'Day-tah, dah-tah... what's the difference?'

This is from one of my favorite exchanges in StarTrek:TNG, a series I used to watch constantly. It's among my favorite dialogue snippets because it expresses something I've tried hard to convey for years. A quick google tells me this is from an episode called "the Child."

PULASKI
Data,
(she says "Data" with
a short A)
look at this.

DATA
(he corrects her)
Data.

PULASKI
What?

DATA
My name. It is pronounced Data.

PULASKI
(with a wry smile)
Oh?

DATA
You called me Data.

PULASKI
What's the difference?

DATA
One is my name and the other is
not.

At birth, my parents dubbed me Anna Susan Quiara Maureen Hazlewood. I grew up called by the name Quiara. One glance shows quickly enough that it's not a particularly common name -- at least it wasn't in Ely, Nevada in the early 80s. I've heard more butcherings of my moniker than there are stars in the sky: "kwee-ra" (She-ra?), "queer-uh," "Keera," "Kwai-rah," and, my least favorite, "key-are-uh." This last one is no doubt the one most people who've only seen my name in print opt for, if they attempt a pronunciation at all. I dislike this version for 2 major reasons: It's in the "close but no cigar" category (much like the day-tah, dah-tah conundrum) and, secondly, after 22 years of wearing the name, I found out it's the more "correct" pronunciation anyway. (Apparently it's a French dialectical form of Clara, for the curious.)

My name, however, isn't pronounced that way. It's said "key-air-ah."

This is why, more than any other reason, I go by "Q." So much easier. Most people hit that pronunciation right off. Plus, my college roommate dubbed me that freshman year and it turns out it was better than what my current roommate, Laura, calls me ("ki-ki"), so I won't complain. Much.

Having had my name mangled for much of my life, I think I grew up with an appreciation for the importance of a proper name. I try my best to pronounce the names of people in the ways they've said them to me. And I'm resolved to become better at remember names. (I've been studying our church directory to put more names with more faces.)

A name is something dumped on a child at birth, assumed that s/he will one day grow into it. A surname, in particular, comes also complete with the traces of things done in that name before the child was ever born. And the things the child will do with his or her name will impact the next generation to wear it as well. Names are important things.

When God called Abram, he changed his name. As he did with Jacob. And he called them all and brought about a new nation all for the sake of his name. We are saved in his name, hated because of his name, things we do "in his name" have eternal consequence. Names are important things.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.



Revelation 2:17

John Fortner once said, "The danger of worship is that you become like that which you worship."

I think of this sometimes when confronted with the idea of people like Fred Phelps. Reverend Phelps claims to be a Christian, a follower of Christ but most people see him instead as a minister of hate. This man claims to be a follower of Christ, but his life evidences harsh judgement and hate to the point of rejoicing in the belief that the souls of certain men, women and even children are burning in hell.

Who does this man worship?

It's true there are pictures of God bringing judgement on the unjust, on the wicked. This image isn't limited to the old testament, either, but veins the book of Revelation with equally startling, disturbing images of the Son of Man. This God of vengeance holds tight to the law of justice and all wickedness finds its end in judgement.

Is this the God of Phelps?

This same God gave Jericho 6,000 years to repent. This same God weeps over his people. This same God yearns for relationship, reaches out, loves even to the point of death. This is not a God, so far as I can see, who holds picket signs proclaiming that [He] hates "fags."

This same Lord encountered the woman caught in adultery, who by his own law should die, and spares her life, dispelling her accusers and commissioning her to a new life, free from sin. Does Phelps know this God?

It seems instead that Phelps worships a broken god; a half-image of the creator. That which he worships is no god; it's an attribute, an attitude, and it's very human.

But what about those who accept unconditionally, condoning everything under a banner of love? These people forget that when Jesus spared the woman, he also told her to go and sin no more. So, too, when we negate the consequences of sin or bandaid bullet holes (crying 'peace, peace! when there is no peace...) we find ourselves doing the same thing: worshipping a half-god, an idol.

This is a sobering thought for me. Who am I like? Am I like the one whom I claim to worship?

Things on faith

I appreciate all the prayers on my father's and my family's behalf. And I believe God hears them. What God has in mind is still somewhat grey.

