Our Writers' Favorite Posts from 2011

Some in-house selections from the past year.

Katelyn Beaty

When our regular readers think back to memorable posts from 2011, they'll most likely think of the most controversial ones, many of which appeared on yesterday's roundup. But what of the 250-some other posts that appeared on Her.meneutics over the past year? To remember those and introduce them to readers who missed them, we asked 10 of our regular bloggers to select a favorite post written by a fellow blogger. Here's what they chose:

Michelle Van Loon's pick:
Why It's Your Job to Break the Women's Ministry Stereotype, by Sharon Hodde Miller (October 11, 2011)
Michelle: Sharon's piece about shattering tired women's ministry stereotypes challenged me to do more than just whine about the way things are, though I'm exceedingly good at doing that. I am putting together an applied theology morning workshop for the women of my church inspired in part by Sharon's words.

Sharon Hodde Miller's pick:
Confessions of a Breadwinner Wife, by Karen Swallow Prior (May 3, 2011)
Sharon: In conversations of this sort, it's easy to dismiss men to the realm of silent party as women air their grievances. That is not what Karen did with this piece. Instead, it was really an ode to her husband, and I came away from the piece with great respect for her husband and the marriage between them.

Karen Swallow Prior's pick:
Guarding Your Marriage without Dissing Women, by Gina Dalfonzo (May 31, 2011)
Karen: As a married Christian professional woman, I loved the wisdom (and humor) in this post about being wise-but-not-ridiculous in acknowledging our human fallibility without automatically sexualizing or demonizing every opposite-sex friend or colleague.

Gina Dalfonzo's pick:
Welcoming Doubt to Christian Education, by Karen Swallow Prior (September 16, 2011)
Gina: Karen brings much needed honesty to the perpetual education debate among Christians, and shows the important difference between true education, which broadens minds, and indoctrination, which closes them.

Amy Julia Becker's pick:
The Praying Pedestrian, by Anna Broadway (April 7, 2011)
Amy Julia: Months later, I still find myself grateful for Anna's description of how prayer has changed her perception of her neighborhood. This piece was not only informative but also transformative as I seek to integrate spiritual disciplines like prayer into everyday life.

Rachel Marie Stone's pick:
Being Loved through Breast Cancer, by Sarah Thebarge, guest blogger (July 27, 2011)
Rachel: Sarah's post stands out to me because of the compelling story of two women with breast cancer--and how when it comes down to it, we all need the same things: the love and connection with other human beings that bears witness to the love and compassion of God. My favorite quote: "Part of the beauty of loving God is that through simple acts of compassion, we get to bear witness to El Roi, the God who loves and sees his struggling children."

Caryn Rivadeneira's pick:
The Charlie Sheen Has Worn Off, by Jennifer Grant (March 11, 2011)
As someone who struggles to avoid gossip and yet enjoys a good People magazine every now and again, I found this piece totally convicting. Grant's line, "Our culture wipes its mouth with the back of its hand and glances absentmindedly around the room," is an image that pops up every time I'm prone to wander into gossip.

Jennifer Grant's pick:
Etiquette Isn't for Dummies: How Manners and Ministry Relate, by Caryn Rivadeneira (December 19, 2011)
Jennifer: I loved Caryn's post because it's timely in our too-often impolite society, witty, and because it does what I think Her.meneutics posts do at their best: examine a cultural artifact or practice and reveal the underlying spiritual significance that we might otherwise fail to notice. (Also, the accompanying cat picture is just plain funny.)

Alicia Cohn's pick:
Why Romance Novels Aren't Emotional Porn, by Caryn Rivadeneira (June 7, 2011)
Caryn set herself to take an honest look at the "Christian romance" genre, and came away with a refreshing perspective. As an avid fiction reader, I was blessed by Caryn's gracious take on the story-telling addiction and its roots in "everything lovely."

Marlena Graves's pick:
Searching for Abba on Father's Day, by Margot Starbuck (June 17, 2011)
Marlena: Margot expresses so painfully and beautifully several gospel implications: God is for us, he brings order from disorder and healing from deeply embedded pain. The gospel is a gospel of life!

Katelyn Beaty's pick:
Chaz Bono Brings Transgender Issues to TV, by Elissa Cooper (September 19, 2011)
Katelyn: Elissa's post accomplished what I hope every Her.meneutics article does: brings the gospel to bear on all aspects of contemporary life, even those as complex and puzzling as gender-identity disorders. Elissa beautifully shared parts of her personal story, showing how the church's first and last word to the transgendered among us is grace, as this is the first and last word our Lord has spoken to us, his children.

The Top Her.meneutics Posts of 2011

The year in review at the women's blog.

Katelyn Beaty

2011 was a year of tremendous growth for Christianity Today's women's blog, now entering its third year. First, in sheer numbers, we saw the number of readers nearly double since last year (to 1 million unique pageviews in 2011), and welcomed plenty of new readers through our Facebook and Twitter feeds (with no small thanks to a few evangelical celebrity retweets!). But perhaps more importantly, we saw the writers who make this blog tick (and who published books all their own in 2011) hone their ability to shed truth, deep thought, and charity on some of the most foundational issues within our movement — e.g., How can men and women relate in ways that honor God? How should Christian parents discipline their children? How do singles balance the demographic realities of delayed marriage, prolonged adolescence, and the "mancession" with the virtue of chastity? These and other foundational issues appear on the following list of the top-read posts of the year. We thank you, our readers, for returning daily to follow the conversations and adding your own (mostly charitable) two cents.

It's no surprise that a recurring theme in the year's list is sexuality, whether in marriage or mass culture, and no doubt we'll continue to talk about sexual ethics throughout the new year. But we also want to acknowledge several posts that had nothing to do with sex; for this, we asked our regular writers to select a favorite 2011 post written by a fellow writer. For the list of our in-house favorites from the year, check back tomorrow.

And now, if you missed them the first time, enjoy the top-read Her.meneutics posts of 2011!

(10) The Argument for Girl-Boy Wrestling, by Caryn Rivadeneira (February 22, 2011)
Joel Northrup cited his Christian faith for refusing to wrestle Cassy Herkelman in last week's Iowa state championship. I say his Christian faith should have taken him to the mat.

(9) An Open Letter to Donald Miller on Your Engagement, by Karen Swallow Prior (June 23, 2011)
First, congratulations. Second, let's talk about that list of qualities we should want in a spouse.

(8) Another Assault on Little Girls, by Jennifer Grant (January 3, 2011)
Vogue Paris's "Gifts" photo spread is one more example of how our culture robs children of innocence.

(7) Miss America and the Bikini Question, by Katelyn Beaty (January 20, 2011)
Do modern-day pageants ask young evangelical women to compromise their values an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny too much?

(6) My Father Was a Porn Addict, by Michelle Van Loon (July 25, 2011)
The Playboys lying on the coffee table were the tip of the iceberg in our home.

(5) Sin, Grace, and the Royal Wedding, by Caryn Rivadeneira (April 28, 2011)
What I'll tell my 6-year-old daughter about marriage as we watch the festivities together.

(4) Much Ado about Mark Driscoll, by Sharon Hodde Miller (July 15, 2011)
What do we do when Christian leaders are imperfect?

(3) Doing Authentic Ministry with My Smokin' Hot Bride, by Karen Swallow Prior (July 19, 2011)
A list of the worst ever Christian cliches.

(2) The Cult of the Orgasm, by Anna Broadway (June 16, 2011)
Thinking Christianly about the vibrator boom and unsatisfied sexual desire.

(1) How 'Modest Is Hottest' Is Hurting Christian Women, by Sharon Hodde Miller (December 15, 2011)
What the phrase communicates about female sexuality and bodies.

Sitting in the Dark, Waiting for Emmanuel

Instead of fixing people's pain, maybe the most Christian act of love is to sit beside them, and wait.

Sarah Thebarge, guest blogger

A few months ago, my friend Stephanie’s grandma was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In spite of brain surgery and chemotherapy, the tumor has grown, and her grandma is now on hospice. When I had coffee with Stephanie recently, I asked her when she’d seen her grandma last. She told me it had been a few weeks. She said it was too overwhelming to see her grandma suffering and not be able to intervene.

“I don’t know what to do, so I don’t do anything,” she said. “What do you think?”

I have not faced anything as serious as what Stephanie’s family is going through, but I’ve had similar questions about a family of Somali refugees I’ve been working with here in Portland. Sometimes I’m encouraged by how far they’ve come, and other times I’m discouraged by how far they still have to go. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed, I avoid visiting the family because it’s too difficult to engage in a problem that I cannot solve completely.

And then I think about something my mom likes to say, that God made us human beings, not human doers. Life is about who we are being and who we are becoming, not so much about what we are able to accomplish.

The more I’ve worked with the refugee family, the more I’ve learned that not only do I need to be as an individual; I need to learn how to be with others—not to fix or change or cure them, but to be with them where they are.

So when Stephanie asked me what I thought she should do, I told her, “Your grandma doesn’t need you to cure her. She needs you to be with her. She needs you to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, holding her hand.”

I told myself the same thing about the Somali family. I cannot give them everything they need, but I can sit with them in their cold apartment. I can eat rice with them from a bowl on the floor. And at night when the children are huddled together on a stack of mattresses, I can rub their backs and sing to them until they fall asleep.

Last year my friend Karen Spears Zacharias wrote a book called Will Jesus Buy Me A Double-Wide? In it, she tells the story of a Marine who had completed his military career and then gave up everything he had to work with homeless people in North Carolina.

He and his friends were able to get a woman off the street and into her own apartment. But all the money she had went toward paying the rent; there was no money left over for her bills. One day she came to the Marine and told him she needed help paying for her electricity. “You have to help me,” she pleaded. “If I can’t pay the bill, they’ll come turn off the lights.”

