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:25 AM | Comments (10)

Holy Hot Flashes! A Spiritual Take on Menopause

How the mysterious life stage changes a woman's capacity to nurture others.

Michelle Van Loon

Belly fat? Check.

Hot flashes? Check.

Sleep problems, mental fog, AWOL menstrual cycles? Oh yes.

The desire to nurture others? Pfffft. Gone. Current thinking on menopause tells us that the caretaking “instinct” is nothing more than a relic of a woman's reproductive years.

As Sandra Tsing Loh notes in a wry piece in the November issue of The Atlantic, the message of pop-culture self-help tomes like Christine Northrup’s The Wisdom Of Menopause is that mommy’s selflessness is basically a biological hiccup. In other words, as a woman’s estrogen powers down at menopause, she becomes far less nurturing and way more self-centered. It’s pure biology:

It is not menopause that triggers the mind-altering and hormone-altering variation; the hormonal “disturbance” is actually fertility. Fertility is The Change. It is during fertility that a female loses herself, and enters that cloud overly rich in estrogen. And of course, simply chronologically speaking, over the whole span of her life, the self-abnegation that fertility induces is not the norm—the more standard state of selfishness is.

Tsing Loh surveys the self-help literature aimed at coaching women through The Change. She takes on the whack-a-doo diet and exercise advice doled out by experts and amateurs alike. A hearty amen here. I have a small contingent of peers who lob their dietary cures at my midlife woes with evangelistic fervor. If only I will go gluten-free/dairy-free/do a colon cleanse/ingest flaxseed/fish oil/supplements/more supplements/still more supplements/ad nauseum (literally), I will feel and look 20 years younger, and lose weight, too! There's probably some truth buried in these ideas, but I prefer dietary moderation with an order of fries on the side.

The Atlantic piece then commends Northrup’s 600+ page encyclopedic volume as the motherlode of the menopause genre. Tsing Loh allows that the book includes some of the same old nutty lifestyle advice found in other sources, but the book grants her an epiphany as she considers her fading energy for her caregiving responsibilities:

What the phrase wisdom of menopause stands for, in the end, is that, as the female body’s egg-producing abilities and levels of estrogen and other reproductive hormones begin to wane, so does the hormonal cloud of our nurturing instincts. During this huge biological shift, our brain, temperament, and behaviors will begin to change—as then must, alarmingly, our relationships. As one Northrup chapter title tells it, “Menopause Puts Your Life Under a Microscope,” and the message, painful as it is, is: “Grow…or die.””

Gone-with-the-estrogen, do our sweet mothering filters shrivel and die as menopause turns women into Maxine incarnate?

We do indeed change emotionally, spiritually, and socially as our bodies age. Even if we take up rockclimbing at age 50 and live on wild-harvested fish, quinoa, and organic vegetables, we face decay. In our fallen world, there is an arc to our lifespan.

However, I'm not convinced that my desire or responsibility to nurture others is tied to the amount of estrogen in my body. Doesn’t caregiving take many forms throughout our lives?

As a child, I wept over the death of baby birds I’d tried to save with worms and eyedroppers full of water. As a young teen, I dedicated myself to being a good listener for my friends. During my 20s, I gave birth to three babies, then raised them throughout my 30s and 40s. During those years, I organized Bible studies and homeschool support groups, and was involved in many different community activities. At times, all this nurturing should have landed me on the Barnum and Bailey payroll.

As my nest has emptied, the care I give to others has changed both scope and shape, as it must. I have more time now, but I also have less energy. My nurturing comes as I spend time with my two grandsons. I’ve also cared for elderly shut-ins in need of companionship. I’ve mentored a number of young women. I am a wife. I try to spend meaningful one-on-one time with friends from all walks of life. Shoulder surgery and other recent health woes have left me less able to do some of the in-the-trenches nurture I was once physically capable of. But neither those woes nor my depleted estrogen exempts me from God’s command to love as he loves.

Fellow Her.menutics contributor Jennifer Grant offers a simple way to help midlife women think about where to invest the nurturing they have yet to give, even if they feel as though they’ve flatlined in the caring department. She suggests, simply, that we pay attention to what makes us cry. For some at midlife, tears are an unwelcome companion, markers of the depression that often comes with menopause. But tears speak of sorrow, rage, regret, frustration, and joy – and may be a directional signal that shows us where and how to care for others and ourselves in the next years of our lives.

The real wisdom of menopause isn’t birthed from our changing physiology. It's in our maturing capacity to seek God’s best for those he’s placed in our sphere of influence.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:34 AM | Comments (23)

Tattooed Barbie: You’ve Come a Long Way!

Barbie is art imitating life (and vice-versa).

Karen Swallow Prior

A new limited-edition Barbie is raising eyebrows with her punky pink bob and smattering of tattoos. Barbie has had tattoos before, but those were of the temporary butterfly variety and thus decidedly less hardcore. The mild uproar this doll has incurred is to be expected, I suppose. But the objections are unsatisfying on several fronts.

For one thing, the doll is for adult collectors and is apparently not available at toy stores, which mitigates concerns about the doll becoming a role model for children (although this raises some different questions about adults who collect Barbie dolls—but that’s another issue entirely).  Besides, Barbie being Barbie, a Tattoo Barbie makes more sense than, say, a stiletto-wearing Church Barbie.

Furthermore, the question—if not the conclusion—of Barbie’s sway as a role model for girls is a given, particularly when it comes to body image. Regardless of whether one grants Barbie a great deal of power in shaping a girl’s self-image or a negligible role, it is certain that a girl (or woman) who wants to imitate the tattooed Barbie would do far less harm to herself in being tattooed than in submitting to the horrific surgery that would be required to sculpt herself into Barbie’s surreal shape. I’m of the school that is a lot less concerned with Barbie’s influence than with the influence wielded by real life role models (including Hollywood starlets). On the other hand, I played with stuffed animals, baby dolls, and Barbies as a girl, and now I love animals, hate abortion, and adore fashion. Perhaps I should reconsider my position on the influence of toys. I guess it’s a good thing I read a lot of books, too. I might have done better with the Anne Bradstreet doll. (True confession: I studied abroad one summer in college, and my Italian housemate told me that I looked like Barbie. It was a number of years before I realized that this wasn’t necessarily the compliment I took it to be.)

A related question when pondering one’s position on a tattooed Barbie is whether or not art imitates life or life, conversely, imitates art. I’d say it’s both. There’s no doubt we are influenced by the images, views, and ideas expressed in art, especially popular forms such as film, television, music videos, and fashion. On the other hand, the makers of Barbie never would have produced such a doll if the cultural values that would make it profitable to do so didn’t already exist.

Ultimately, responses to the tattooed Barbie—as to any cultural artifact—are shaped by our views of culture in general. The church’s understanding of its relationship to culture has a history that is long and varied, as H. Richard Niebuhr has outlined it. And our contemporary understanding greatly needs re-examination, as Andy Crouch argues.

The fact is that not only are we creatures of culture, but God actually designed it this way. If his whole purpose in creating us was only for the eternity we will spend with him, then why did he create earth as a pit stop on the way? Having been placed by God in the midst of human culture, we can’t help reflecting the cultures we are part of.  And since Barbie dolls reflect that culture, too, we can learn something from them.

Recently, I stood in a long line in the restroom at the Christian university where I teach. A presidential candidate was there to speak, so a few members of the community were interspersed among the college students. A 40-ish woman clad in a knee-length denim skirt, oversized white sweatshirt, and red neckerchief stood in front of me shaking her head.  She asked if I were a faculty member and when I answered affirmatively, she responded, “I’m so grieved” and continued shaking her head. “These students look just like the culture, and I just don’t see anything in the culture worth imitating.”  What I wanted to tell her—and did as soon as I could muster up enough love to do so gently—is that we all resemble some form of culture; we can’t help doing so. She in her red-white-and-blue and hair-in-bun reflected Christianity no more and Americana no less than the college woman in front of her in retro Flashdance attire and short-cropped hair.

Like both of these styles, tattoos reflect a slice of contemporary culture unlinked to specific religious practice, which wasn’t always the case for tattoos (or braids, for that matter). Most Christians cite Leviticus 19:28 as the basis for objections to tattoos. The context of the verse is one in which God was calling out his people to be different from the surrounding pagan culture. For the same reason, according to a Christian worker in Egypt I know, Coptic Christians there are expected to have tattoos that signify their Christian belief.

Examining both the text and context of the Levitical prohibition, Pastor John Piper cautions Christians against getting tattoos. As someone who has a couple of tattoos, I agree with his wise exhortation for the believer to examine the motives and effects of tattooing (or other body art) on one’s heart and on the kingdom of God. As Piper says, the Christian’s identity should be radically rooted in Christ—not, I would add, in tattoos or Barbies. And not in body-image, but in the body of Christ.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 8:57 AM | Comments (39)

A Real Christian Education

My daughter Penny reveals that academic success is not always connected to test scores.