The tumor was malignant and they've found cancer cells active in his lymph nodes. He'll be starting chemotherapy soon -- as soon as he heals from the last surgery. But he has opted to take the treatment. That in itself is a prayer answered and in the way I'd hoped.

Over the last year or so, I've learned a lot about faith. I've learned that in order to learn about faith and in order to grow in faith, I've had to fight with faith -- and fight with God.

I've learned to pray differently. I still pray for God to heal the sick, comfort the hurting, encourage the despairing and to bring about his will and manifest the kingdom of God. But I realize in that last part, the part about "your kingdom come, your will be done," I'm sometimes negating the first part. Not because I think God's will is for people to be sick, hurting, alone or despairing, but rather because in a world full of sickness, hurt, loneliness and despair, God sometimes has to work through that in order to reach us.

In Disappointment with God, Philip Yancey explains this far better than I could. A God who answers prayers like fast food orders and appears in pillars of flame and columns of smoke at the drop of a hat isn't a God who inspires faith and love in his people. More often, they grew to resent him or to take him for granted. But the question "why does God seem so often silent?" That's a question that arises in the lives of most at some point. I'm sure it occurs to anyone who's ever petitioned God for the life of a loved one, only to lose them anyhow. And when the hurt just wraps a cold hand around the heart, squeezing, sometimes the dying breath of faith is, "Where are you, God?"

Why doesn't he reveal himself then? C. S. Lewis struggled, too, when he lost his wife, Joy. The silence of God was heavy and complex, and difficult, too, because so often when he'd not wanted God around, when he wished to be lord of his own life, God was persistent, insistant and omnipresent, at his elbow constantly. So this God who annoys us in our sin and arrogance, where is this same God who will not show himself when we are steeped in pain?

Questions like that get frowned at. I don't understand why, though, when even Christ knew what it was like to sit shadowed in the silence of God and cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?"

Jesus came to be literally God with us. But he also came to become like us, fully human as well -- to experience what it is to be thirsty, tired, sad, happy and if he would know all that, he must also know what it's like to feel forsaken. We really do have a high priest who understands and intercedes.

Philip Yancey has already said that doubt isn't the enemy of faith, fear is. And I think he's right. Questions are only questions. It's when we are too afraid to look for the answers, often because we don't think we'll like what we learn, that our faith begins to fail.

In order for God's kingdom to become manifest in this world through his people, he constrains himself to the context of this world. How will we minister to the hurting if we've never felt pain? How can we love the ones who struggle if we've never struggled? And can any of us say we've never experienced the silence of God?

Sometimes I wonder if the state of our world, our lives, our souls -- I wonder if sometimes it doesn't simply strike God speechless.

Our cable modem/router had an unfortunate encounter with lightning on Friday (must be all the heresy I've been sending through it...). On the upside, though, it's given me time to unpack.

Apparently God wanted to choose our new apartment for us, so he made last week as complicated and complex as possible so we wouldn't end up where we thought we would.

Last Monday, my roommate and I were supposed to move down the road to a new apartment complex. The short version of the story is that we, in fact, didn't. The longer version involves a lost set of keys, delays due to vacuuming and a burrowing rodent of questionable genus and/or species. The resolution involves the hand of God - and also a Kroger gift certificate.

Anyhow, it leaves me very domestic lately. I have to clean the old apartment before... well, before the apartment managers want to look at it. Which I think is Thursday. Which leaves me cleaning pretty much... tonight.

Last night I took my guitar over there and played for a while. The acoustics are better in the empty rooms.

Invisible

So many things in the world today are invisible. Invisible toxins can kill us. Invisible illnesses strike without warning. I pass invisible people every day -- the ones who are hard to look in the eye, because looking means realizing a mother of three can be homeless and hungry and realizing brings responsibility to do something about it, something beyond saying, "Be warm and filled." And by the way, God loves you. It's just easier not to see.

There's another kind of invisible -- invisible tradition. As an example, my friend recounts to me his travels to Japan, specifically Tokyo where he studied for a year. In general, he found the city and its people pleasant.