Replete of personal resources, the Marine told her, “I can’t pay your bill, but I can promise you this. On the day they turn off your lights, I will come over and sit with you in the dark.”

The Book of Job tells the story of a man who had everything—a wife, children, money, real estate—and in one day, lost everything but his wife and his life. And his wife wasn’t that helpful. When she saw how much physical and emotional pain Job was in, she told him to curse God and die. Instead of cursing God, Job took his sorrows and sat alone in a garbage heap, scraping his boil-ridden skin with glass shards to try to dull the pain.

Three of Job’s friends came to visit him while he was trying to live through the pain of unspeakable losses. They came to him and sat with him in silence for a while. And then, unfortunately, they opened their mouths.

They accused Job of having hidden sins, reasoning he must be doing something wrong to have incurred God’s wrath. In the end, God chastised the friends for their advice. Their mistake was not in showing up when Job was hurting; it was in assuming they needed to correctly diagnose and fix their hurting friend.

The Book of Job is not only a lesson in how to relate to a God we sometimes cannot understand. It’s also a lesson in how to relate to someone who’s enduring life-threatening, heartbreaking pain. Rather than teaching us the “right” words to say or “right” ways to fix broken hearts, it teaches us that sometimes the best thing we can do for a hurting soul is to be present with them. And to keep silent.

This week, Stephanie went over to her grandma’s house. She lay next to her grandma in bed and held her hand. She got to tell her grandma how much she loved her. She got to say goodbye.

The next night, when Stephanie got word that her grandma had slipped into a coma, I went over and sat with her while she grieved the loss. And when she had run out of tears, I sat on her bed and read her Psalms until she fell asleep.

Sitting in the dark is not only the purest way we can love each other; it’s the way that God loved us. He sent Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” Emmanuel ventured into the darkness and was not afraid to eat with prostitutes or let unruly children sit in his lap or touch contagious lepers. He did not come at us or to us; he came to be with us.

And now we get to be with each other. We get to engage in others’ problems and pain. We get to keep them company in their darkness. We get to be, even when there’s nothing we can do but sit in the dark.

Sarah Thebarge lives and practices medicine in Portland, Oregon. She writes at My Tropic of Cancer and the Burnside Writers Collective, and has written for us about having breast cancer at age 27. She has also written for CT's This Is Our City project.

Beards: A Hairy Topic in My Household

The cultural and religious significance of the manly mane.

Karen Swallow Prior

Every year about this time, when the petunias wither, the horse coats thicken, and the dogs have to be coaxed outside in the morning, a certain delicate debate returns to the Prior household. Each year, as if for the first time ever, I inquire of Mr. Prior if he has forgotten to shave. And Mr. Prior answers, without elaboration, in the negative. After a few more unshaven days pass, I ask, as though I don’t already know: “Are you growing a beard?” And Mr. Prior again offers a noncommittal sort of non-response. Finally, after a week or so goes by, I state rather than ask, “You’re growing a beard.” And Mr. Prior, as though we hadn’t discussed this once or twice or twenty times before, responds, “I thought you said you liked my beard,” referring, of course, to last year’s battle of the beard. “Yes, I like how it looks . . .” I explain, trailing off, unconsciously brushing my sensitive cheek with my hand.

Sometimes our facial hair skirmish goes on for a week, sometimes a month. Happily, it always comes to an end once the beard does, too.

Beards have a complicated and varied history. In various times and cultures beards have signified wisdom, manliness, virility, dignity, poverty, propriety, conservatism, and countercultural revolution. Some men’s very identities are tightly wrapped up in their beards: who would Abraham Lincoln be without his legendary beard? Or good ol’ St. Nick without his white whiskers?

Poor men. While the range of personal expression women can achieve through fashion includes bags, shoes, jackets, hairstyle, hair length, hair color, nail polish, earrings, necklaces, scarves, boots, barrettes, bracelets, and lipstick, or the lack of any of these, a man’s range can be pretty much summed up in Dockers or not-Dockers, bowtie or regular tie, and facial hair.

And if it’s true that a woman’s dress and appearance are subject to endless scrutiny (illustrated perfectly by the astonishing number of reader comments on a recent Her.meneutics post), the facial hair of men is subjected to a fair amount of interpretation and controversy, too, as a few recent news stories show:

· Last week, famous Jewish rapper Matisyahu stirred up fans when he posted a photo of himself online sans beard, explaining that shaving was one more step in a decade-long, unfinished religious journey. · The U. S. Army recently agreed to let an ultra-Orthodox bearded rabbi serve as a reserve chaplain, due to a settlement in a federal discrimination lawsuit. Army grooming standards require soldiers to be clean-shaven, but the discrimination suit claimed exceptions to the rule had been made for Sikh and Muslim clerics.
· In October, Amish men in Ohio were terrorized in a series of beard-cutting ambushes which resulted in the arrests of several members of a rival sect who’ve been charged with federal hate crimes. Because beard growth is a central expression of the religious beliefs of the Amish, the attacks were direct attacks on the core of the men’s belief system.

Such religiously motivated beard brouhaha led Slate.com to ask, “Why Does God Love Beards?” Clearly, for some beards are serious business.

Among religious conservatives, beards are either requisite—or rebellious. For some traditionalists that claim the Old Testament as part of their religious texts, beards continue to signify the reverence and respect with which they were associated under Mosaic law. For a different kind of conservative—namely, the modern American kind—beards are suspect: “Never trust a man with a beard,” the saying goes in some quarters. For example, at my own conservative institution, located on the buckle of the Bible Belt, administration have only recently let students sport beards.

Perhaps such policy changes reflect only the resurging popularity of beards, particularly within the college set. All my life, I’ve never understood the grizzly beards of old men. Now in middle age, I’m even more perplexed at the recent turn that has brought into vogue what I call the train-hopping/Avett Brothers/hobo look among the younger generation. Personally, I’m thankful to have been born between beard generations, my husband’s short-lived annual attempts notwithstanding.

It’s no coincidence, I think, that in an age of diminishing rites and rituals, one of the most prominent male physical features traditionally associated with both maleness and religion is making a comeback. As a symbol of masculinity, beards set the men apart from the boys—and the women. The old practice of swearing an oath by one’s beard was to stake one’s virtue (the Latin root word for virtue means man) on one’s word. As a religious expression, a beard separates one from the surrounding culture. Traditional Jewish and Orthodox Christian interpretation of Old Testament law centers on the prohibition of shaving with a razor, not a requirement to have a beard, since cutting the hair was permissible under the law. As an expression of masculinity or holiness or both, a beard can be sacramental, an outward sign of an inward state.

Of course, a beard does not guarantee virtue or true manliness, any more than it guarantees true religion. But in a world increasingly less certain about such inward states, I’m not surprised to see increasing attention given to the significance of outward signs. For those under the law, a beard is a mark of salvific obedience; for those under grace, however, salvation comes from One bereft of his beard not by the blade of the razor, but by the hands of men: “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard” (Isaiah 50:6a). Even in such a seemingly small matter as facial hair, Christ both upheld the law and fulfilled it, so that from the law we, too, can be unlocked.

Why Santa Belongs in Your Kids' Christmas

I'm tired of hearing Christian parents use the SATAN anagram. St. Nick was a saint.

Keri Wyatt Kent, guest blogger

I hear curious rumblings this time of year among Christians that letting children believe in Santa is wrong. That giving children a myth implies that the Nativity story is insufficient. That letting them believe that good behavior earns gifts makes them greedy or legalistic. That belief in Santa means bowing to materialism and all things plastic.

But what if Christians embraced the Father Christmas myth while rejecting the materialism attached to it? Myths, after all, are time-honored methods of communicating truth through story, and the Santa Claus myth is no exception. (Please, don’t tell me his name is an anagram for Satan. Santa comes from the Latin sanctus, meaning holy or saint. Santa’s name likely evolved from a real person, Nicholas, a Christian man whose extreme generosity helped strangers.) I’d like to propose that teaching children about Santa Claus does not conflict with teaching them about Jesus. In fact, I propose that the Nativity story and the Santa myth may have more in common than we’re prone to believe.

Some stories, such as fables and parables, are not empirically true, but they are true in that they point to realities about God’s world and the human condition. Some stories are empirically true and also communicate this kind of truth. The Nativity story is a perfect example of the latter. The Santa Claus myth is a great example of the former. Santa Claus embodies Christian values such as kindness, generosity, forgiveness—every child soon realizes that even if they have not been perfect all year, Santa comes through. Santa brings gifts to children both deserving and undeserving. While Santa is not a Christ figure—that must be clear—the Santa myth is not the problem. The problem is that we have let advertisers hijack Santa, turning Christmas into a retail event.

Obviously, leading your kids to believe that their wish list is a demand list, or focusing exclusively on Santa, or using it to threaten or manipulate your children, is unhelpful. But allowing children to embrace Santa while they are young can allow them to experience unmerited favor (grace). We can, as they grow, point to that experience in order to explain what it means to give and receive grace. Rather than replace fairy tales with rational, hard facts (“There is no such thing as Santa. He does not exist!”), why not tell your children the tales of Father Christmas or St. Nicholas, someone who gives without expecting anything in return, who loves children—and who brings you one gift, not 30?

C. S. Lewis, one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th century, dedicated the Chronicles of Narnia to his goddaughter Lucy Barfield. In the dedication, he noted that “girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales. . . . But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

Many of us have grown too old for fairy tales, yet not matured enough to understand them as adults. And we steal something precious from our children when we deny them the opportunity to believe in fairy tales, and to learn how to glean truth from a made-up story. To believe, for a little while, allows them to later understand symbolism and metaphor. And as growing children question the veracity of the story, let them research the stories and real people (like St. Nicholas) whom the myth is based on. They can compare and contrast Jesus and St. Nick.