Amy Julia Becker

Our daughter Penny started kindergarten six weeks ago. At the end of her first day of school, she greeted me with, “Mom! I didn’t miss you!” She’s loved every moment since. I’m sure much of her experience is typical—she walks to school, she works on spelling and reading and basic math concepts, she plays on the playground at recess. And yet Penny’s experience also highlights significant changes in American education over the past few decades because Penny has Down syndrome and an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and regular therapy sessions. Hers is an “integrated” classroom, with two teachers and a classroom aid. Forty years ago, she might not have been eligible to attend public school at all, much less in a classroom alongside her typically-developing peers.

Penny’s academic skills are similar to those of her friends at the moment, but her behavior is different. Her teacher breaks the day down into 10-minute intervals, with a sticker for every stretch of self-control Penny displays, and frequent rewards—"Freeze Dance," a prize from the prize box, the chance to read out loud to the class—throughout the day. It’s a lot of work to have Penny in the classroom. And it’s a great place for Penny. I hope and pray that it’s also a great place for the other kids, that Penny’s presence contributes to the learning environment in such a way that she is a blessing to her peers, even as she is blessed by their inclusion of her.

The New York Times recently ran a series of opinion pieces about “differentiated learning,” in which teachers modify curriculum so that children of various academic abilities can all work in the same classroom at the same time. Most of the commentators held up differentiated learning as an ideal, but they also expressed concern about how this learning works in practice. Cassandra Davis attributes higher test scores for struggling students to inclusion and differentiated instruction, but Michael Petrilli counters that differentiated learning harms high achievers because teachers pay less attention to the kids who least need their help. Frederick Hess summarizes the disparity: “low-achieving students benefit when placed in mixed-ability classrooms (faring about five percentage points better than those placed in lower-track classes) but high-achievers fared six percentage points worse in such general classes.”

My own experience in school couldn’t have been more different than Penny’s. I skipped kindergarten because I came home crying a few weeks into the year. “When is it going to get harder?” I asked my mother. I went on to excel in school, but I cried again in fourth grade when I received a B on my report card for math class. I remember forgoing social events and working all the time in high school. It wasn’t until I was two years into college that it dawned on me that school was about more than my personal academic achievement. As I learned more about Jesus’ priorities, I began to see my single-minded devotion to getting good grades as a problem instead of a sign of success. I had learned a lot about literature and calculus and historical events. I could speak Spanish. I would soon graduate from a good college with good grades. Yet I hadn’t learned much about serving other people or about understanding the gifts I could receive from others, even, especially, people who weren’t as academically inclined as me.

In Mark 9, and elsewhere within the Gospels, Jesus’ disciples remind me of myself. They bicker with each other over who is the greatest, over which one of them will gain the most power and prestige in God’s eyes. They are climbing the equivalent of today’s corporate ladder, a ladder that now begins in the classroom, with the rungs of academic achievement leading to productive employment leading to success in the eyes of their peers. And then Jesus disrupts their posturing with a child: “He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’”

I suppose I could say God disrupted my own posturing with a child too. Having a child with learning disabilities has challenged my notions of the purpose of education and offered me a broader vision of God’s kingdom. The potential exists for a similar positive disruption to occur throughout the nation’s classrooms as teachers attempt to educate students with diverse needs. Having a child with a disability has opened my eyes to the ways in which my education—filled with enrichment programs, dedicated teachers, and independent studies—was nevertheless an impoverished one. I never learned alongside or from people who don’t share my academic inclinations. It took me a long time to recognize that my own academic strengths correspond to weaknesses in my character and to recognize that each of my fellow beings has the ability to teach me, if only I have the eyes to see them as God’s beloved.

The purpose of education, at least from a Christian perspective, is not simply academic achievement or increased GDP. Education is one aspect of spiritual formation, in which we learn how to love and serve one another as Christ has loved us. Classrooms with differentiated learning serve “the least of these,” even if they lead to less academic success for peers with higher IQ’s. But I would argue that differentiated classrooms serve the high-achievers too. In some ways, classrooms with differentiated learning mirror the kingdom of God, a kingdom in which merit does not gain us a seat at the king’s table but rather the invitation of the king to understand ourselves as dependent and vulnerable human beings who are both gifted and loved.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 9:06 AM | Comments (16)

'Just' a Stay-at-Home Mom

So I’m liberated from home life. But what if I want to be there?

Micha Boyett Hohorst, guest blogger

I am a product of second-wave feminism of the 1960s. By the time I was a child in the ’80s, movies were full of women in shoulder-padded jackets leading employees from their corporate desks. The working mom was alive and well, figuring out how to balance her professional and family responsibilities. My grandpa was picking me up after school and watching me until Mom got home from work.

So I came into my stay-at-home mom role slowly, with frequent handwringing and doubts. I was in full-time ministry before that, in a form of work that demanded loads of energy, crazy hours, and a great community of support. I had dreams for the way my career and calling would flow into my children’s lives. I wanted a home where high-school kids I ministered to could stomp in and out and eat all our tortilla chips. I wanted my boys to experience the socialization that comes from being around caring young people (my volunteer leaders). I wanted my children to know the part of me that leads 500 kids in the “Jai Ho” dance on stage, or sits with a 16-year-old girl over a cup of coffee, hearing about her family and her relationships, and letting her know she is valued.

When my husband’s job moved us across the country, the community I depended on for childcare was gone, and my job was not transferable. Instead of high-school field hockey practice and prayer meetings, my days in San Francisco became centered on the playground and story time at the library.

I’m grateful for the feminist movement, yet also uncomfortable in it. Some Christian women use the term egalitarian to describe their beliefs about women and the church, assuming it’s less loaded, less political than the “f-word.” But I struggle in that as well, knowing that even Christian working women have more opportunities thanks to the work of pioneering feminists. I constantly question my choice to be home. I struggle with this choice I’ve made to become the grocery shopper at 10 a.m. in my yoga pants, two kids piled in my shopping cart. After our cross-country move, when asked what I do, I found myself saying: “I’m just a stay-at-home mom.” Why has it been so hard to value my work at home?
In The Feminist Mystique, Betty Friedan explained part of what has led to my stay-at-home discomfort:

The only kind of work which permits an able woman to realize her abilities fully, to achieve identity in society in a life plan that can encompass marriage and motherhood, is . . . the lifelong commitment to an art or science, to politics or profession.

Friedan and other second-wave feminists saw domesticity as holding women back from something much greater. By and large, the goal of feminism was to liberate. Women broken by our society’s narrow expectations were released from what for many was a jail cell of forced domestic life. When a prisoner is freed from her small, dark room, she blinks at the new, wide-open landscape. That message of liberation resonated with many women. Yet what of those women who had happily chosen their life at home, who had not been oppressed, who had found their calling within the family?

By the time my generation appeared, our society had bought into such a view of women and their value. Some women had pursued something meaningful, committing to “art or science, to politics or profession,” while the rest of us had walked back into a prison. Essentially, that judgment nullified the contributions of women for centuries. None of us would say women were insignificant throughout the story of humanity: their work of making babies, breastfeeding, clothing their families, planting gardens, gathering food, feeding and passing on stories, songs, and the arts, and providing emotional support for the community — all possible or necessary tasks of today’s stay-at-home mom, and all tasks associated with the domestic realm — have allowed for our existence.

If we really believe a woman is wasting her mind, time, and talents by staying at home now, then it’s always been a waste.

I have been given a bright, open job to spend my days playing dragons and cars with my boys. When I fail to value the narrow yet deep work of raising children, to value the work of building a safe place, I miss out on the joy of recognizing myself as a working woman.

I’ve spent the past couple of years looking for nods of approval of my choice. I won’t always get them. The question is not whether we receive the approval of others, but how we begin to value all women’s work, whether in the home or in the office.

It’s only by embracing the deep value of a life raising my boys that I can look beyond my home into a world aching with need. It’s only when we are free enough to understand liberation that we can spread out under its banner.

Micha Boyett Hohorst blogs at MamaMonk.com, and just moved from San Francisco to Austin with her husband and two boys. She's written for Her.meneutics about Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:43 AM | Comments (35)

We're Just Friends. No, Really

Our culture - and church's - obsession with romance has crowded out the chance for real friendship between men and women.

Enuma Okoro

I was sitting at my friend Andrew’s dining table in the mid afternoon. I had stopped by to pick up a book I needed for a writing project and decided to stay and work with him a while. It was quiet and peaceful and he was bent intently over his work. I slipped slowly into the silence and wiggled my way into its corners. After a short spell I looked up at him from across our computer screens and said, “Tell me there’s nothing wrong with me.” I cupped one side of my face in my hand, smudging vulnerability like a shoddy makeup job.