In Japan, there is no racism; it doesn't exist. Japan is not like the U.S. My friend heard this repeatedly from different friends he'd made at the university, all of whom were Japanese. Despite having observed others crossing to the other side of the road to avoid walking with him, despite having seen restaurants deny him entrance, claiming there were no tables even as later arriving Japanese customers were continually seated, despite all of this, racism does not exist in Japan.

His friend weren't just covering for the status quo. It's hard to cover something one doesn't see. Racism is impolite, it's loud and angry and an attitude more than an action -- at least as it's perceived in Tokyo. Everyone had politely declined to allow him full participation -- after all, he's not Japanese. But that's not racism -- it's just the way things are.... Right?

Wrong. The intent and attitude are, of course, elements, but the action is the essence. The invisible bias against the "outsider" is a polite form of racism so subtle and ingrained that it links seamlessly with life as lived.

My friend pointed out another invisible bias that I've never quite known how to vocalize. And even now, my doing so will not be effective. My friend points out the Western invisible bias of the masculine. It's likely that those words from a female will align her immediately with the far feminist left whereas a male who states it "may have an interesting point."

The invisible bias is pervasive. It does not occur to many men why many women do consider the ongoing question of women and the church to be an important question. "Why rock the boat?" But the question is bigger than women and the church; the underlying question is women and God.

It doesn't occur to some the lack of female "role models" in either testament. Most women are valued or commended for their roles in preserving the bloodline, the male legacy. Men walk and talk with God "as a man with his friend." Women have never seen the divine. Men are righteous for living according to the law of God, women for living according to the law of their husbands. But when this comes up, often well-meaning men will point to Jesus as the only example needed and claim that to look elsewhere is to lose the focus of the Christian walk.

Why then are men who exhort us to have the heart of David, the wisdom of Solomon and the drive of Paul not given similar lectures?

Jesus is the ultimate expression of divine love and his sacrifice is all-sufficient for our salvation, yes. But if a woman were to follow his example very far, she'd find herself at diametric odds with the church; she'd walk contrary to doctrine.

Often I've heard 1 Corinthians 11:7ff as an answer -- man is the reflection and image of God; woman is the reflection and image of man. How is this an answer? It only brings more questions. This verse has been quoted to me so often, I no longer (if I ever did) know what it means. The words are senseless to me. The same ones who quote it to explain away the "problem" of woman are the same ones who claim that woman is not inferior.

Woman seems always at least one more degree removed from God than is man. Man is the reflection of God; woman is the reflection of man. A copy of a copy makes a lousy copy. Man is created from nothing; woman is 'built' from man. Moses sees the face of God, Miriam is stricken with leprosy. After the rape of Dinah, Jacob is angry -- but not because of what has been done to his daughter. He's angry because his sons have avenged it and brought conflict on his house. And where was God? God is silent there as much as he is in Judges. God doesn't speak much in Judges. If God is King and there was no king in Israel, was God simply absent? Covering his face?

This is why I struggle. When I voice my questions, I'm "reassured" that God doesn't think women are inferior or secondary -- but I'm given no reason to believe it. When I voice questions challenging the status quo, I'm rebuffed as a radical or seen as a boat rocker. If I'm rocking the boat, it's only from grabbing at the side and trying to climb inside rather than continuing to drown.

---

I seriously considered deleting this entry. It's full of questions no one can answer and that many won't even see as valid questions. But today I got an e-mail from a friend asking many of the same ones, asking any advice or encouragement in dealing with them -- and I didn't have any. But she shared hers with me so I feel compelled to leave mine here. Maybe they're not valid questions, I don't know. But I do know I'm not the only one who struggles with them.

Questions, at least, shouldn't stay invisible.

...

Dad seems to have come through his surgery fine and the doctors think they got all of the mass. I appreciate the prayers and kind thoughts as, I'm sure, does he. He's a stubborn old goat, but I love him. ^_~

Slight update

He's only now waking up and is scheduled for another surgery in the morning to remove as much of the mass as is possible. They suspect cancer, but won't know for certain until after the surgery.

Because fervent effective prayer avails much...

My dad is currently in surgery. Sunday, they found a mass in his right side and they're doing a biopsy and colonoscopy today. In addition to his other problems and the fact that he had a bad reaction to the medication last night, I'm worried.