Christmas is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus, who brought us the best gift of all: eternal life. And certainly, we need to tell our children first and foremost that Christmas celebrates the Son of God arriving to earth (Our family even baked him a birthday cake!). But other Christmas traditions—from the tree to the turkey dinner to Santa—can also enrich and bless a family’s holiday. By using a myth of a loving person who brings you a gift you did not earn, we allow them to experience a parable they can understand when they grow older. They will learn about all generosity by being the recipient of generosity.

Lewis (who, by the way, included Father Christmas in one of his Narnia books) often corresponded with readers. One youngster, 9-year-old Laurence Krieg, confessed to his mother that he might love Aslan the Lion more than he loved Jesus, and felt guilty about this. His mother wrote to the publisher, and Lewis himself responded in less than two weeks.

“Tell Laurence from me, with my love,” Lewis wrote, “ … [He] can't really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that's what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before. . . I don’t think he need be bothered at all.”

Lewis’s answer is brilliant. God made our imaginations and hardwired us to connect deeply with stories. Jesus himself appealed to people’s imagination by telling parables—stories that communicated profound truths. Even if stories are fairy tales, and therefore not empirically true, they still communicate truth. Smart parents will use the Santa myth to teach their children to be giving rather than demanding, and to experience generosity and grace.

Keri Wyatt Kent is the author of several books on Christian spirituality, most recently Making Room for God in Your Hectic Life, and has written for several websites and magazines, including Christianity Today. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she and her husband Scot have been married for 17 years and live with their son and daughter in Illinois.

Etiquette Isn't for Dummies: How Manners and Ministry Relate

Proper etiquette is less about rigid rules and more about loving others.

Caryn Rivadeneira

Don’t tell my husband: As soon as I saw that the new Emily Post’s Etiquette (18th ed.) released in October, I thought, I know what I’m getting Rafi for Christmas!

If you know my husband, this will surprise you. Rafi doesn’t exactly seem the fussy manner sort, the type who would enjoy this book. He’s definitely not a stern Captain Von Trapp at the table, reminding our kids of their place, of their do’s and don’ts. And because he’s been married to a feminist long enough, he knows better than to pull off any mindless gallantry.

But still, Emily Post has a special place in our relationship. While we initially bonded (and probably fell in love) over our shared love of dogs, my own love for him deepened the day I saw a copy of Emily Post’s 14th edition on his bookshelf. I particularly liked the red-tassel gradeschool bookmark that hung across the top of the huge volume.

“You’ve read that?” I asked.

“A good chunk of it.”

His aunt had given it to him for Christmas when he was 14—just after he started prep school, and before launching into the world of dating and then college and then job and family, where, his aunt had rightly assumed, good manners were important.

My husband—not a huge reader—read the book over a “slow weekend,” not because he was so interested in manners per se, but because he liked the order and logic of it all. He’s a cut-and-dry kind of guy, and he liked knowing the right and wrong of how to act.

I paid attention to etiquette for similar reasons. My natural social bent is awkward. I am shy and introverted, and my mind tends to blank out when it comes time for making small talk. Walking into a room or sitting at a table full of people I don’t know is the stuff my nightmares are made of.

So understanding the rules of etiquette became a safety net. Knowing which fork to use, where to put my coffee cup, along with some tips on creating nifty small talk takes the pressure off.

Indeed, Peggy Post, Emily’s great-granddaughter in-law and director of the Emily Post Institute, recently told the Daily Beast, "Etiquette gives people the blueprints to deal with times of stress.”

In the article, Jennie Yabroff writes that Post became popular during the Depression because “[a]n anxious nation wanted reassurance about how to sit at the table, even if it had no guarantee of where the food on it would come from.”

It’s that sense of certainty in uncertainty, order in chaos that I’ve long believed is one of the main reasons I count Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence as one of my favorite books. With all that was wrong (and there was a lot!) with life in the Gilded Age, and as much as I probably would’ve struggled in any strata of society back then, the idea of such an ordered life appeals. I’ve always subscribed to the “free to be you and me” philosophy of the 1970s I grew up with, but on the days when this is hard (and freedom is always hard), I start yearning for a bit of Victorian rigidity.

But still—that rigid view of etiquette turns most people off. The idea of including or shunning a person based on birth or behavior doesn’t sit well with most of us 21st-century Westerners.

The idea of excluding based on etiquette should be especially troublesome for Christians, as it’s quite contrary to our Jesus. The One who invited himself over to dinner (the nerve!) to the home of a tax-collector (rabbis and tax-collectors? That shouldn’t happen!). To the Jesus who hung out alone with uncouth women (gasp!) and then talked theology and other taboo topics (the horror!). All that, along with a zillion other things that were just not said and done in polite Jewish society.

And yet, Jesus is all about etiquette. He’s the Granddaddy of Good Manners, really.

Consider these quotes:

“Emily Post believed in having rules, but thought that everyone should have equal access to them. Your only obligation is to make the other person feel OK."
—Laura Claridge, Post’s biographer

“[Etiquette] is the golden rule.”
—ibid

“Courteous people are flexible, willing to adjust their own behavior to the needs and feelings of others… Courteous people are forgiving and understand that nobody is perfect.”
—Emily Post’s Etiquette (18th ed.)

“Every edition of her book emphasized the basic rule of etiquette: make the other person comfortable.”
—Post’s New York Times obituary (9/27/1960)

Now consider these:

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
—Jesus, Matthew 7:12

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
—Jesus, Matthew 22:39

“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.”
—Jesus, Luke 6:35

Seems Jesus and Ms. Post were on the same page.

As we head into Christmas and New Year’s and all their fancy trimmings, we might do well to remember that proper etiquette isn’t about separating ourselves from others or establishing needless rules to complicate life or shame people. Etiquette is about creating order, yes, but more importantly, about welcoming, considering, and loving others—even our enemies.

When we hold open that door, it’s not because another person is not able, but because it’s kind. When we set a proper and pretty table, it’s not to show off, but to tell those around the table that we love them. When we handwrite those thank-you notes, it shows gratitude and tells the recipient they are worthy of our efforts.

Whether you call it etiquette or simply following Jesus, it’s a nice way to live.

A Word to Michelle Duggar's Critics: What it Means to Publicly Grieve a Miscarriage

In a culture that doesn't have rituals for mourning a miscarriage, the Duggars' memorial service may become a helpful model.

Rachel Stone

I’ll just say it: I’m inclined to criticize the Duggars.

Yes, a part of me wants to respect their right to have “as many children as God gives” them. But I also have real concerns about their choices. I’m concerned that their view of God’s “control” over fertility is problematic on theological and pragmatic levels. While I’d affirm with them that children are a gift and a blessing, I also think that there are many good reasons to welcome fewer children than one could physically conceive in a lifetime. I worry about the daughters who are raised up as junior mothers, for the sons who are pressed into a model of patriarchal responsibility (with an emphasis on financial independence) beginning at a young age. And I worry about Michelle and mothers like her, whose bodies may not be able to withstand near-continuous pregnancy for decades.

I finished the Duggars' newest book, A Love That Multiplies, days before the news of Michelle’s miscarriage broke. As I read the book, which tells the agonizing, touch-and-go story of Josie’s early emergency C-section and rough start as a baby born 16 weeks too soon, I felt for the Duggars. Hearing their story in their own words humanized them in a way that tabloids never could. Despite discomfort with some of the ways they’ve worked out their understanding of Christianity, I couldn't help seeing them as fellow believers who love every one of their 19 children as ferociously as I love my 2. And so, while I can more easily imagine running for President than having even half their number of children, I felt deeply sad for them at the loss of the daughter they’ve named Jubilee Shalom, whose brief life the family will remember with a memorial service Wednesday at their Arkansas church, where they handed out black-and-white photos of Jubilee.

Even as the Duggars thank their fans for the “outpouring of love” and sympathy they’ve received, others are ready to judge and speculate on why this happened: Was it Michelle’s age? The number of babies she’s already had? The relatively brief spacing between her pregnancies?

The fact is, we can’t know precisely why Michelle lost Jubilee. And we don’t need to know. What we do know is that grief over miscarriage and stillbirth is real and intense, even crossing the seemingly insurmountable divide between pro-life and pro-choice. Pointing out that Michelle already has 19 children (and two grandchildren) doesn’t help. Noting that the baby probably had some kind of “problem” that “Nature” resolved by miscarrying doesn’t help, either. The shape and form of grieving a miscarriage tends to be poorly understood by those of us (including me) who’ve haven’t gone through it.

As pastor Elise Erikson Barrett pointed out in her book What Was Lost, we have few if any traditions and rituals for recognizing and grieving a miscarriage. Yet miscarriage is very common: 10-25 percent of “clinically recognized” (medically confirmed) pregnancies end that way. Grieving a pregnancy loss is frequently a highly private affair—but not for the Duggars. As the subjects of a reality TV show in its 8th season, their grief is availabe for all to see. At the least, I wonder whether the Duggars’ story will, however imperfectly, help give public shape to the painfully private suffering of those who have lost babies they barely (or never) got to know.

The Duggars, on medical advice, allowed Michelle’s body to “birth” the deceased baby. That advice is rooted in physical reasons, there is a powerful psychological and social component in play, too. Unassisted miscarriage—as opposed to a medical evacuation, often called a “D&C”—is less invasive, more private, and can be perfectly safe. Naming the baby, as the Duggars have done, makes the loss more real and helps shape or structure the grieving process as does holding a funeral or memorial service. By sharing these things publicly, the Duggars have, I think, done something beneficial for grieving couples everywhere: They’ve provided a model for moving through a common human experience, holding gently the hope of the Resurrection while allowing their grief to be real and visible.