“What do you mean?” he asked cautiously but tenderly.

“I mean, with Sam, not wanting... Tell me…”

He interrupted softly, “…that you’re not inadequate?”

I nodded and looked down at the keyboard where I knew the slow but open tears would soon land.

He spoke slowly. “I think you are beautiful. And I think you love people fiercely. That is an amazing gift.” I was both surprised and grateful that he hadn’t repeated his usual praise about my intellectual and creative gifts. Somehow he heard me speaking from that shier crevice of my heart, the one easily layered with “shoulds” and “ought tos,” the one whose fragile fractures are habitually hidden.

“I. Think. You. Are. Beautiful,” he repeated.

I nodded rapidly, still looking away as the tears came. “I know, I know,” I whispered. “I know.” I could feel his caramel colored eyes trying to stare these truths into my heart. I could feel how quickly I wanted to bypass his words because some part of me still struggled to hear it.

We sat quietly across the table from one another. I wept freely into the small cradle of comfort his words had carved for me. I knew he believed what he had told me and somehow I felt that seeping back into me as I cried. I felt alone and held all at once. Without moving from his side of the table, without touching me, without breaching the space of sorrow that could only rightfully be mine at that moment, I felt held and re-membered by his friendship in a matter of moments.

Andrew and I have been good friends for the past year. I am still growing into this sliver of space our friendship provides. We met when we were both single and immediately hit it off. We enjoy one another’s company intellectually and socially, and we both find the other physically attractive. Yet there was no assumption that our new and enriching acquaintance would lead to a romantic relationship. We simply spent several months getting to know one another through conversation and sharing activities together and with groups of mutual friends. Yes, we have since had some conversations around boundaries and expectations. We have had to, because neither of us has been well formed by our culture or Christian traditions to imagine healthy platonic relationship between two single people as good enough.

Many would look at our friendship and wonder why we aren't pursuing a romantic relationship. The truth is that sometimes, romantic relationships are all about timing and part of discernment is honoring what seems fitting for particular seasons of our lives. Andrew and I met when neither of us felt inclined to pursue romance for our own respective reasons. I have come to believe that platonic male-female friendships can be a life-giving, healthy corrective to our culture’s and churches’ overemphasis on romance.

This summer, the movie Friends with Benefits (Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis) revisited the timeless question famously posed by When Harry Met Sally: Can a man and woman be “just” friends? Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal spend years trying to prove that they can have a platonic relationship. They sleep together, awkwardly pretend the sex never happened, and then eventually start dating. At the center of these movies is the premise that any good emotional connection between a single man and woman should evolve into a sexual relationship. It is not that different in churches and Christian youth culture, where most relationship discussions revolve around preparing for marriage, courtship dating, and abstinence. Rarely do Christian resources focus on the importance of cultivating friendships in general, let alone cross-gender ones. It’s no wonder that heterosexual men and women fumble over how to live into mutual life-giving and respectful non-sexual relationships with one another.

Desire is beautiful. No denying we are sexual beings, and intellectual and emotional attraction can easily lead to sexual attraction between friends. But being single and feeling something toward someone else who happens to be single does not mean that we should act on our desires. We each come with unique personal histories; sometimes it takes a while to figure out what lies behind certain desires. It may have little to do with the person in front of me and more to do with misdirecting specific unmet needs. Part of the conversation around nurturing male-female friendships has to include how we order and discipline our desires.

I believe my friendship with Andrew will have a positive impact on my next romantic relationship. But it is also beautiful for its own sake, without thought of its broader utility. He is teaching me to argue better, to share my discontent in less hurtful ways. I am learning that deepening our friendship means not shying away from difficult conversations. I cannot hide behind verbal jabs offered in pseudo jokes. He speaks forthrightly to me and mirrors his desire for me to be transparent, to say what I mean and to not couch my emotional needs in half-truths. I hear him and often still stifle in defense. It is risky to nurture the kind of friendship that compels us to reach out from our fears and insecurities. Friendship takes courage, even the ones that offer to reminds us of who we are, and who we are created to be.

As a culture we do not know very much about discipline. We assume that if something or someone is accessible to us, there is usually no good reason why we should not lay claim to it. We are not well trained in saying no. At different seasons in our lives, denying sexual desires in particular can open up space for a life-giving platonic friendship, as well as for new gifts and opportunities for growth.

Enuma Okoro was born in the United States and raised in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and England. She holds a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School where she served as director for the Center for Theological Writing. The author of Reluctant Pilgrim and co-author of Common Prayer (with Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove), Enuma lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. She blogs at EnumaOkoro.com.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at 11:19 AM | Comments (67)

Exotic Animals and Kingdom Ethics

Principles for why we should avoid treating all animals as possessions.

Karen Swallow Prior

In the tight-laced society of 18th and 19th-century England, bull baiting, bear baiting, and cock fighting were popular forms of entertainment. Thanks to the efforts of William Wilberforce and other evangelical Christians (who were hard at work abolishing slavery at the same time), these activities were not only outlawed, but are now viewed through 21st century eyes as the acts of savagery they surely are.

Certainly, circuses, big game hunts, and Industrial Age-era zoos don’t descend to the same level of depravity as animal fighting for “sport” does. But might these be lesser forms of barbarism even so?

This week’s horror story of exotic animals released by their suicidal owner in Ohio makes the answer obvious, I think. The event was a disaster just waiting to happen. Long before law authorities (who had little or no choice of actions given the danger posed by the loose animals to humans) shot nearly 50 tigers, lions, and other exotic animals, these creatures should have received the protection of the law. Their troubled owner had a long history of felony animal abuse charges, and his state is one of several with little or no regulations on ownership of such animals. With better laws and effective enforcement of those laws, this tragedy—including the suicide of the owner whose increasing desperation about his circumstances with the animals he harbored seems to have triggered the chain of events—could have been averted.

But for Christians, this case highlights important aspects of stewardship that transcend matters of public policy. The situation speaks to our obligation to bring to bear not just legal standards, but also religious, social and personal influence on matters of animal welfare and creation care.

I, for one, have never experienced pleasure in viewing beautiful, mighty beasts in confinement, much less in watching a creature as magnificent as an elephant being coaxed into performing silly tricks like standing on a stool for the sake of a few philistine “oohs” and “ahhs” from onlookers. Those who do find enjoyment in such would likely lose all mirth with the knowledge of the sinister underworld of wild animal trafficking.

On the other hand, this is not an argument for an absolutist position against all human enjoyment and use of animals. I don’t believe God’s call for human stewardship of or dominion over his creation is quite so black and white. (Indeed, I own—and terribly spoil—hunting dogs and riding horses.) Rather, responsible stewardship requires wisdom, discernment, adaptability, and most of all love—love for the Creator first and, flowing from that, love for his creation.

When I was in grade school, my fifth grade class took a field trip to the circus. I don’t remember a lot about that day, but two memories stand out as though it were yesterday. The first memory is of a funny red, white, and blue hat my classmate Katie bought there and wore on the bus ride home. The second memory is something I saw from the bleachers where I was seated with my class during the show: A cage was set off to the side of the performance ring. Inside the cramped, barred confines, a tiger stood, swaying his head back and forth, as though hypnotized, for the entire performance. I don’t believe I saw much else that day; I couldn’t take my eyes off that creature, the sight of which robbed me of any of the joy that children are supposed to experience at the circus. It was the last circus I ever attended.

The use of mules for plowing or chickens for eggs, and the enjoyment of dogs for companionship or goldfish for beauty are not the same thing as making a bear dance in a dress or whipping a lion into submission so a man can put his head inside its mouth. The former demonstrate respect for both Creator and creation — the latter mere foolishness at best.

God, in his good and inscrutable ways, saw fit to create some species of animals as more suitable (with varying degrees of exertion on our part) to human companionship and domesticity, and he made some less so. Like the many variations of weather that God created, He made some animals to be enjoyed, some to be admired from afar, some to be fed from and some to be fled from. Good stewardship is in knowing, and respecting, the differences.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at 3:06 PM | Comments (8)

Why Church Matters

How we can remind each of the need for the church to play a central role in our lives.

Mary DeMuth, guest blogger

Recently I wrote a blog post entitled, Spiritual Abuse: 10 Ways to Spot it. While I'm not an expert on spiritually abusive churches or ministries, I've had my share of negative experiences, some bordering on abuse.

As I read through the comments, I saw a lot of hurting people, some of whom have left church because of the pain. Couple that with high-profile pastors leaving their churches and the fact that more and more people are emigrating away from traditional church, and we find we're in a bit of a conundrum about church. What is it? Why is it necessary? Why bother? Isn't everything church? Or nothing at all? Is attendance required for a Christ follower?