I and my family would definitely appreciate prayers.

Camp again:

Did I mention that my girls won Bible bowl again this year? I've worked this week for three years now and they're undefeated for the third year in a row. ^_~

Culture Shock

I've just returned from a week in which worship means dirt, sweat and bug spray. It means crickets and mosquitoes, sunsets and flashlights. It means wooden bleachers caked with questionable substances, shorts and t-shirts to combat the heat and the word of God read under skies threatening rain. I've just returned from this to my home church where tonight, in an air conditioned building complete with stained glass, carpet and florescent lighting in cushioned pews made to seat a thousand plus decked out in Sunday best, I heard a sermon complete with PowerPoint bullets on God's desire to heal us of our love of stuff.

I sat in the auditorium feeling both happy to be home and distinctly out of place.

Some camp stuff: good and bad, a mix.

Is it really Saturday? Already? Well, it was when I started this post. It's Sunday now.

It seems like just yesterday I made my brother haul my camp stuff into girls' cabin 2. But it was Friday that I hauled it out and yesterday that I returned to Memphis.

It was a good week, but over so quickly. Monday was long -- it always is. Sunday night is spent re-igniting friendships, alliances and rivalries a year dormant. Sunday is spent without much sleep. Monday's pretty much the longest day of camp -- and then it flies entirely too quickly.

The girls were wonderful this year as always. I had several returning for consecutive years, several new ones and some who'd missed a year or two in between. They were incredible, organizing and giving the devos on their own, generally well-behaved, if a little bit talkative. (Okay, a lot bit talkative, but they're teenage girls -- what did I expect?)

The hardest part of the week came Thursday evening at the "senior banquet." The campers who've graduated that school year are honored at a special meal. Someone says a few words about them and then at the end a prayer is led on their behalf. One of my girls, Danielle, had graduated. That morning, while the names were being divvied up, the director asked specifically for "guys who'd be willing to say a few words."

Danielle had been in my cabin for at least 4 years. None of the male counselors knew her that well, so the director wound up with her name.

It bugged me all morning, but why buck? It's a small thing, right? It is, but it didn't just bug me -- it bugged all the female counselors and so I was "elected" to ask about it. Not to challenge it, but just to ask why the ones who spoke at the senior banquet (not a "church" setting) had to be all male.

The reason: because that's the way we've always done it. In the past, there had been a prayer following each "speech" about a senior -- though done by a different counselor from the one who'd spoken. He needed to think about it. Unfortunately, he decided it'd be okay about 15 minutes before it was to happen.

Yes, I could have come up with something off the top of my head to say about Danielle. But the reason I'd wanted to say anything in the first place was because Danielle is important to me. She's been one of "my girls" for years now. She means more than 15 minutes prep time. I declined and he spoke on her behalf.

It was frustrating, but it's over. It was just kind of hard. The director is a great guy, one for whom I have a lot of respect and one to whom I normally enjoy talking. Next year, however, he wants to plan it so that it will be not only possible but also in such a way "that the most conservative person will be happy with it." I think that means I won't be able to mention God, how he's blessed me through these girls or how I pray he'll continue to bless them in the future. Dunno if I'd be allowed to quote/read a Bible verse/passage either.

It's just frustrating: a senior banquet should not be tangled with the discussion of "acceptable roles of women." It only served to remind me that no matter how well I manage to learn this Bible stuff, it'll never bee good enough for anyone to forget the fact that I'm female. For some, my words will always negate the word of God and destroy the body of Christ. And if that's not a good enough reason for me not to preach or teach, I don't know what is. But it doesn't stop the feeling that someone is ripping my guts out.

Home again.

I've been back from camp for 20 minutes.  Before I pass out, I want to record a few thoughts on the week.
 
It was a good week. 
 
There's only one reason I do camp:  the kids.  God is gracious to bring me through it every summer and to let me be a part of the shaping of the souls of these kids.  My last post sounded naive; this post will only reinforce that.  We were blessed to have an excellent group of kids.  Very few discipline problems, very few pranks.  No one wanted to go home early. 
 