The Duggars will always have their critics. But they are people—not a circus, not a freak show, not an ideology. So while I may work out my understanding of Christianity very differently from them, I refuse to believe that there’s nothing I can learn from them; that their concerns and griefs and joys—their stories—are so very different from mine.

Or yours.

How 'Modest Is Hottest' Is Hurting Christian Women

What the phrase communicates about female sexuality and bodies.

Sharon Hodde Miller

I remember the first time I heard the words chirped by an eager female college student as we discussed the topic of modesty. Her enthusiasm was mixed with perk and reprimand, producing a tone that landed somewhere between Emily Post and a cheerleader.

To be honest, my initial reaction to "modest is hottest" was amusement. I thought the rhyme was clever and lighthearted, a harmless way to promote the virtue described in 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-4. No harm no foul.

Since then, I’ve heard this mantra of the pure proclaimed many times by young women, Christian artists (including, most famously, CCM singer Rebecca St. James), and Christian leaders. In conversations the phrase always elicits chuckles, but my response has changed over time. I still wholly affirm modesty as a biblical practice for men and women, but now I hesitate to embrace the “modest is hottest” banner. Those three words carry a lot of baggage.

The Christian rhetoric of modesty, rather than offering believers an alternative to the sexual objectification of women, often continues the objectification, just in a different form.

As the Christian stance typically goes, women are to cover their bodies as a mark of spiritual integrity. Too much skin is seen as a distraction that garners inappropriate attention, causes our brothers to stumble, and overshadows our character. Consequently, the female body is perceived as both a temptation and a distraction to the Christian community. The female body is beautiful, but in a dangerous way.

This particular approach to modesty is effective because it is rooted in shame, and shame is a powerful motivator. That’s the first red flag. Additionally concerning about this approach is that it perpetuates the objectification of women in a pietistic form. It treats women’s bodies not as glorious reflections of the image of God, but as sources of temptation that must be hidden. It is the other side of the same objectifying coin: one side exploits the female body, while the other side seems to be ashamed of it. Both sides reduce the female body to a sexual object.

Of course, this language isn’t new. Consider how profoundly the female identity has been negatively linked to her body throughout church history. For several decades now, feminist theologians have critiqued the mind-body dualism by which Christians have equated men with the mind and women with the carnal body. Citing Eve as the original “gateway for the Devil,” thinkers such as Tertullian have peppered Christian tradition with hostility toward the wiles of femininity. Origen likened women to animals in their sexual lust. According to author Jane Billinghurst, “Early Christian men who had to greet women during church services by shaking their hands were advised to first wrap their hands in robes so as to shield their flesh against their seductive touch.”

In response to this aspect of the Christian tradition, Rosemary Radford Ruether and other feminist theologians have over the past 50 years rightly challenged the mind-body dualism by which women were thought to be “modeled after the rejected part of the psyche,” and are “shallow, fickle-minded, irrational, carnal-minded, lacking all the true properties of knowing and willing and doing.”

All this negative talk about the female body may have created a vacuum for the “modest is hottest” approach to fill. Perhaps the phrase’s originator hoped to provide a more positive spin on modesty. I sympathize with that. However, “modest is hottest” also perpetuates (and complicates) this objectification of women by equating purity with sexual desire. The word “hot” is fraught with sexual undertones. It continues a tradition in which women are primarily objects of desire, but it does so in an acceptable Christian way.

Making modesty sexy is not the solution we need. Instead, the church needs to overhaul its theology of the female body. Women continue to be associated with their bodies in ways that men are not. And, as a result of this unique association, women’s identities are also uniquely tied to their bodies in a manner that men’s identities are not.

How do we discuss modesty in a manner that celebrates the female body without objectifying women, and still exhorts women to purity? The first solution is to dispense with body-shaming language. Shame is great at behavior modification, even when the shaming is not overt. But shame-based language is not the rhetoric of Jesus. It is the rhetoric of his Enemy.

Second, we must affirm the value of the female body. The value or meaning of a woman’s body is not the reason for modesty. Women’s bodies are not inherently distracting or tempting. On the contrary, women’s bodies glorify God. Dare I say that a woman’s breasts, hips, bottom, and lips all proclaim the glory of the Lord! Each womanly part honors Him. He created the female body, and it is good.

Finally, language about modesty should focus not on hiding the female body but on understanding the body’s created role. Immodesty is not the improper exposure of the body per se, but the improper orientation of the body. Men and women are urged to pursue a modesty by which our glory is minimized and God’s is maximized. The body, the spirit and the mind all have a created role that is inherently God-centered. When we make ourselves central instead of God, we display the height of immodesty.

That is not to say that godly women will not attract godly men with their modesty. They might. But that is not the purpose of modesty. If “modest is hottest” encapsulates the message we communicate to young women about modesty, then we have missed the mark. “Modest is hottest” is foundationally human-centered, whereas biblical modesty is first and foremost centered on God.

How to Respond to Our All-American Muslim Neighbors

And how to respond to absurd boycotts, for that matter.

Margot Starbuck

Lowe’s national retail chain, following a conservative Christian group's call for businesses to boycott advertising on a new TLC reality show about Muslims, pulled its advertisements from All-American Muslim. The Florida Family Association (FFA) claims the series, which follows five families in and around Dearborn, Michigan, is nothing more than propaganda masking a radical Islamic agenda. Though the FFA suggests over 60 other advertisers have also pulled their ad dollars, these reports have not yet been confirmed. In any case, Lowe’s has borne the brunt of media criticism for pulling their ads from the show.

The FFA’s odd beef with All-American Muslim is that the Muslims being featured are not radical enough. One is a high-school football coach. One is expecting her first child. Another goes shopping for the traditional hijab after abandoning it following September 11. With the exception of shopping list items, these folks feel pretty similar to most middle-class Americans. But not according to FFA, which says "the show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to the liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish."

FFA’s twisty logic is subtle, so don’t miss it. By using the phrase “appear to be,” FFA is not willing to admit that these Muslim Americans might actually be ordinary folks. Rather, to support the imaginary agenda—and to promote their own—the organization maintains the story that somehow, TLC producers are tricking us by presenting those who “appear” to be ordinary.

The group is right about one thing: Someone is masking reality to promote a radical social agenda. I just don’t think it’s the families in Michigan. In fact, when I tune in on Sunday night to meet these families from the safety of my living room, I fully expect that the elusive liberties and values cherished by the majority of Americans are also cherished by these American families. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I suspect that FFA founder David Caton won’t be tuning in. Recently appearing on ABC News’s World News, Caton insisted, “This program creates an image that’s harmful, education-wise, to the beliefs, structure and memories of millions of Americans who will look at this and say, ‘Well, all Muslims are like that,’ when it’s not accurate.”

If Caton’s statement is confusing, you’re not alone. As a reality barometer, ask yourself if it would be more or less true to invert Caton’s statement, asserting, “This program creates an image that’s not harmful, to the beliefs, structure and memories of millions of Americans.” Would it more true or less true to say, “Not all Muslims are radical extremists”? Sadly, Caton has distorted truth to suit his group’s ends.

If TLC’s controversial, now-cancelled Sister Wives, which chronicled the daily life of a Mormon polygamist, was a scintillating private treat for curious evangelicals, All-American Muslim is its natural successor. Among the many millions of American Christians who will tune in to All-American Muslim on Sunday night, there will be millions of us evangelicals who, regrettably, do not have one authentic relationship with a Muslim American. Even if we can identify them in our communities, we’re not regularly breaking bread with them before a Friday night football game or attending their baby showers.

Whether or not we’ll continue to shop at Lowe’s, those of us who dare to watch on Sunday night will be educated, in a rudimentary way, about what “they” are really like. And, for groups like the FFA, that’s very dangerous. The success of Caton’s group, and others like it, depends on creating images of “the other” that are frightening and inherently distorted. When the Muslim community becomes our teacher—or the Mormon community, or the gay community, or the poor community—the stick-figure straw men that we use, and abuse, will be exposed.

Blogger Tod Kelly recently grieved this generation of protesters who seek to stifle ideas with which they disagree. Recalling the day when protests centered on ensuring the public good, he writes,

A fruit grower that used toxic chemicals that made their way into the product, for example, or companies that had been caught illegally paying slave wages are the kinds of boycotts I can sympathize with. These boycotts looked to change destructive examples corporate malfeasance—usually one that put the public well-being directly at risk. For my generation, however, it seems like boycotts are all about the stifling of ideas that are different from our own.

The contemporary impulse to stifle freedom of expression isn’t just coming from the Right. Over the summer, activists protested Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz’s scheduled appearance at Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit by circulating an online petition claiming Willow Creek was “anti-gay.” The campaign resulted in Schultz withdrawing from the event. Rather than being open to the possibility that mutual exchange between those who disagree was possible or even beneficial, organizers reinforced the kind of binary thinking that disallows the very relationships that might actually heal and transform.

The words being thrown around these days to describe the FFA are “hate group.” Maybe it is. It is definitely a “fear group.” If the group’s type of lobby doesn’t represent your faith, consider watching the show. Decide for yourself. Better yet: Don’t watch the show, and pursue an authentic relationship with a person in your community who practices Islam.

Now that would be radical.

Margot Starbuck is the author of the forthcoming Small Things With Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor (InterVarsity Press) and has written for Her.meneutics about advertising, Father’s Day, strip-club evangelism, and jiggly thighs.

'But He Never Hit Me': A Christian Primer on Emotional Abuse

To answer the question, Christians must first understand the problem.