When we church planted in southern France a few years ago, we ran into an interesting obstacle. Some folks believed that any sort of gathering was "church." If we hung out, we were having church. If we went to a concert, church. If we walked down the street and ran into another Christian, that was church, too. If that is true, why bother with the local congregation?

Bill Hybels has said, “The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders.” The best way to see converts, missiologist C. Peter Wagner tells us, is to plant a church. He wrote, “Church planting is the best methodology of evangelism under the sun.” Church erupted from a Holy Spirit-shaking prayer room in the second chapter of Acts, and it spread like the dickens to every remote corner of the earth. Jesus tells Peter he'll build his church on the rock of Peter’s belief.

And yet I run into people who no longer attend, who mimic my friends in France, who believe hanging out is enough.

The New Testament uses the Greek word Ecclesia to describe our local congregation. Here's a simple definition:

1. A congregation
2.The assembly of citizens of an ancient Greek state [from Medieval Latin, from Late Greek ekklesia assembly, from ekkletos called, from ekkalein to call out, from kalein to call]

A church is a body of called out ones. From Paul's writings (in a nutshell), it's a group of local Christians who celebrate the sacraments and have a leadership structure in place with deacons and elders who orchestrate the mission of the church. According to Alan Hirsch, the church should be a centered set (based on social set theory) where Jesus is at its center, beckoning people toward him through his irresistibility. It's not about who is out or who is in, but who is on the journey toward Christ. As I've talked to my theologically astute husband, he echoes these definitions, saying that church is the place where . . .

• we're taught
• we give
• we meet each other's needs
• we pray and encourage others
• we take communion
• we worship
• we administer baptism
• we marry and bury

Church is the center point where we love others, modeling Jesus to the world through our sacrifice and missional community.

With that definition, everything is not church. Hanging out is not church. And if we are running from church because of our injury or personal bias, we are missing out on God's calling to us. He calls us all out to be a part of his ecclesia, his local congregation. Yes, as Christ’s followers, we're all a part of the universal Body of Christ. But to be effective and obedient and shaped and discipled, we must be a part of a local group of believers, breaking bread together, submitting ourselves to teaching, letting others into our lives, giving them permission to say the hard things.

We live in a mobile culture, which sometimes isolates us. We who create personas on the web, who perfect our hiding, may find attaching ourselves to a local church frightening. And yet God calls us there, warts and all. He calls us to covenant together with other Jesus disciples, to messy our lives with people we might not hang out with normally. In that beautiful conflagration of community, we learn the art of loving each other and showing the world outside our circle just who Jesus is.

Question for you:
What is church? Why attend church? And what about church has harmed you? Inspired you? Helped you? Grown you?

Mary DeMuth is the author of twelve books including her latest, The Muir House (a novel). She speaks around the country and the world, encouraging people to live uncaged lives. She lives with her husband, three teens, a needy dog and an angry cat in Texas. Find out more at http://www.marydemuth.com

When Child Discipline Becomes Abuse

A Washington couple was recently charged with the death of their 11-year-old daughter, Hana, whom they disciplined by withholding food and shutting out of the house; she died of hypothermia and showed evidence of malnutrition. Last year, 7-year-old Lydia Schatz died after being beaten by her parents for mispronouncing a word during her reading lesson. And five years ago, 4-year-old Sean Paddock suffocated to death when his mother bound him tightly in blankets as a form of discipline.

Place an appealing object where they can reach it. . . . when they spy it and make a dive for it, in a calm voice say, ‘No, don’t touch that.’ Since they are already familiar with the word ‘No,’ they will likely pause, look at you in wonder, and then turn around grab it. Switch their hand once and simultaneously say, No.

With our first toddler, I placed an old, unused and empty, single-shot shotgun in the living room corner. After taking the toddlers through several “No” and hand-switching sessions, they knew that guns were always off limits. . . . I didn’t child-proof my guns, I gun-proofed my children.

When the first fires of fall were lit, I would coax the toddlers over to see the fascinating flames. Of course, they always wanted to touch, so I held them off until the stove got hot enough to inflict pain without deep burning — testing it with my own hand. When the heat was just right, I would open the door long enough for them to be attracted by the flames, and then I would close the door and move away. The child would inevitably run to the stove and touch it. Just as his hand touched the stove, I would say, “Hot!” It usually took just one time, sometimes twice, but they all learned their lessons.

This, the Pearls write, is what the Bible means by, “Train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6). They write, “Train up — not discipline up. Train up — not educate up. Train up — not ‘positive affirmation up.’ ” Yet for people who profess vehement disgust with what they continually call “modern psychology,” they do seem to have placed most of their eggs in the behavioralist basket. They insist that their method of child-rearing (emphasis on the rear) is the biblical method, and grows out of their belief that the inherent sinfulness of babies (who “go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies; Psalm 58:3”) must be restrained. Parents, they write, “can begin the child’s ‘sanctification’ long before his salvation.” In sum, the Pearls’ training consists of using strikes and blows to “help [children] develop a firm commitment to righteousness.”

It’s probably important to emphasize that the physical blows I’ve mentioned so far are not, in the Pearl method, understood as punishment. They are given for the sake of training, and, if a child has been “trained properly,” spankings with “the rod” will not, they promise, happen often. However, if a child does “transgress” — for example, failing to come when called, showing slight hesitation or displeasure, or throwing a tantrum (and the Pearls interpret crying after the age of 7 months as selfishly manipulative) — she must be “admonished” with “the rod,” ideally some kind of smooth stick that increases in diameter as the child ages. The child is to “come submissively” to be spanked; however, the Pearls write, “if you have to sit on him to spank him, then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he has surrendered.” Likewise, while the Pearls acknowledge that “five to ten licks” are likely sufficient, the “general rule is to continue the disciplinary action until the child has surrendered,” which may take upwards of 40 lashes (which, if we’re being biblical here, exceed the Old Testament’s limit on beatings for adults).

Throughout the book, the Pearls say their method makes for happy, loving, contented children; theirs, they say, is the path to healing and wholeness, citing Proverbs 23:13: “‘Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.’ ” And Michael Pearl insists that the parents who killed their children “twisted” his teaching.

However, after reading To Train Up a Child, I believe that the line between the Pearls’ “child training” and child abuse is blurry at best. Theirs seems anything but biblical child rearing, rather, a program of calculated cruelty in the name of a God who loves kindness and mercy; a God who bears with the weakness and rebellion of stubborn people of all ages, and who became flesh to suffer in our place and for our healing. One child suffering under this training is too many; it’s my hope that the Pearls will be widely discredited, and soon.

Go Marry, Young Man!

In his recent book, Young and in Love: Challenging the Unnecessary Delay of Marriage (Cook) pastor Ted Cunningham joins a conversation that hit the media spotlight a few years ago with Christianity Today’s cover story “The Case for Early Marriage,” which I responded to on Her.meneutics. This February, sociologist Mark Regnerus, author of the cover story, broached the subject again in an interview with Katelyn Beaty, where he discusses his new book on Premarital Sex in America (Oxford).

Cunningham adds insight from his own experience pastoring Woodland Hills Family Church in Branson, Missouri Cunningham, coauthor with Gary Smalley of Great Parents: Lousy Lovers (Tyndale), encourages couples to not let youth inhibit marriage. Couples considering rushing into marriage against the advice of godly parents and friends, while dating new believers, or while in high school should be cautious, Cunningham says; yet if you’re considering delaying to, say, finish a college degree, he says, “Why wait?”

Her.meneutics’ Ruth Moon talked with Cunningham about his pro-marriage philosophy.

What was the impetus for this book?

It was based on our marriage ministry at Woodland Hills. The more I started meeting with 20-somethings, it made me realize you guys just need somebody to picture a special future for you. Your parents didn’t do it; your colleges didn’t do it; the churches you grew up in didn’t do it. They didn’t tell you that marriage is a great thing, something to look forward to, and something you’re going to enjoy. You’re delaying it because you’re doing exactly what you were modeled and taught, so I want to give you a different perspective.

Your book is geared toward a very specific demographic: people who are young and in love, and people are saying they’re too young for marriage. What can other demographics — like young singles — get out of the book?

I’m not pushing the book on people who want to stay single and selfish — which is who I meet most of the time. I get the I Corinthians 7 argument. I totally understand it. I don’t meet many people in their 20s who are staying single out of service to Christ. Most 20-somethings I meet are pursuing independence, which has become a socially acceptable term for selfishness. It’s, “I want more years with me. I want more years to do my own thing, to be my own person, to care for myself, to buy things for myself, to consume.”

The young women I know who are single are not so because they rejected 50 eligible men, but because they haven’t met anybody they feel is worth spending their life with. What’s your advice for them?