The cliques disolved in large part and the kids meshed fairly well.  There wasn't the normal pettiness one often finds when a group of teens are confined to a single geographic region for 6 days.
 
Of 80 campers, many "repeat offenders," we had maybe one who would be voted "camper most likely to be thrown from the bluff."   Not bad numbers.
 
Five were immersed into Christ and I witnessed the first double baptism I think I've ever seen.  Rusty McMillion baptized 2 kids at once.  I called him on it:  double dunking.  ^_~
 
It was hot, but the rain held off till the last day. 
 
Somewhere in this jumble, there is a thought process at work.  I've got more to say later.
 
 
 

For some,the years turn around January -- the first signifying the "new" year. For most of academia, a new year begins in August or September, when school takes up again. While I don't really consider it my "new year marker," camp for me is the highlight of my year. People who know me casually might find that funny. People who know me well are no longer surprised.

People who know me only casually know me well enough to get some idea of my physical prowess and coordination. It doesn't take long for me to sufficiently prove my lack of either. This coupled with the fact that I am allergic to everything tangible, it would make sense if spending a week in the woods were something I'd choose only if I were feeling particularly suicidal.

But this camp is different.

I started out at CRYC as a camper, though an older one. (I think I was 16.) It wasn't long after I'd converted; all of my friends from my mother's church would be going to the Baptist camp down the road, the camp I'd gone to before. I didn't know many people except those from my home congregation at Bono; most of them were younger than I was and would be in other cabins. I felt pretty awkward about the whole thing; it seemed like everyone already knew everybody else from previous years, youth rallies and other activities. I wondered how I'd ever fit in, particularly being "older."

I guess I was lucky in that the campers that year were a pretty wonderful group of people. I felt at home pretty quickly. The counselors were incredible people. I remember being impressed; these people really cared about the kids and about camp.

I counsel with some of those same people now. The people I looked up to as adults and authority figures are now peers. And now I'm one of the responsible adults. How'd that happen?

Honestly I haven't got a clue. Though from my first week as a camper on, I wondered how I'd be able to go back to summers without CRYC. To tell the truth, I still don't know; I haven't yet missed a year. Last year it must have been the hand of God himself that got me through.

I'm stubborn. When I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in February of last year, one of my first thoughts was "But what about camp?" I finished the first six week round of radiation radiation the week before camp started. Only Gary, one of the counselors and a good friend, even knew of the diagnosis. Immature as it was, I hadn't wanted to tell the director -- he might tell me not to come!

If I'd been smart, maybe I wouldn't have. But I'm not that bright, really, so I'd gone anyway. It was a hard week, physically and emotionally.

Originally, my doctor hadn't thought I'd have to undergo chemotherapy, that the radiation would be effective enough. But the bloodwork the week before showed otherwise. Wednesday of camp last year, I got the news: I'd be doing six months of radiation starting the Monday immediately after camp. I wasn't sure whether to tell anyone or not. I talked to Gary and Gary decided for me: it wasn't something I should keep to myself.

It was a hard week, but wonderful. Even while I felt like yelling at God, I watched kids turning to him, learning to love him. While my faith was being challenged, theirs was growing. By the end of the week, we were all of us stronger.

This year, I'm in a partial remission. I have my doctor's full approval to rush stubbornly into the woods for another week of camp psychosis: no sleep, sugar rushes, running ourselves ragged on the ropes course. And watching teens grow in faith.

Not all of them do. I realize (as naive as I sound) that for some of them camp is just another social event. For some of them, it's an excuse to get away from home for a week. Others are there because their parents made them come. But regardless of why they come, they're there. And God is constantly doing something. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to see exactly what, but he's always doing something.

Very few people plan their theophanies. God's got a way of reaching people who don't necessarily want to be reached.

Anyway, tomorrow afternoon we start another week. I've been praying all year.

I'm in charge of writing the Bible Bowl questions for Teen Week this year. Trey Reely (the director) wrote them last year and I gave him a hard time about them, so he kindly (?) passed the torch on to me. My instructions are to keep it under a thousand questions and require no more than an associate's degree in Bible to answer.