Jenny Rae Armstrong, guest blogger

Deb* still has a hard time saying she was abused. Her husband knew the Bible well and proclaimed his Christian faith boldly. They studied Scripture together, prayed together, and hosted Bible studies in their home. But a domineering nature lurked behind his confident, God-fearing front. He spent years tearing down Deb’s sense of security and self-worth.

“I had things broken around me, threats made to me, emotional games played on me—a knife held to my throat, a gun held to my head,” Deb says. “The Bible itself was even used as a weapon against me—always out of context, mind you, but used nonetheless.”

He blamed his outbursts on Deb, and for years she bought the lie that she was partially responsible. “I had to have been doing something wrong if things weren’t going well in a relationship that included God, right? I tried so hard to be godly . . . and the Bible told me to submit to my husband. Maybe God just wanted me to suffer a bit, to make me more holy. Besides, it wasn’t that bad—he never hit me.”

But it was bad, enough that their marriage disintegrated under the strain, leaving Deb brokenhearted, fearful, and ashamed.

Deb’s story is not unusual. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four American women experiences domestic abuse in her lifetime, with emotional abuse present in the majority of cases. The numbers are no better among churchgoers (a fact supported by research, studies, and statistics in No Place for Abuse: Biblical and Practical Resources to Counteract Domestic Violence, by Nancy Nason-Clark and the late theologian Catherine Clark Kroeger). In fact, the difference seems to be that Christian women are less likely to seek help, because many believe the Bible says they must submit to their husband regardless of his behavior. When they do seek help, it is their churches they go to first.

Emotional abuse is a particularly sticky topic for Christians committed to the sanctity of marriage. While an increasing number of church leaders will suggest that a woman remove herself from a violent situation, they aren’t sure whether nonviolent forms of abuse merit anything beyond the suggestion that she “pray and submit.” The misguided advice many well-intentioned Christians give victims reveals a common misunderstanding about the problem—a misunderstanding some Christian organizations are working to correct.

Yvonne DeVaughn is the national coordinator of AVA (Advocacy for Victims of Abuse), a ministry of the Evangelical Covenant Church that equips churches to address domestic abuse. She explains that, contrary to what many believe, domestic abuse is not about an angry person losing their temper and lashing out at their spouse. Rather, it is a pattern of behaviors that people use to establish dominance in their relationships. “The common denominator is that it’s about having power and control over another human being,” she says. “It’s not about anger management—often you see that the person can manage that anger when they’re in social situations. It’s not about drugs, alcohol, genetics, biology, out-of-control behavior, or stress—it is about having power and control over another human.”

Abusers use a variety of nonviolent tactics to keep their partners under their thumb. They may chip away at their partner’s self-esteem through constant criticism and name-calling, or intimidate them by yelling, using threatening body language, or displaying weapons. They may isolate the victim from family and friends, insist on knowing their every move, or keep them dependant by denying them access to financial information or accounts or preventing them from attending school or getting a job. They may humiliate the victim by manipulating them into performing degrading sexual acts or violating their religious beliefs, and may threaten to hurt the victim, loved ones, pets, or even commit suicide if the victim defies them. And of course, many abusers who are Christians twist Scripture to insist that the victim submit to their sinful behavior, using God as a weapon against their partner.

Here’s the distinction many Christians fail to make: Emotional abuse is not a relational problem, a symptom of an unhealthy marriage (although it can certainly cause both of those). It is a heart problem, stemming from the abusive person’s un-Christlike drive to attain and maintain dominance. Emotional abuse is a habitual sin that seldom goes away on its own. The church needs to treat it accordingly.

Telling the victim to submit to sinful behavior will rarely encourage the healing God wants to bring about in the life of both victim and abuser. Instead, it enables the abuser to continue down his or her destructive path, while their family pays the price. The best chance a marriage has for long-term survival is for the cycle of abuse to be broken, and for the abuser be brought to repentance (not just remorse) and get the help they need, preferably from professionals trained to address abuse. Churches can assist families in finding this help, and come alongside them to provide spiritual guidance, emotional support, and ongoing accountability.

Nowadays, Deb puts her painful experiences to good use, sharing her story with advocacy groups and encouraging women who find themselves in the situation she was in 20 years ago. She has made peace with her ex-husband, and can speak with him in grace instead of fear. “God has done great healing in his life as well,” she says. “Had we not divorced, I am not at all sure that would have been the case—not because God couldn’t, but because the need wouldn’t have been acknowledged and healing accepted. God’s desire would be to heal marriages. But the healing can happen on both sides only after the pattern has been broken.”

As the church, let’s help people break those patterns earlier, instead of later, and support them wherever they are in the journey.

*Full name withheld

If you are being abused, or think you might be abusing someone, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Churches can call the hotline to find out what resources are available in their area.

Jenny Rae Armstrong is an award-winning freelance writer and a member of the Redbud Writer’s Guild. She lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband and four not-so-little boys, and recently launched AVA (Advocacy for Victims of Abuse), a ministry that equips churches to deal with domestic abuse and sexual assault, in her region. She blogs at JennyRaeArmstrong.com.

Birth Pangs: When God Shows Up in Pregnancy

In her new book, minister and mother Sarah Jobe says God is present precisely in the "grossest" moments of pregnancy.

LaVonne Neff

Last week I went to Johnsen & Taylor Inspirational Books and Gifts to listen to five women authors from the Redbud Writers Guild present "Women and Writing: The Importance of Using Your Voice for Christ's Kingdom." After the lively discussion, I wandered through the store looking at book jackets. Most of the books, all aimed at evangelical readers, were written by men. Most of the shoppers in the store were women.

I suppose some men feel less queasy about walking through displays of fluffy angels and inspirational wall plaques if they know that stacks of books by male authors await them in the back of the store, though few men were there that evening. I believe that men - and women, too - can learn a lot from male authors. On the other hand, I also believe that men - and women, too - can learn a lot from female authors. And I know that there are things that simply can't be said unless a woman says them.

Sarah Jobe is saying some of those woman things.

Creating with God: The Holy Confusing Blessedness of Pregnancy (Paraclete) isn't an obvious reading choice for a 63-year-old grandmother, but I picked it up anyway - and was almost immediately laughing out loud. "This book is an attempt to name how pregnant women are co-creators with God at precisely the moment in which we are pooping on the delivery table," Jobe writes in the author's note. "I will claim that pregnant women are the image of Jesus among us not in spite of varicose veins but because of them."

I remember pregnant. First baby nestling so deep within me that there was no room left for stomach, lungs, bladder, or various other organs I had formerly enjoyed using every day. Second baby perched so far beyond me that walking became perilous and friends pointed and laughed when they saw us waddling their way. And my pregnancies were a breeze compared to Jobe's, though her midwives dubbed hers "uncomplicated."

What bothered Jobe - who has an M.Div., is an ordained Baptist pastor, lives with her family at the Rutba House intentional community in Durham, and works as a prison chaplain - is that she couldn't figure out "how God could be present in pregnancy in spite of back pain, financial stress, hormonal shifts, and constipation." But as she progressed through two back-to-back pregnancies, she writes, she "learned a startling truth. God is not present in pregnancy in spite of all the crap (and I mean that in the most literal sense). God is present in pregnancy at precisely the places that seem least divine."

If Jobe's wry frankness got me into the book, her theological ruminations kept me intrigued. Who knew that Eve's exclamation at the birth of Cain could just as well be translated a quite different way? That the glow of pregnancy might be related to the glow seen on Moses' or Jesus' face? That groaning in labor is not only inevitable, but also productive and even Godlike? That communion, the placenta, and breast milk have a lot in common?

Such observations are not often made by male writers. And even if they are, how many males could achieve Jobe's "been there, done that" realism? Listen to her reflect on how she was feeling days after her due date, with no sign of imminent labor:

In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells a story about waiting for the kingdom of God. There are ten virgins waiting to greet their bridegroom. They wait and wait, but he doesn't come.... Jesus chooses a negative example; a story about how not to wait. But he could have told a story about how to wait well by simply trading in the virgins for some pregnant women.

Pregnant women surely would have fallen asleep (probably before the virgins) but by the time the bridegroom came, they would have woken up twice to pee and once for a little snack of peanut butter toast and milk. When the bridegroom came striding in at midnight, at least three lamps would already be on. The pregnant woman struggling with insomnia would welcome him to the kitchen table for a midnight cup of herbal tea. The second-time mom would motion the bridegroom to the couch while she finished nursing her firstborn. And the third-time mom would say with a large dose of exasperation, "It's about time you got here - my 6-year-old can't sleep for excitement about this wedding feast!" All of them would have their hospital bags packed and waiting by the door. Jesus could have said, "Wait like a pregnant woman."

That night at Johnsen & Taylor's bookstore, I did see books written by women, of course. Most of the novels had female authors. A few books by women were in the Christian Living section. As a retired editor for a variety of religion publishers, I'm happy to see women contributing to any and all categories. But I'm especially happy when women use uniquely female experiences as ways to see God.

The image of God is male and female. Half a God may be better than no God at all - or it may be dangerously distorted. It's way past time to let light shine on the neglected half of God's image. Thanks, Sarah Jobe - and please keep writing.

This review originally appeared on LaVonne's website, The Neff Review.

The Co-Sleeping Controversy and Enduring 'Bad Mom' Glares

If the City of Milwaukee is really concerned about protecting infants, they should use information, not shame, to inform parents.

Caryn Rivadeneira

As soon as the weather turns in Chicagoland, I know: ’Tis the season to start hearing all the dangers, illness, and strife that await my nearly 10-year-old son if he keeps refusing to wear a coat.

’Tis the season to endure the shaming glances, the “what a bad mom” nods while I shrug and offer: “He says he gets hot.”