I get pretty frustrated with that. If you’re going to be a pro-marriage church like Woodland Hills, you also have to be a pro-dating church. You have to teach young men to take initiative, which they really haven’t learned. They’ve been taught to fear love and be paranoid of marriage; how are they going to make a move, a first step on asking a young lady out? Don’t just go to a community where there are singles; that’s not enough. They search for churches with singles groups and churches with marriage groups. That’s not enough; you have to go to a pro-marriage church. You have to be part of a community where the little boys are being challenged to become men.

You said in the book a couple times that marriage is normative and singleness is not, yet also mention the obvious counterexamples of Jesus and Paul. Why is marriage normative?

You can take it from the social aspect; you can take it from the biblical aspect; you can take it from the reproductive aspect. The health of the church rides on the marriages. I do think singleness has a strong purpose, but we don’t want the message getting out there to young people that singleness is better than marriage. And the reason I use the word normative is that I don’t want singles to hear that marriage is better; it’s just the standard. God gave it to us. It’s what keeps the human race moving; it’s what builds the church. It’s what models the gospel of Jesus. The exception of singleness has its purpose — service to the body of Christ; devotion to Christ; loyalty to Christ. But if I’m going to have to pick a message on Sunday morning and encourage something, I’m going to encourage marriage.

Toward the beginning you talk about flirting and pursuing as a woman. Can you explain how a woman ought to show interest?

I’m an old-fashioned guy to the hilt, so I believe wholeheartedly in letting that guy make the first move. But here’s what I’ll challenge young ladies — I get in a lot of trouble for this and I’m okay with it. ‘Present yourself’ would probably be a better way to say it than pursue. I don’t know too many guys who are into the rolled-out-of-bed look. Fix yourself up a little bit when you know you’re going to encounter a guy you’re interested in. Communicate eyeball to eyeball.

Here’s what young men tell me: They feel intimidated. A lot of young ladies put out an aura that they don’t need anybody. Put out those feelers that no, I enjoy your company. Give those cues, give those signs and present yourself. Those are just a few things, I don’t claim that’s my expertise but I think anything you can do to take down the walls of “I’m living the fabulous single life, I don’t need a man” — I think a lot of people are taking those cues seriously and turning around and walking the other way. 

An Open Letter to DC Comics

Dear DC Comics,
Since you are my favorite comic book publisher, I am so excited that your risky decision to reboot 52 of your comic book titles seems to be paying off.

However, I applauded your initiative to simplify your storytelling, and hoped it might re-center on the moral drama of priority-setting, the often competitive brute and moral strength, choice, and consequence. After all, those qualities got me hooked on superhero stories in the first place, and it’s those kinds of character dilemmas that I have most enjoyed dissecting with other fans.
For this, I would celebrate your success wholeheartedly — if it weren’t for a controversy triggered by the reboot of several of your female characters, in particular, the alien Starfire.

Fantasy author Michele Lee asked her 7-year-old daughter how she felt about the revamped Starfire. Here’s a snippet of their conversation, one you’ve apparently caught wind of:
Daughter: "Well, she's not fighting anyone. And not talking to anyone really. She's just almost naked and posing."

Lee: "Do you think this Starfire is a good hero?"

Daughter: "Not really."

Lee: "Do you think the Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon is a good role model?"

Daughter: immediately "Oh yes. She's a great role model. She tells people they can be good friends and super powerful and fight for good."

Lee: "Do you think the Starfire in the Teen Titans comic book is a good role model?"

Daughter: "Yes, too. She's still a good guy. Pretty, but she's helping others all the time and saving people."

Lee: "What about this new Starfire?"

Daughter: "No, I don't think so."

Lee: "Why not?"

Daughter: "Because she's not doing anything."



This conversation hits close to home. I have a 6-year-old niece who is far more interested than me in combining “pretty” dress-up outfits with saving the day. So I was interested to see the official response on your Twitter feed:

We've heard what's being said about Starfire today and we appreciate the dialogue on this topic. We encourage people to pay attention to the ratings when picking out any books to read themselves or for their children.

Unfortunately, I find your defense flawed on multiple fronts. First, Starfire is a major character in an animated series targeted to a pre-teen audience (Teen Titans). The sunshine-y version of the character in the cartoon is barely recognizable to those of us who've read her adult saga, but it's the same character and the same brand, and a new generation of little girls is getting hooked on the idea of her.

A Christian Response to Gay Bullying

A few weeks ago, Jamey Rodemeyer was found dead by his parents in their Buffalo, New York, home. But Rodemeyer’s death was different. The 14-year-old was one of many young people who have committed suicide over bullying and taunting over sexuality. Last year, Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge in New York after a roommate secretly filmed him in a sexual encounter with another male student and posted it online. Asher Brown and Seth Walsh committed suicide after facing relentless taunting for being gay. And Sladjana Vidovic was one of five students from an Ohio high school to commit suicide in the course of a year.

. . . until adults take responsibility for how we treat one another, until we see that we are doing the same thing we are asking kids not to do at school — politicians do it, adults do it — to say that he [Bono] is different and he is wrong and to make something of it, shame on us for doing that and being an example for kids.

After the suicides of Clementi, Brown, and Walsh, Degeneres posted a video in which she expressed grief and outrage that anyone would feel so alone that suicide seemed their only option. She said intolerance of homosexuality is the foundation for today’s bullying: “There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting and we have to make it stop. We can’t let intolerance and ignorance take another kid’s life.” She concluded that “things will get easier, peoples’ minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

Degeneres’s comments give Christians much to think about. When any person commits suicide, it’s a tragedy, one Christians especially should grieve, given the person’s God-given dignity and irreplaceable presence in others’ lives. Bullying, taunting, and physical or emotional abuse is not to be tolerated by believers who see it happening, regardless of who is being bullied. Nevertheless, Ellen’s comments present some troubling assertions — namely, that bullying is simply any moral judgment about another person’s behavior.

It’s a fine line between bullying and tolerance, and Christians have made blunders on both sides. Some have seemed to put homosexuality into its own category of sinfulness, as if it takes a special kind of atonement to make clean. This has only added fuel to the pro-tolerance fire. In an effort to reverse these effects, some Christians have swung the pendulum too far, ignoring Scripture’s prohibitions against homosexual behavior in favor of a widely embracing, culturally acceptable sexual ethic.

Christians must bridge the gap between bullying and the cry for tolerance. We cannot turn a blind eye to sinful behavior of any sort, whether it’s homosexual behavior or hateful bullying. And we also must clearly define bullying, focusing on physical and verbal abuse rather than simple disagreement with another’s actions.

After Clementi’s death, Albert Mohler wrote an article lamenting that four young men had committed suicide in one month. He wrote, “Tyler joined Billy, Seth, and Asher as tragic evidence of the dangerous intersection of sexual confusion, hateful classmates, and the wide-open world of social media. These boys simply ran out of the emotional ability to face life, crushed by the burden of secrets and the bullying of their peers.” What was once a fight in the hallway or a rumor passed in a classroom note has become an online epidemic. A girl who sends a text message to a boy at school can be an internet sensation by the end of the day. A young man who has a sexual encounter with another young man can be broadcast unbeknownst to him by a cruel college roommate. This is a problem and a tragedy, especially when it leads to death.

Yet the answer is not a ceasefire on all moral pronouncements in the public square. Degeneres’s definition of bullying, like many in the LGBT community, assumes that if we simply normalize homosexuality, bullying over sexual orientation will cease. As Christians, it’s more complicated than that. In order to be faithful to what God says, we must resist the notion that “tolerance” will solve the bullying problem. Living outside God’s design for sexuality, no matter the specifics, has implications for this life and for eternity.

Christians should be the first to offer a healing hope for the victim of senseless bullying of any kind. As Mohler asked, “Was there no one to step between Tyler Clementi and that bridge? Was there no friend, classmate, or trusted adult who had the courage and compassion to reach into his life and offer hope?”

Yet as Christians, we must have the heart of Jesus, who was willing to do the unpopular in order to free them from eternal judgment for their sin. We must never resort to hateful tactics and unkind words to prove our point, simply mimicking the meanness that permeates our schools. When Christians offer a counter voice to the actions of their peers, maybe then will our bullied friends and neighbors see an alternative to the seeming only option of a desperate suicide.

Courtney Reissig is a pastor's wife and freelance writer/blogger. She has written for the Gospel Coalition's book review site, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. She blogs regularly at In View of God's Mercy.

Why It’s Your Job to Break the Women’s Ministry Stereotype

I remember the day I parted ways with the old model of women’s ministry. I was sitting in a hotel ballroom full of women. The speaker shared a gut-wrenching testimony that elicited a few sniffles from the crowd, which gradually grew into sobs, which snowballed into full-on emotional meltdown. It was exactly the kind of thing men imagine happening when women get together. I didn’t like it at all.