It's fun putting this thing together. Some of them I came up with off the top of my head, but I decided to just read through my Bible until things struck me that would make good questions -- particularly considering we're dealing with teens here. Which is how I came to include the questions about Ehud and King Eglon. Figured the teens (particularly the guys) would get a kick out of the very fat man whose guards didn't want to open his chamber because they figured he was ... indisposed.

I know they'll grumble, but I'm being merciful. I'm giving them a study guide and I have at least book and chapter (and usually verses) references for each question -- they don't just have to hunt them all up outta nowhere. Too bad they don't seem to get nearly the kick out of this that I do.

Sometimes I wonder how you inspire that in a kid? When I teach classes, it's easy enough to get them interested. But how do you get them to take that home with them? How do you make it stick? How do you convince them that the word of God really IS "sweeter than honey" -- and not only that, it's NOT boring? Because without fail, I have some kid tell me, "I didn't know THAT was in there... that's COOL." (They tend to speak in capital letters.)

That's what I want to do, but not only teens. I want to inspire interest in and love for the Bible in people. Because there's fascinating stuff there -- beyond the fact that it's the history of God's people and the testament to his working in the world and in the lives of man, there's some seriously funny and fantastic stuff in there besides.

I guess it's a question for the ages.

Random, unimportant and also lacking in substance or "how Gorbechev stole my ring"

(This blog was supposed to be primarily for -- well, the sort of things it's been for. I write the other stuff elsewhere, normally. But I was bored, I had access to a computer, and the computer happened to be online. All of this could have lead to mayhem, death, destruction and mass chaos. Instead it led to rambling stupidity.)

Just so you know, my birthstone is peridot. It should be a matter of public record and taught to children in school, but sometimes these things get overlooked. My birthstone happens to be peridot primarily because I managed to be born in August. Go me.

Problem is, peridot is very rarely turned into pretty jewelry. In fact (there has been research), large quantities of the jewelry made with peridot are sold to ugly people to make them feel better. There has been only one pretty ring from peridot and ... I think Gorbechev stole it.

I posessed this ring. My parents had given it to me for my 16th birthday. I'd never seen another one like it -- and probably never will. Turns out, it was a custom design. What were they thinking?

Anyhow, I wore that stinkin' ring everywhere. Including, I might add, to the concert in which I and several hundred other Harding choir/chorus/singers members serenaded Gorbechev with a song in Russian about a tree -- and a couple of English songs, too. The rest of the time we spent propping our eyeballs open trying to pretend that the translator was interesting. Because he wasn't.

While I was sitting on a hot stage in ... some month in the spring semester of that year,whenever that was, my hands began to swell. So I took the ring off and placed it in my inadequate pocket.

Short story long now, I lost it. Very sad. (I actually lost another gold ring and a gold bracelet that same year. This may explain why I wear so much silver now. Much cheaper to replace -- which I do nearly so often as I have my oil changed.)

And so I'm cursed to sort through ugly peridot jewelry in search of a decent ring that doesn't exist.

Fin.

"Sermon" to myself.

Earlier, talking about loss and the things God teaches us through it, I said sometimes I don't want to know what God is going to teach me. And it's true.

Sometimes I don't want to know because sometimes I'm afraid it will hurt. I'm no stranger to pain -- in fact, I'm familiar enough to know that I don't like it. The losses hurt already, do I really want to surrender to the hands of a God who let it hurt?

Yes.

So why don't I? Why don't I let it all go and hand it all over? Sometimes it is because I'm scared. I don't have any guarantee that it won't hurt to heal or that I won't suffer loss again. But I do know that God uses the things that have hurt in our lives to shape us, to mold us more in his image. He knows, too, what it's like to hurt, to lose someone he loves.

God knows what it's like to lose a child. But he also knows the joy of receiving him back -- a joy he offers to us to share. Our God doesn't lead us through valleys he's never seen.

Sometimes it's because I'm angry. Because as often as I ask "Why God?" I know that underlying that question is often, "But why me?" Why my loved ones? Why did it have to touch my life? Why at all?

I don't always have good answers, either. I understand the Yancey/Brand concept of no pleasure without pain -- and that pleasure is the greater puzzle. I understand (but disagree with) Rabbi Kushner's final assessment that God simply can't stop these things, that he would if he could. I've read the story of Job -- and Job was mad, too.