Maybe it’s because I’m so fresh into the shaming season that I reacted so strongly to a new campaign from the City of Milwaukee that aims to curb the number of infants dying from unsafe sleeping conditions, particularly from co-sleeping—the practice of parents letting their baby sleep in their bed. The campaign includes radio ads, a Safe Sleep Summit, a “Safe Sleep Sabbath” song, and, most recently, two posters featuring sleeping babies cuddled up on piles of pillows and comforters, within reach of a butcher’s knife. The words across the top: “Your baby sleeping with you can be just as dangerous.”

Since the campaign’s goal is nothing short of noble, you would think I’d be a huge fan.

When my kids were babies, I faced no greater fear than having them die suddenly (this is still my greatest fear). I took great precaution—no tummy-sleeping, no blankets, no pillows, no stuffed animals, no loose-fitting jammies—to make sure my babies slept as safely as possible. And since I appreciate Milwaukee’s vigor in trying to reduce the number of infants apparently dying from co-sleeping, you’d think I’d appreciate the punch of the campaign’s posters. Especially since at least nine infants have died this year from alleged co-sleeping arrangements. Further, according to the City of Milwaukee, “Between 2006 and 2009, there were 89 infant deaths related to SIDS, SUDI, or accidental suffocation. Of these, 46 (51.7 percent) infants were sleeping in an adult bed at the time of their death.”

But I’m no fan of the campaign.

I’m no fan of “bad mom” insinuations, whether about coats or co-sleeping. I’m no fan of implying that parents who choose to co-sleep are as reckless or malicious as those who’d put their babies to bed with a knife. And I’m no fan of the government “educating” a public via shame and shock and hyperbolic misinformation.

I’ve never been a fanatical co-sleeper proponent (in fact, with my first two, I rather shunned the practice), but by the time I had my third, having my baby—who nursed round-the-clock—sleep next to me seemed a lot safer than me getting up six times a night, wobbling over to his bassinet or crib, gathering him up, settling me back down, nursing, sleeping, putting him back down, me wobbling back to bed.

So co-sleeping it became. I read up on it, I asked our pediatrician about it, and I discovered that it could be a safe and healthy. Our doctor offered many of the same rules Dr. Sears (a noted “attachment parenting” expert and co-sleeping proponent) notes in response to the Milwaukee campaign:

-No baby between mom and dad (mommies are more attuned to a baby’s movement and likely to rouse if needed).
-No co-sleeping if one parent’s been drinking or taking drugs or sleep aids.
-No baby on pillows, wrapped in blankets, etc.

So I followed all this, and I found co-sleeping safe and lovely. Granted, not entirely without risk. But what in the world of childrearing is?

In response to criticism of the ads, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett told ABC News he realized the ads make people uncomfortable, but told them, “I guarantee it’s a lot less uncomfortable than having another baby die from co-sleeping.”

Of course. No one wants another child to die from co-sleeping, or from anything.

My discomfort from the campaign has little to do with the shock value of the ad. My discomfort stems from my curiosity about what Milwaukee is really trying to say here.

Unlike those who will give me dirty looks or ask me about my parenting when my hot-blooded boy goes sans coat, when the government gives dirty looks via shock-value posters like this, we have to wonder: Are they trying to make babies safe, or are they trying to criminalize co-sleeping? Because these posters sure seem to say that parents who co-sleep endanger their kids. And I’m pretty sure child endangerment is illegal in Milwaukee.

If the city had wanted to protect babies, a poster with information would’ve sufficed. It seems they could’ve listed the “rules” of safe co-sleeping, and still offered the website for further information and the free Pack-N-Play to parents who can’t afford a crib.

I realize that some will say that “shock value” pays off if it saves just one baby’s life. But when the government (or any of us) is trying to help parents to make wise choices, shame and shock make lousy tactics.

We can’t expect city governments to be in the business of modeling Jesus’ approach to sin and shame, but we should be. And we have no better example than Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, when Jesus drew in the sand and offered his “you without sin cast the first stone” zinger. He dealt with her honestly, gently, and lovingly, understanding the deeper issues at play.

Likewise, when concerned about the well-being of a child, our approach should be empathetic, loving, and grace-filled. We need to remember that God created mothers (and fathers) with fierce and primal protective natures. At the first whiff of danger, most moms will stop or re-evaluate a practice.

And for the moms who don’t—the ones who ignore all danger cues, and the ones this ad campaign is designed to reach—something else is amiss, a deeper issue is at play. And it’s not something a poster is going to solve.

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.

Why Identifying as a Republican—or Democrat—Can Be Idolatrous

And how Sojourners’ Lisa Sharon Harper navigates one side of the political spectrum.

Alicia Cohn

It took Lisa Sharon Harper nearly 10 years to reconcile her faith with her political views. Then she met her first self-described evangelical Democrat in 1991.

At the Los Angeles Nazarene congregation where she attended after college, about half the members were Republican and half were Democrat. It was the first time Harper realized she could both serve God and stay true to her family and upbringing.

Harper, recently named the director of mobilizing at Jim Wallis’s Sojourners, was raised by politically involved parents who had her knocking on doors to get out the vote as early as age 7. In a new book, she says she views politics primarily through the impact of policies on relationships, corresponding to the way she understands God’s relational view of his creation.

The book, Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics, released last month from Russell Media, confronts conflicts that fellow believers face over policy and politics. Harper unabashedly represents the Left, while King’s College politics professor D. C. Innes represents the Right.

Harper calls the book “a tool to help more Christians be involved in politics.” She and Innes agree that “political disengagement is not a moral option.” But while both writers are self-avowed Christians, neither pulls any punches about having nearly completely opposite political positions.

“We wrote it in order to give Christians the ability and permission to think, especially evangelicals, because over the past 30 to 40 years or so we’ve really been trapped in ideologies and the belief that we can’t be Christians without being in one party who cares about one or two issues,” Harper told me.

Co-author Innes told me the book should encourage believers to think about the principles behind the policies. “You have to decide principles before you can decide practice,” he said.

The book is not a defense of Christians who lean left—or vice versa. “It’s not ‘Republican, Democrat and Christ,’ ” Harper said. “[The title] does set up a political spectrum, but it’s actually not about the parties. It’s actually about the worldview.”

Harper and Innes don’t agree on much policy, but the book stresses that it is possible to disagree on almost everything else and still agree that God is God—and that self-identifying as a Democrat or Republican before identifying as a Christian is idolatry.

Harper and Innes said they are both registered with the respective parties because their faith-filled policy positions most closely line up that way.

“I am a Democrat, but what I would say is, I am a Democrat in as much as the Democratic Party is pressing for policies that do justice,” Harper said.

“The parties don’t line up as Christian parties,” Innes similarly noted, suggesting that a Christian’s positions likely will and should differ from the party she or he most closely aligns with at some point or another.

Innes notes a tension in acknowledging that believers aren’t always united behind the same policies or party. “If there is only one position, there isn’t much thought about that position,” Innes said.

Still, the political differences as laid out in the book betray a commitment to the principles of the two parties’ platforms.

For example, Innes argues that the Bible advocates for less government interference. “God appoints government for our benefit, but it is not to provide every good,” he writes in the book. “Rather, government is to encourage private citizens, communities, and citizen groups to address the many needs that arise among us, from beautification projects to helping the poor, the sick, and the homeless.”

Harper, on the other hand, argues that the big vs. small concept is a “straw man” argument. “The real issue is whether you have smart government or ineffective government,” she said.

Harper, who now attends an Evangelical Covenant church in New York City, relates her work at Sojourners to her understanding of God’s definition of “good” in Genesis. She writes that in Hebrew, “good” defined the relationships between every possible thing, not just creation itself.

The two authors had never met before publisher Russell Media set them up for the book, which includes two points of view on six topics: health care, abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, war and terrorism, and the environment.

On abortion, likely the widest gap between the two parties’ positions, both authors define themselves as pro-life.

Harper emphasizes poverty as the root cause of high abortion rates. “We absolutely can agree that babies are among the least of these, but they are among the least of these, they are not the only ones,” Harper said. “To measure vulnerability, to say one is more vulnerable than the other, it feels like a political ploy.” In the book, she also argues that government in a pluralistic society cannot define life according to “the specific mandates of the Christian faith.”

Innes disagreed, arguing that poverty and abortion should be addressed separately just as we would high rates of murder in a poverty-stricken neighborhood. “The unborn children are not one among the least of these,” he said. “They are the absolutely helpless. Even the poor among us …have some means to defend themselves.” He added that one of the primary obligations of government is to protect the defenseless.

Left, Right and Christ is not likely to convert anybody who takes a position on hot-button policies. But it is a reminder that when it comes to politics, the party shouldn’t call the shots.

The God of Awkward Virgins

Can he be trusted?

Anna Broadway

Watching clips from the new TLC series The Virgin Diaries, which debuted Sunday, is a bit like seeing Borat, The Yes Men, or another feature-length “you’ve been had” films. The show profiles virgins in their late 20s and 30s, most of whom are choosing to save sex — and their first kiss, in one case — for marriage. Debuting as a one-hour special this Sunday, it is casting for future episodes and has already prompted criticism for exploiting its subjects. The subjects kiss awkwardly at the altar, choreograph their first night while swinging and riding teeter-totters at a park, sing songs about abstinence, and discuss “reclaimed virginity” during a backrub chain in one woman’s bedroom. Only the virgin by circumstance is shown in adult settings, like a dinner out with friends.

The trailers don’t specify why the subjects are still virgins, but it’s fair to assume that at least a few of them are waiting because they are Christians. So, if nothing else, The Virgin Diaries is a chance to bravely acknowledge our common ground with the socially awkward and other fellow believers who prove hard to love.

But there are other, subtler ways a show like this challenges us. Even the brief clips in the trailers get into your head as pictures of people who probably got here because they entrusted their bodies to God (at least in some cases). And what kind of God does that conjure in your mind? Be honest.