In retrospect, my younger self was arrogant and naïve in that moment. Women need healing from the Lord, and sometimes a good cry in a safe space is spiritually restorative. That aspect of ministry is necessary and valuable. Even so, I couldn’t ignore the part of my spirit that wanted more. That yearning has persisted ever since, and it is present in the hearts of many women I know today. Emotional forms of ministry have their place, but women in the church are eager to move beyond emotion, and beyond the surface.

Blogger Emerging Mummy recently captured this sentiment in her impassioned post “In Which I Write a Letter to Women’s Ministry”:

But I'm here with you tonight because I want what the world cannot give me. We're choking on cutesy things and crafty bits, safe lady topics and if one more person says that modest is hottest with a straight face, I may throw up. We are hungry for authenticity and vulnerability, not churchified life hacks from lady magazines. Some of us are drowning, suffocating, dying of thirst for want of the cold water of real community. We're trying really hard - after all, we keep showing up to your lady events and we leave feeling just a bit empty. It's just more of the same every time.

But she is not the first to express such concerns with women’s ministry.

Several years ago author Wendy Horger Alsup wrote a post titled “Pink Fluffy Bunny Women’s Bible Studies” in which she criticized the “emotional fluff out there masquerading as Bible study.” Alsup, I should add, works hard at demonstrating an alternative to spiritual milk. She writes in a manner that is consistently theological, thoughtful, and faithful. She is a wonderful example of the change she would like to see.

Undoubtedly, the younger generations of women want a different kind of women’s ministry, one that is Christ-centered, biblically based, and kingdom oriented. However, Alsup’s example also highlights a tension in the very term “women’s ministry.” On the one hand, Emerging Mummy has consistently encountered a model of women’s ministry that is deeply troubling when she would like to see something else. Here is what she writes:

You know what I would have liked tonight instead of decorating tips or a new recipe? I would have liked to pray together. I would have liked for the women of the church to share their stories or wisdom with one another, no more celebrity speakers, please just hand the microphone to that lady over there that brought the apples. I would love to wrestle with some questions that don't have a one-paragraph answer in your study guide. I would like to do a Bible study that does not have pink or flowers on the cover. I would have liked to sign up to bring a meal for our elderly or drop off some clothes for a new baby or be informed about issues in our city where we can make space for God. I would like to organize and prioritize, to rabble-rouse and disturb the peace of the rest of the world on behalf of justice, truth, beauty and love. I'd love to hear the prophetic voice of women in our church.

On the other hand, women like Alsup are working hard for change. In addition to serving in her local context, Alsup helps women go deeper with her book Practical Theology for Women. The ministry of Southern Baptist Seminary professor Mary Kassian challenges women to love God with both their hearts and minds. And while Beth Moore is often associated with the old-school model, she must also be credited as a real trailblazer in the field, assembling Bible studies that are consistently in-depth.

The tension, then, is in the diversity of women’s ministry models. In spite of the criticism frequently leveled at “women’s ministry” as a generic whole, women’s ministry isn’t generic at all. On the contrary, women’s ministries vary from church to church.

Women’s ministry, as a form, is in the midst of a massive shift. Many women’s ministries have responded to the outcry and evolved, but the stereotypes have not always changed accordingly. Rather than doing justice to the change, broad stereotypes have remained, further stigmatizing women’s ministry in the minds of female church-goers.

Nowhere has this stigma been more apparent to me than in my efforts to involve young women. In most of the churches where I have served, the 20-somethings have been all but absent from women’s ministry events. This younger generation has grown up hearing about “fluffy” women’s ministries, and the stereotype has become entrenched. Even when change is happening in their churches, many young women persist in the belief that all women’s ministries are inherently superficial.  

An additional tension raised by these stereotypes is the attitude that often accompanies them. In the interest of improving women’s ministry, there is a tendency to belittle women who have done it differently. I am guilty of this. In the past, my critiques of women’s ministry were not only unfair but often condescending. I painted in broad strokes and I was ungrateful for the contributions of the women who had gone before me. I did not distinguish form from function, ignoring the reality that in some parts of the country, a tea party is exactly the kind of outreach event that a non-Christian, middle-aged woman might attend.

Women’s ministry is not a monolithic movement. As some women’s ministries begin to change, it is important that our language reflects the complexity of this shift. Old stereotypes and blanket condemnations can be just as detrimental to the growth of a women’s ministry as its own frivolous methods. Prophetic correction is indeed necessary at times, but the line between constructive criticism and destructive cynicism is a fine one. Too often our conversations about women’s ministry have fallen on the wrong side of that divide, so we might consider hope as a categorical alternative. After all, women discipling women is certainly worth getting excited about.

Grumble Hallelujah on the Kitchen Floor

As I lay on the kitchen floor — my body rocking with sobs, my mouth telling my husband, “I hate my life”— it never occurred to me to pick up the phone and call a friend. To tell someone that the life I was living, in which rug after rug kept getting pulled out from under me over the past few years — my parents divorced, my husband’s business tanked, our debt rose, health issues loomed, and our marriage sagged under the weight of it all — was nothing as it was supposed to be.

In fact, I was mortified when my husband rounded the bend and saw me there. Crying and hurting is something I do best alone.

So I was surprised to find Amy Dickinson write this in her 2010 memoir of life as a single mom, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: “I wanted two things when I first learned that my marriage was ending. First, I wanted it not to end. And second, I wanted for others to share a complete and interior knowledge of my heartbreak, followed by demonstrable grief.”

Is that true? I wondered. Are there people whose first inclination amid heartbreak is to tell others? In person?

Even though my heartbreak and disappointment were quite different than hers (my marriage, for example, was not ending) I couldn’t imagine wanting to tell a soul.

And yet, Dickinson  — a.k.a. “Ask Amy,” the syndicated columnist who filled Ann Landers’s wise shoes — laments that she could not share her grief. “While there might be tiny streets tucked away somewhere in London where this sort of behavior is both possible and tolerated,” she writes, “they remain like Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter novels: attended by witches and warlocks and mysteriously hidden from view for the rest of us.”

Though I’ve never lived in London, I believe my middle America neighborhood is much like this. Maybe it’s because I grew up being taught to always respond, “Fine, thank you. And how are you?” when asked how I was. What I took from this well-meaning, good-mannered advice was, “No one wants to hear your problems, Caryn.”

And a few more “witches” and “warlocks” moved in to block the streets where I could speak.

All through the years of being disappointed with life, I spoke very little of what was going on. I was ashamed. Scared. Confused. For being angry with God, angry with my family, and generally hating my life. I kept hearing the voice in the back of my head say no one cared about my problems. And then, another voice, that my problems were not real problems at all: Look around the globe, Caryn! People are suffering! Starving! Trafficked!

But mostly, I feared the voice that told me I shouldn’t complain. That if I really loved Jesus, I’d trust and obey. And shut up. And choose joy. And praise him. I feared the voices that said voicing hurts and disappointments not only had no place in the Christian life, but was antithetical to it.

Just after my fetal-curled time on the kitchen floor, I cracked open my Bible. Then, I risked vulnerability and talked to a friend.

And I realized something: complaining about the “supposed to be’s” of life is not only cathartic, it’s biblical. Consider the complaining that is done in Bible. Think of the lament Psalms. Of the entire book of Lamentations! Of Habbakuk without any sheep in the pen, any grapes on the vine. Of Jesus himself, on the ground, sweating and desperate for his cup to be taken away. Each of these lamenters turned to God in their suffering, ultimately rejoicing in him and trusting him with the “direction” of their lives. Even when it was to the cross.

I believe this complaining, this lamenting, needs to be part of our Christian lives and our churchy conversations. Because it’s the down times of life—the crises—that can lead us to God, to what he wants from our lives.

In a Psychology Today article, Marcia Reynolds writes, “…don’t let people tell you that you have no right to be unhappy with your life. It is okay to lose your equilibrium when others think your life should be smooth sailing. It is okay to question your life’s purpose. It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ It is better to ask the questions and seek the answer than to live a numb life.”

It’s something we Christians should be preaching as well, not simply because it’s psychologically beneficial but because it’s spiritually true. Especially since Jesus told us as much when he says, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). This is the same Jesus who tells us we will have trouble offers us life to the “full” in him (John 10:10). I believe these babies go hand in hand.

The full life doesn’t mean everything will come up roses, that we have to paint on fake smiles and walk through life with nary a grumble. The full life means we recognize the life we’ve been given and seek God in it. It means that we begin to see the kitchen floor — or wherever our hurt takes us — as holy ground, as space to seek God and his will for our lives. A place for step one toward a truly full—of troubles, of joy, of sorrows, of laughter, of disappointment, of fulfillment—life that we can love, and through which others can see Jesus.