If you were to work backward from depictions like that to the being who created such people and whose instructions have supposedly shaped their lives, you’d probably think of someone with a flaky scalp, ill-fitting suits that could nonetheless serve as a tourniquet on wayward desire, and a voice not many wavelengths off from a fingernail on a chalkboard. Someone more interested in your adherence to (often petty) rules than your well being and joy.

A god like that is not someone you invite into your life. He's not someone to whom you cede control in the midst of crisis and success. That’s someone you force yourself to talk to and then retreat from as soon as possible—which may partly explain why 80 percent of unmarried Christians have had sex, as Relevant magazine reported in September.

Is that a true portrait of God, or one of the caricatures author Matt Mikalatos calls an “imaginary Jesus”?

The biblical God is one who provides food for all creatures, from the biggest fish to the smallest mite. Who put many-colored beauty and diverse fragrance into even the most fleeting flowers. Who comforted a eunuch turned back from Jerusalem after a 1,000-mile journey with the words of Isaiah, which explicitly promises eunuchs “a name better than that of sons and daughters … an everlasting name” (NASB). Who gave up comfort, wealth, and intimacy to take up an itinerant life before experiencing a brutal death that cut him off from even his most beloved—all so that he could pardon even his murderers, should they repent and be reconciled to him.

I don’t know about you, but to me that’s a portrait of exquisite tenderness and beauty. And that’s even without considering all the ways I have personally experienced God’s kindness and care.

When I am standing in front of such portraits, revisiting such stories, I want to trust God. In fact, I want to entrust him with even more than I already have, because a God like that would surely bring about much better, more beautiful things than if I were to left to imagine and act on my own.

But when I am doubting, fearful, and tempted to despair that God could ever bring anything good in my love life, or a husband with whom I’d want to share my body, I’m thinking of a different portrait. Not a true one but a plausible one, when you listen to that insidious voice that, since Adam and Eve’s debate on fruit snacks, has whispered: God is not good; he doesn’t know best.

Perhaps this is why the Psalms and other biblical texts so frequently urge the reader to remember God’s faithfulness. Remember how he brought you out of slavery to freedom and the wealth bequeathed with the Egyptians’ gifts of jewelry and clothing. Remember how he stopped a mighty river so you could cross. Remember how he provided water and food in a desert where you had nothing to eat. Remember, remember, remember.

If we have committed our lives to God, we have done so because we are persuaded that he is real and good. But daily acting on that trust means repeatedly reminding ourselves of his character, in specific and concrete ways. After all, we have an enemy bent on spurring distrust.

So if you watched The Virgin Diaries this weekend, go read Song of Solomon or Genesis 2 or Exodus or Isaiah or the Gospels. Or ask a friend to tell you about a time God showed up and took care of him or her. Retell some of your own stories. You may even want to revisit physical artifacts of such encounters with his faithfulness, be they a car or a purse, a scar or a book or even a street.

There are too many sneering caricatures of our God out there for us to just passively trust him. Loving God with our whole heart, might, and soul takes deliberate, repeated retelling and richly embodied practices.

Anna Broadway is a writer and web editor living in the San Francisco Bay area. She is the author of Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity and a regular contributor to Her.meneutics.

Should Christians Take Antidepressants?: A Response

I've never heard Christians protest relieving the pain of childbirth. So why would they protest relieving major depression?

Rachel Stone

I’m surprised that I’ve never heard a Christian argument against epidurals.

After all, the pain of childbirth is, according to Genesis, a result of sin. And one could probably argue that the extreme pain of giving birth brings one closer to God. Older versions of the Book of Common Prayer include a service called “the churching of women,” during which the following prayer was read,

God, we give thee humble thanks for that thou hast been graciously pleased to preserve, through the great pain and peril of Child-birth, this woman thy servant, who desires now to offer her praises and thanksgivings unto thee.

If childbirth is now both less perilous and painful than it was when these words were penned in 1789, is the praise and thanksgiving of a woman after childbirth also less fervent and sincere? And should Christians then consider not using epidurals, so as to experience both birth and gratitude more intensely?

I don’t think so. As a doula, I support women who choose to have an unmedicated birth, but not because I think pain is more spiritual. And as a doula (and a mother) I recognize, too, that the pain of unmedicated birth can be helpful: not to mince words, but when you feel the burn as the baby’s head is coming out, you know to slow down the pushing and are less likely to tear.

Sometimes, though, the intensity and length of labor, as well as the health and strength of the mother, make pain relief a wise, merciful, and advisable choice. I’ve heard more than one Christian woman praise God for epidurals.

Even so, pain can be good thing, as when pain tells a laboring mother to ease up on the pushing. Years ago, Philip Yancey and Paul Brand co-wrote a book called The Gift of Pain, which told some troubling and astounding stories of the danger of painlessness in the context of leprosy. In a fictional context, Grey’s Anatomy once portrayed a girl with a dangerous congenital insensitivity to pain. Pain lets you know when something is wrong. And sometimes, pain can teach you more about God. As David wrote in Psalm 119:76: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”

I’ve never heard a Christian argue, however, that taking pain relief is somehow an affront to God. As a teenager recovering from major surgery, I took as much narcotic pain relief as I was allowed, and with everyone’s blessing. Why? Because that much pain was without purpose. And the medicine helped, but did not erase the time it took to heal, or the time I spent crying out to God for healing and relief. Narcotics can be addictive (which is why they’re controlled substances), but they are undoubtedly a blessing to many. I can scarcely imagine enduring surgery, or even a dental procedure, without pain relief.

Why is the responsible use of these kinds of medication largely uncontroversial, while antidepressants are still regarded with suspicion? Monica Selby’s Her.meneutics post last week—“Should Christians Take Antidepressants?”—expressed a concern that echoed those from John Piper and Joel Scandrett in the pages of CT. Their concern seems to be that using medication to treat depression (and other disorders and diseases of a psychological nature) is a “way out” from trusting God, a way of escaping “good” pain--pain that, like the pain from a flame or from infection, lets you know that something is wrong and needs to be fixed by Christ.

Even if mental illness is no longer marked by the shame and secrecy of past decades and centuries, the perception persists that emotional pain and suffering is somehow in a completely different category than physical pain. But this distinction is probably more Cartesian than Christian. Medical science is still very limited in its understanding of the exact nature of depression. What’s clear to me, at least, is that much of what seems to predispose a person to depression—genetics, nutrition, upbringing, life-altering tragedies, unemployment, poverty—is both out of that person’s control and undeniably intertwined with the body. Sometimes emotional pain, like physical pain, has a purpose: to tell you to get out of an unhealthy situation, perhaps, or to seek meaningful connection with others. Other times, as with severe depression, the pain is severe, incapacitating, and points to no discernible purpose.

SSRIs, the most commonly used antidepressants, are very effective, especially when administered by skilled practitioners who can closely monitor blood chemistry as well as day-to-day issues of wellness, like food, sleep, and exercise. Prescribed and monitored well, an antidepressant helps make coping with difficult circumstances possible—they don’t cope for you. They’re not supposed to turn you into a different person, to override your emotions, or to solve your problems for you, any more than an epidural gives birth for a woman.

Medication helps some women through childbirth. Medication helps some people through depression. Can they be misused? Certainly. But does the person who uses medication have less sense of sin’s burn, less need for Christ, less gratitude for his mercy?

Mercy, no.

'Unwanted' Girls Defy Sexism in India

How will Americans respond to the unwanted kids in their midst?

Gina Dalfonzo

The Associated Press recently ran a deeply moving story about a name-changing ceremony in Mumbai, India. “More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean ‘unwanted’ in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life,” reports the AP’s Chaya Babu.

The ceremony—the brainchild of a district health official—came about as a response to a crisis in India. “This year's census showed the nation's sex ratio had dropped over the past decade from 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of 6 to 914,” Babu writes. She goes on to explain,

Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.

Sudha Kankaria of Save Girl Child, a group that advocates for Indian girls, told Babu that being known to family, friends, and everyone else as “unwanted” makes girls “feel very bad and depressed”—and no wonder.

The fact that so many girls are killed before birth on the mere basis of their gender, and that those who do survive are often given names like “unwanted,” points to something deeply wrong with the culture’s view of women. In the renaming ceremony, the girls chose happy- or strong-sounding new names for themselves—names like Vaishali (“prosperous, beautiful, and good”) and Ashmita (“very tough”). Their choices demonstrate that this ceremony was a step toward changing that cultural paradigm—toward giving not just this one group of girls, but India itself, a fresh start.

When it comes to making children feel unwanted, though, India’s not the only country with a problem. The United States may not have as high a rate of sex-selection abortion, but unfortunately, we’ve been all too willing to fall for the lie that a child’s value is based solely on whether he or she is “wanted.” Who could forget former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders’s desire, expressed in a magazine interview, that “every child born in America” be “a planned, wanted child,” as a way to cut the rates of crime and poverty? Her interviewer clearly understood this as a reference to abortion, as her very next question concerned abortion laws.

I’ve been haunted by those words ever since I first heard them, more than a decade ago. I’ve wondered, could Elders really have realized what she was saying? On the surface, the phrase can sound good, even noble: Let’s make every child feel wanted! But the flip side of that statement is almost unfathomably cruel: If a child isn’t wanted, then he or she shouldn’t be allowed to join the rest of the human race. In the light of Elders’s pro-choice beliefs, that supposedly noble statement takes on the quality of an Orwellian nightmare.

The idea of “wantedness” vs. “unwantedness” affects me in a deeply personal way. I have an older sister who was adopted into our family at age 5. She was born to alcoholic parents in one of the poorest areas of the country, the fourth of five children who were neglected almost to the point of starvation. After that she was in and out of various foster homes, at least some of which were abusive.