Caryn Rivadeneira is the author of Grumble Hallelujah: Learning to Love Your Life Even When It Lets You Down (Tyndale, 2011). She lives with her family in the western suburbs of Chicago, and writes for Her.meneutics regularly.

Taking a Break from Your Spouse

If the mathematics of marriage is two becoming one, how do you factor in couples that have decided that some temporary division improves the odds of their relationship’s longevity?

A recent Slate piece highlighted one of the findings from Iris Krasnow’s recent book, The Secret Lives of Women: Women Share What It Really Take to Stay Married: Strategic absences can make spouse’s hearts grow fonder.

Krasnow discovered that spending the month of July apart from her husband of 23 years so each could pursue their own interests strengthened their relationship. This was not a Hall Pass-style break, but rather an intentional choice by both partners to devote time and resources to personal growth. Krasnow currently uses her July marriage sabbatical for writing time on one coast, while her husband focuses on building his furniture business on the other. Krasnow notes that when August rolls around, the two are "hot to see each other, high on our personal accomplishments, and purged of the inevitable resentments that arise in the grind of the ordinary that long marriage becomes."

Krasnow interviewed more than 200 women who’d been married 15 years or more. Wives who were married to spouses who were gone for extended periods of time, such as fisherman and truckers, reported that the separations honed their communication skills, matured their sense of self, and encouraged them to develop their own toolkit of practical skills. A broken toilet in a busy household can’t wait for a husband away on a business trip.

The one marital separation that does not offer these benefits is when a spouse is on active duty in a war zone. Krasnow reports that the damage from the stress of the situation erodes any individual growth gains that may occur during the separation.

The idea of time away from a spouse may sound counterintuitive to those who vow to love, honor, and cherish until death parts them. Church and culture alike portray the marriage ideal is two becoming one and living together happily ever after – emphasis on together. Popular Christian marriage manuals like The Love Dare and Love and Respect underscore the idea that growing a marriage that goes the distance means actively fighting the temptation to drift apart over time. Togetherness is typically prescribed as the de facto solution to this drift.

Krasnow challenges this notion. She found that “the happiest wives have a sense of purpose and passion in work and causes outside of the home. Wives who counted on a spouse for fulfillment and sustenance were often angry and lonely.” Though time apart can be beneficial to both parties in a marriage, the studies quoted by Slate underscored the reality that time away may be more beneficial for women than for men. One possible reason for this may be because some women may be tempted to submerge some or all of their God-given identity for the sake of the relationship.

After 32 years of marriage, I affirm Krasnow’s conclusions about time away, albeit with a slight modification. Short-duration slices of time spent apart from my husband have created space in my life to focus fully on writing projects, service and learning opportunities, and cherished friendships. My husband has encouraged me to pursue these things, and honors them for the growth opportunities they are for both of us. He has enjoyed the quiet around the home to read, watch movies, and relax, and is considering some “time away” options of his own. Krasnow has noted that time away can function as a reset button on some of the niggling annoyances that build up like dryer lint in a long-term relationship. My husband and I agree.

However, during the early years of our marriage, the kind of time away our relationship needed most was time together. We had three children in the span of 36 months, and it was essential for us to get away together a couple of times a year so we could pause from our Mommy-Daddy roles and remember who we were as a couple. Using our limited time resources to build our marriage was the right call for us during those busy years.

But as our children grew up, I realized that I’ve needed to do some growing up as well. That has meant developing as a couple, investing in our family, friends, and in a ministry in which we are both involved. It has also meant pursuing growth as an individual. Long-married couples learn over time to blend their lives in ways that become habitual and comfortable, but that comfort can become a stale plateau for both parties. That plateau is not a spiritually or emotionally healthy place to live.

Paul's words to his friends in Corinth about marriage offer scaffolding upon which long-time marrieds can build if they take some time away:

- Our bodies are not our own

- Both spouses should agree on the nature, purpose, and duration for their time apart

- The goal of temporary separations isn’t to encourage couples to grow apart; it’s to come back together in order to move forward

Paul, who was single when he penned these words, sums up this segment of his instruction to married couples with this reminder: “…each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that” (vs. 7).

Married couples may benefit from the decision to carve out some individual time in order to discover, exercise, and refine those gifts. In this way, they can become gifts to one another the way God intends when he brings two people together in order to make them one.

John Ortberg Is My Dad, But Don't Call Me a PK

I’ve always hated the term “PK.” All my life, people have felt total license to use it with my siblings and me — a knowing glance, a faked camaraderie. “You’re a PK, too? Isn’t it the worst/best?”

Well, yes. And no. And why are we having this conversation in the first place? We never, after all, refer to a dentist’s child as a DK or the child of a homemaker as an HK. Why do the children of clergy get such special designations — and such a specific template into which they must fit?

We PKs have two choices, according to television and popular belief. Either we grow up sanctimonious, carrying the mantle of our fathers — in the mold of Martin Luther King Jr., Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, and Franklin Graham — or, we are Katy Perry or pre-conversion Jay Bakker, tattooed and seductive and rebellious and raising hell in ways specifically contrived to reject our parents’ beliefs (call it the Pastor’s Kids Gone Wild trend, as Jon Acuff recently did).

We have on our hands a Christian celebrity culture that runs counter to the gospel: that elevates the gifted communicators, teachers, and leaders and devalues the gifts of the volunteers: those who welcome people into their homes, the administrative assistants, and the janitors. A 2004 Biola Magazine cover story on pastor’s kids noted, “When your dad is a famous Christian, there’s a sense that people aren’t putting him or you on the same level as themselves. It’s this weird, super-Christian mentality,” said one of the interviewees. And this sentiment is true, and it is sad, and it is wrong, and it is against everything that Jesus tells us and lived out about the crux of his gospel being located in service.

What is most important for me to say in this whole conversation, though, is not necessarily to indict certain people or phenomena, but to thank my parents.

We three children easily could have grown up with “pastor’s kids” as our primary identifier. For the better part of our growing-up years, my mom and dad worked in one of the biggest churches in the country, a church prone to certain kinds of Christian celebrity worship. To be clear, that is part of its junk, and every church has junk, and the congregation is also an incredible place of service and community. People talked to us frequently about how our parents’ gifts impacted their lives. And we all, I think, loved to hear that.

But had we not gotten freedom from our parents to be the people we were — to grow and learn for ourselves and even occasionally embarrass our parents, as good children do (a famed family incident at a church in Southern California that involves my then-5-year-old brother lying on his back, thrusting his pelvis to a children’s worship song called “Jumping Bean,” comes to mind) — we would likely have ended up feeling like our only two possibilities in life were becoming the mantle-bearer or the rebel.

There is a scene at the very end of Braveheart that always gets me. Your thoughts on Mel Gibson aside, it’s one of the most famous scenes in recent film history, and also one of the most powerful. At the moment of his public death, William Wallace looks several times into the eyes of a child in the mob and, moments later, as he is about to die amid cries of “Mercy!” from the crowd, Wallace issues a guttural yell for freedom. A yell that becomes both the rallying cry for the Scots and a blessing pronounced on the boy who caught Wallace’s eye.

Clearly, we seek a freedom different from the kind Wallace fought for. But it is similar insofar as true freedom is the same at its core across time and context. Something deep inside of each of us longs for freedom, hopes for freedom, was created to live in freedom. A freedom that claims us in Christ regardless of what our parents do for a living, that releases us from the need to be perfect, to maintain a certain image, to become the person that God has made us to be.

Throughout our growing-up years, and now, well into our adult ones, one of the greatest gifts my parents have given to us is that freedom. That absence of pressure to be a certain kind of kid, to behave in a certain way, to meet the standards and expectations of people whom we didn’t know and who had nothing to do with our family. That has been one of the most shaping forces in my life. In any church, regardless of size, it’s not uncommon for people to have certain expectations of the pastor’s children. Our parents protected us from that, through their commitment to let us grow into the people we were, pelvic thrusts and all.

Where there is true freedom, there is God. Freedom here does not mean an absence of rules or boundaries, because of course only through obeying God do we experience true freedom. I am not a parent, and though I hope to be one, I still don’t imagine this is an easy gift to bestow upon your children. But as the product of parents who worked hard to give it to me, I can tell you that it is a gift worth giving; a heart-altering gift that mirrors the gift of God to all of us.

Laura Ortberg Turner, a Westmont College graduate, is an admissions counselor at Fuller Theological Seminary. She blogs at An Ordinary Player in the Key of C.