I don’t know my sister’s biological family, but from the facts of her birth and early childhood, there seems no way around the hard fact that she was not what most people would call a “planned, wanted child.” It makes me feel sick to think that her life could have been snuffed out because of that—that plenty of people would have advocated such a fate for her, based solely on her biological parents’ circumstances.

Despite the emotional baggage that she carries to this day, my sister’s life is of infinite value. She is loved and wanted now, but that’s not where her value comes from. It comes from the God who made her, who knew her from the moment of conception, and who always wanted her. And that is why she has always mattered, even before she was wanted by other people.

We have one clue that my sister’s biological parents may have recognized this fact: Despite their circumstances, they named her Joy. She kept that name when she came to us, because our parents wanted her always to have that one good thing—besides her life—that her biological parents had given her.

There’s a great deal of power in a name, as the girls of India are finding out. May those 285 girls’ new names remind them—as my sister’s name reminds everyone around her—of their worth, which no one can take away.



Gina Dalfonzo is editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog, and author of ‘Bring Her Down’: How the American Media Tried to Destroy Sarah Palin. She wrote “What the Herman Cain Case Reveals about Harassment,” "The Good Christian Girl: A Fable,” “The Lost Virtue of Courtesy,” and “Abstinence Is Not Rocket Science” "God Loves a Good Romance" for CT online, and “Guarding Your Marriage without Dissing Women,” “Bill Maher Slurs Sarah Palin, NOW Responds,” “The Social Network’s Women Problem,” "Facebook Envy on Valentine's Day," "What Are Wedding Vows For, Anyway?" "Why Sex Ruins TV Romances," and "Don't Think Pink" for Her.meneutics.

Sara Zarr Talks Faith, Art, and Imperfect Christians

How to Save a Life, her newest novel for young adult readers, is about several lives that need saving.

Interview by Ruth Moon

Young adult novelist Sara Zarr is no stranger to the genre, with three award-winning books to her name (Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, and Once Was Lost, which Her.meneutics contributor Laura Leonard reviewed last spring). Her latest book, How to Save a Life (Little, Brown, 2011), received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and landed on its “Best of 2011” list.

How to Save a Life is the story of several lives that need saving: 18-year-old Mandy Kalinowski is pregnant and has been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Robin MacSweeney, who was unexpectedly widowed 10 months before, is adopting Mandy’s baby. Jill, Robin’s daughter, isn’t sure how to define herself or fit into the world now that her father, one of her best friends, is gone. And, of course, there’s Mandy’s baby.

The story opens with an exchange between Mandy and Robin, setting up an undocumented adoption. As Mandy moves in with Robin for the final weeks of her pregnancy, Jill must come to terms with the stranger living in her house and rekindle relationships she cut off after her father died. The story comes across as a heartfelt, sincere approach to young grief and love as Mandy and Jill both learn to move past despair.

Zarr lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Gordon, a teacher. She enjoys Flannery O’Connor’s book of essays, Mystery and Manners, and used O’Connor’s short story title, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” as the epigraph for How To Save a Life.

“She’s a writer that all the popular people in Christian arts and faith circles talk about all the time,” Zarr said. “I tried reading Wise Blood two years ago, and I need someone to explain it to me. I don’t want to pretend like I’m some intellectual person who understands Flannery O’Connor.”

Zarr has blogged about theology, adoption, and How to Save a Life here and blogs on her website here. She talked with Her.meneutics’ Ruth Moon about faith and writing.

The first thing that came to mind with your book title was the song by The Fray. Is that why you picked that title?
I liked the idea of everyone thinking the life being saved in this story is the life of Mandy’s baby. But in truth, Mandy and Robin’s choice to enter into the adoption is saving their own lives in a lot of ways. Mandy in particular thinks she’s doing this for the baby, and that’s part of her motivation, but she’s a girl who desperately needs saving. She’s smart enough to recognize that the life she’s in is not going to take her anywhere good, and she needs better models of what it is to be an adult.

Jill says early in the book, “Love is just a word we use to describe what boils down to a selfish and temporary state of happiness.” How does her idea of love evolve?
The questions Jill has about love are probably questions or thoughts I’ve had in trying to understand what love—familial love, romantic love, friendship love—is. So when my characters are questioning things, it’s not me leading up to an answer; it’s me asking those same questions and letting the characters’ lives unfold and seeing where it takes them. It was not an intentional discovery of love. I don’t know if she really has answers, but I think she has more faith that love isn’t just a false promise.

How has your faith developed?
I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement. I never stopped going to church. I took some breaks in my adulthood, but the idea of the church as community was really ingrained in me. I always felt that church is where I’m going to find my community and people to live my life with. So when I got married, my husband grew up Lutheran and we decided to find a church together. Now we go to a PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) church. I’m always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

Did you make a conscious decision to not market your books through a Christian publishing house?
I always had characters in mind who were getting themselves into emotional trouble and practical complications. I didn’t want to be asked to redeem everything all the time by the end and have a “message.” I just wanted to tell these stories. I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn’t room for what I wanted to write. One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books. They’re really dark and disturbing. I always loved those books. So I felt like he was an inspiration for me—you can have sincere, devout faith and still go to dark places with your writing, if that’s what you need to do.

How does faith play into your writing, particularly this book?
How to Save a Life started with a writing prompt. It wasn’t until I was done that I looked at it and [realized it echoes] some of the themes in all my books: family, choosing family and trying to love and failing and trying to receive love and failing, being let down and letting other people down but sticking in there anyway. That definitely connects to my experience of family, my experience of church community, and the idea of home that I’m looking for. I always think about what my pastor says before Communion –“This isn’t a table for perfect people.” Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn’t exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way.

Why I'm Okay with Church Failure

At the end of the day, Christians' ministry success is not about money and buildings.

Mary DeMuth, guest blogger

Recently a headline caught my eye: God Provides Nearly Homeless Megachurch $5 Million. John Bishop, the pastor of Living Hope Church near Vancouver, Washington, appealed to his congregation and other churches to help raise the remaining money needed to keep their home, a revamped K-Mart. Outreach magazine listed the church as one of the fastest growing churches in the nation. The church raised $4 million by itself before Bishop started the FortyFirstDay.com campaign, asking churches around the nation to give $1,000 toward the $1 million shortfall. They actually ended up raising more than what was needed, and they plan to use the excess in homeless outreach.

It got me thinking. Although I love the heart of this church and in no way disparage God's provision for their building, underneath reports like this is an assumption: When God's in a thing, it will succeed. We experienced quite the opposite when we tried to plant a church in southern France from 2004-2006. Constant spiritual warfare, financial stress, and team issues contributed to our return to the States. When we came home earlier than expected, someone emailed and asked me if I thought we missed God by going there in the first place. What she basically meant was that God must not have led us there because it didn't "succeed." Therefore the simple formula is this: God leads + We obey = Outward success.

I wondered about the small churches around this nation whose pastors might've read the report of the $5 million in provision. When a church closes, grief enters in. Even so, churches have found joy in the grief. In March this year, Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, shuttered its doors. The grief they experienced, though, was tempered by another church moving into their building. Another congregation, Bethany United Methodist Church, voted to close, but chose to give away their furnishings to a congregation that had lost its building to a fire.

As church members struggle to make ends meet in a difficult economy, as folks shift and move like migrating monarchs, how do pastors feel? Do they question their calling because they can barely pay the light bill for Sunday services? Did they look on with envy at God's extravagant provision elsewhere? According to Fox News and NPR, one of the economic fallout issues from the past three years has been churches foreclosing.

And what of the house churches in China where leaders have been taken in the night, beaten, imprisoned? This last week, China Aid Association reported about a congregation in China who were visited and threatened by the authorities. Their pastor had been sentenced to two years of “re-education through labor” this July. What of the churches that meet under wide-limbed trees in the heart of Africa who serve God faithfully but see little material blessing? How about the struggling pastors in Haiti who adopt orphaned children and have no church buildings?

Wherever we look, we see the dichotomy. Some churches flourish, others do not. Does this mean God is not in it?

The statistics about church death in America are not clear-cut. Christian web strategist D. J. Chuang has a fascinating exploration of the topic at his blog, complete with a collection of statistics from a variety of surveys. According to Shiloh Place Ministries, 1,500 pastors leave the pastorate each year, and 7,000 churches close. Do all those shifts constitute failure?

After I read the e-mail about us possibly missing God by going to France in the first place (only to fail), I realized that it's not a biblical idea that if God is in a thing, it will automatically prosper. God uses hardship and failure for our growth, to stretch us, to make us more like Jesus. True, Joseph saved a kingdom, but not before he experienced abandonment, slavery, wrongful accusation, and prison. Paul planted churches, yes, but he penned many words from prison, hardly a lofty position. Even Jesus at first sight didn't "succeed." He who was supposed to liberate Israel from Rome died on a cross. Yet that very defeat (one in which he clearly had followed God's will) led to resurrection, the church, and redemption for countless people.

Perhaps we need a shift in the way we think. Instead of measuring church success by numbers or money or buildings, we measure everything in light of an upside-down kingdom. The first will be last. The least will be counted worthy. Those who serve under the radar, unnoticed, will be exalted. Those who obey, then "fail," yet rise up again to trust God for worth and life and hope, measure that as success.

God may not call us to create large ministries. He may even ask us to do the counterintuitive. We have to remember that Paul succeeded sometimes (in the world's eyes) as a church planter, but he also wrote a legacy from prison, hardly a heralded place of honor. Wherever we serve, we can rest in the fact that God, El Roi, is the God who sees the unseen, who perceives the greater worth beneath the ashes, and whose blessings often look like paradox.

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