A Woman's Place in Christian Higher Ed

Spiritual writer Frederick Buechner once defined calling as the place where a person’s “greatest passion meets the world's greatest need.” But what of a person’s leadership? This summer, researchers in Christian higher education surveyed 16 top leaders at Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) member schools to see how their leadership was related to their sense of calling. All the leaders interviewed for the survey, published this summer in the journal Christian Higher Education, are women. (A preview of the study is available here.)

Over the past 50 years, in both the West and developing countries, women have made significant strides in government, business, and education. In the United States, where it was once improper for a woman to even express a desire to vote, women now constitute over half of the electorate and occupy many of the nation’s top positions. In 2007–2008, for the first time, women earned the majority of degrees. According to the U.S. Department of Education, women earned 57.3 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 60.6 percent of all master’s degrees, and 51 percent of all doctoral degrees. And the number of women holding university presidencies has more than doubled from 1986 to 2006.

Yet despite such gains, women are still underrepresented in leadership positions in higher education. Further, according to the Christian Higher Education report, the average number of individuals serving at the vice-presidential level or higher in the CCCU was 4.9 men and .99 women. Thirty-four percent of institutions had no women at the executive level, while 44 percent had one woman at the vice presidential level or higher. As Her.meneutics reported amid Wheaton College’s presidential search, of the 111 North American member schools of the CCCU, 6 are led by female presidents (5 percent).

The 16 leaders were interviewed over the course of a year about their paths to leadership, calling, and how culture impacted their leadership experiences. A central theme that emerged among the CCCU leaders was the importance of knowing and using their giftedness towards a greater purpose — that is, having a calling.

Most women described their calling as a general purpose for their lives, while a few understood calling as a specific task or career path. Rebecca, a seasoned Student Life professional, commented, “I think that [calling] is knowing that God’s given me gifts and abilities and he has kind of this plan, maybe a canvas, and he gives me the brushes and it’s like, as long as I paint with his brushes, it’s okay . . . It’s not just one thing only.”

Diana, a faculty member, expressed a more specific understanding of calling: “And the Lord said to me, ‘I want you to follow me just as literally as those first apostles did. And that means I want you to give up your career. I want you to be willing to leave your family. I want you to give up your desire to get married.’ I said, ‘Whoa. That’s a lot to ask. What do you want?’ ‘Just follow.’ So I did that.”

Some of the women developed a sense of calling through personal reflections and devotions, while others discerned it from external influences such as affirmation from others. Sarah shared that her sense of her calling was shaped by external influences: “It would be those moments when people spoke it to me and would say, ‘You’re a leader. I see you as having potential.’ That changed how I thought about myself.”

The women also described calling as meaning different things in different seasons throughout their lives. Mary, a cabinet-level leader at a university, felt compelled to quit her job and care for her infant daughter. Several years later, Mary chose to resume her career and assume leadership positions. Both decisions were grounded in her sense of what God was calling her to do at that point in her life.

Researchers proposed four action steps based on the results of the study. First, leadership programs should use resources such as Clifton StrengthsFinder that “allow women to identify, celebrate, and further develop their talents and strengths.” Second, programs should introduce women to current research on the topic of calling. Third, given that this research indicated that periods of reflection were important for helping some participants develop their understanding of calling, curriculum should incorporate periods of time for reflection and analysis. Finally, women should be given opportunities to develop relationships that will help them identify their calling and support them in leadership.

The study of CCCU women is the latest example of the seismic changes occurring in the research on Christian women and leadership. Until recently, very little literature existed on Christian women leaders due in part, I believe, to the fact that most of the academic discussion was directed toward theological issue of women’s ordination and her place in the home. Researchers were asking, “Can women lead and if so, in what context?” rather than, “How can we help women leaders thrive?”

Last year, I conducted a research study of 21 Christian nonprofit organizations, with an eye to women in leadership. Among other findings, the study revealed that women leaders in Christian nonprofits face a number of obstacles, including conflicting perceptions about womanhood and leadership as well as difficulty finding supportive relationships. If, as the CCCU study indicates, one’s sense of calling is such an important motivator for women, it is pertinent to ask whether or not we are helping women to fully understand their calling and their giftedness. Both complementarians and egalitarians agree that women can be leaders; the disagreement is the context in which they can lead. By starting to study Christian women leaders empirically, we can break the impasse, help women thrive in the various spheres to which they are called, and raise up even more examples of strong leaders in a culture starved for examples of strong leadership.

Halee Gray Scott is an author, scholar, and researcher focused on issues related to spiritual formation, leadership, and women leaders. She teaches spiritual formation and leadership at Wesley Seminary and theology at A. W. Tozer Seminary, and has written for Christianity Today about Beth Moore's Bible study method.

When a Midlife Crisis Becomes Serious

A recent study found that there has been an alarming spike in suicides among midlife women. I am neither scientist nor statistician, but I am 52. Some have called mid-life “Prime Time.” but few midlife women in my circles are crowing that they’re living their best life now.

Most of my friends tell me they’ve experienced periods of moderate-to-severe clinical depression. A good percentage of these women are committed Christians. Though the Church is called to be a community that honors life transformation and fosters spiritual growth, many at midlife report that what they’re experiencing emotionally and spiritually isolates them from congregational life – and that their churches are not equipped to respond to their needs.

Case in point: Cathy was once the vivacious soccer mom who coordinated snacks and rides for her kids’ teams. She led the Thursday evening women’s Bible study at her nondenominational congregation for many years. She sold real estate in her middle-class suburb. She was old enough to remember the ad jingle that went “I can bring home the bacon / fry it up in a pan / and never, never, never let you forget you’re a man,” because she lived it. Doing it all was having it all for women of her generation.

Now 56, it’s been years since Cathy has fried up any bacon. Her cholesterol levels were off the charts at her last doctor’s visit, and there was no one left at home to eat the bacon, anyway. Her kids are long gone from the nest she worked so hard to create. Her only remaining parent has late-stage Alzheimer’s. The real-estate crash effectively ended her career. She sees her grandmother’s body staring back at her when she looks in the mirror. She stopped leading the Bible study at church when her marriage was unraveling 10 years ago, though she’s continued to attend Sunday services. A few weeks ago, a well-meaning greeter stuck a brightly-colored “Welcome, Visitor!” flier in her hand as she entered the sanctuary.

When I asked what that communicated to her, Cathy said, “I have been battling the sense that I am invisible in so many areas of my life. The one place I should be visible is to my own church family.  And the thing is, I can’t even get offended about it. I just don’t care anymore.”

Because many of our churches are focused on family-based programming, the unspoken message to those who don’t fit the target demographic is that they don’t matter the same way that younger people do. Pollster George Barna reports that baby boomers are leaving the church in surprising numbers.

When her marriage ended, Cathy sought mental health counseling for symptoms of clinical depression, and her doctor prescribed a low dose of an antidepressant. Though the treatment has been successful, she can’t shake the sense of emotional and spiritual flatness she feels. Though she has some of it up to the side effects of her medication, the two of us have also been considering whether it might be acedia, or spiritual apathy, most recently described in Kathleen Norris’s 2008 memoir, Acedia and Me (Read Christianity Today magazine’s review here).

Norris explains:

I believe that such standard dictionary definitions of acedia as ‘apathy’, ‘boredom’ or ‘torpor’ do not begin to cover it, and while we may find it convenient to regard it as a more primitive word for what we now term depression, the truth is more complex . . . Acedia, it seems, is not only the demon that lobs an assault at midday but also the bad thought that afflicts us in the middle of life, when it seems impossible to care about so many things that used to matter . . . The pose of indifference is far more appealing.

For some of us the steady passage of time becomes unbearably cruel, an endless round of pain that wears us down. My husband was convinced that most suicides come out of sheer exhaustion.

The church has been empowered to bring God’s comfort to those who are suffering and to call those who are ensnared by temptation toward freedom. Norris notes that “while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer.”
Hugging the margins in many church communities, you’ll probably find a handful of middle-aged women who are battling depression, acedia, or both. Most churches can’t and shouldn’t provide mental health treatment, but they can provide referrals, prayer support, and a safe, shame-free environment to those who are suffering from depression. They can cultivate wise mentors and mature spiritual directors who can help others face down their possible “noonday demons” after mental-health issues have been addressed. This is Pastoral Care 101 for congregants who are willing to make themselves visible.

But what of the invisible Cathys? Learning to see those who are invisible is a spiritual act. How many church leaders are committed to ongoing education of their congregations about the changes and challenges members experience during each life stage and transition? I believe this is an essential and often-neglected component of spiritual formation. Understanding who we are in Christ is linked to life stage in some deeply profound ways. Learning about life stages in a church context must come through a variety of channels: sermons, classrooms, small groups, retreats, and multi-generational relationships. Without this understanding, how will we ever live into the “one anothering” to which every person in a church community is called?

As we do, perhaps we’ll discover that midlife is prime time after all.