Sometimes we don't get answers. Some relegate all evil and pain to the existence of sin in the world. Is it really sin that causes miscarriage? SIDS? Random cancers? Or other unexplained death? "Who sinned that this man was born blind?" No one.

God didn't cause any of it. And I have to trust him to heal it, even if it hurts, because he's the only one who can. I certainly can't. God didn't cause it, but he can use it for his glory -- if we (I) let him.

More thoughts from a "Radical Feminist Heretic" (tm)*

The discussion on Mike Cope's blog about women, men, church, worship, gender, roles, etc. has been fascinating. I've still got a lot to say about it, but I took up tons of space there already. So I'll blog it here.

There was one comment in particular that I wanted to respond to, but didn't since a) it was anonymous and b) sounded like an ad for the Piper/Grudem book Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Comment may be clipped for length here and broken up for the sake of clarity, but it may be found in its uninterrupted entirety somewhere in here.

Doesn't Paul's statement that "There is . . . neither male nor female . . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28) take away gender as a basis for distinction of roles in the church?


No. Most evangelicals still agree that this text is not a warrant for homosexuality. In other words, most of us do not force Paul's "neither male nor female" beyond what we know from other passages he would approve. For example, we know from Romans 1:24-32 that Paul does not mean for the created order of different male and female roles to be overthrown by Galatians 3:28.

I think that the Galatians text is often bent into uncomfortable contortions on this issue, so generally I don't mention it. But for a good breakdown of that verse in the larger context of the book, Jan Faiver Hailey has written an excellent essay on it which can be found in Essays on Women in Earliest Christianity, vol. 1. The part of this paragraph that got me was this person's other reference: Romans 1:24 - 32, which says (at least according to the NRSV):

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God's decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

Here I'm confused. This passage as explains that Paul did not mean to overturn the "different created order of male and female roles"? I could be wrong, and often am, but to me, this passage says several things:

• men have sex with women and women with men, not men with men or women with women


• not acknowledging God leads to self-destruction


• those who do not acknowledge God are the wicked, evil, covetous, malicous, envious, murderous, striving, deceitful, crafty, gossiping, slandering, God-hating, insolent, haughty, boastful innovators of evil who are rebellious, foolish, heartless and ruthless -- though not necessarily all at once.


• They refuse to acknowledge God by choice. They know what he requires and simply don't do it -- and encourage others to follow suite.

To me, that doesn't seem to have a lot to do with any sort of created order, unless the commenter meant the part about God ordained sexual unions involve both a woman and a man. I'm not even sure why it was brought into the discussion. It seems instead a negative catalogue in order to highlight the virtues of Christian morality. There's a literary term for that, but I've forgotten it.

The context of Galatians 3:28 makes abundantly clear the sense in which men and women are equal in Christ: they are equally justified by faith (v. 24), equally free from the bondage of legalism (v. 25), equally children of God (v. 26), equally clothed with Christ (v. 27), equally possessed by Christ (v. 29), and equally heirs of the promises to Abraham (v. 29).

I agree wholeheartedly. However, I don't think it's limited solely to that meaning. Because something has one agreed upon meaning, does that negate its having any more applications? I hope not. Preachers rely on bringing new life to old texts, often through new insights. This idea will have put them out of a job: once all passages are preached in their one-meaning context, why continue to talk? Let the people buy the tapes instead.

In 1 Peter 3:1-7, the blessing of being joint heirs "of the gracious gift of life" is connected with the exhortation for women to submit to their husbands (v. 1) and for their husbands to treat their wives "with respect as the weaker partner." In other words, Peter saw no conflict between the neither-male-nor-female principle regarding our inheritance and the headship-submission principle regarding our roles. Galatians 3:28 does not abolish gender-based roles established by God and redeemed by Christ.

The 1 Peter text is also interesting. It begins "In the same way, wives..." Well, in the same way as what? Going back to chapter 2, we can see that Peter is there addressing slaves and telling them to submit to their masters. This is a passage often quoted by those who say it affirms female submission -- but deny that that submission has anything to do with slavery. Apparently for Peter, there is a clear parallel -- so much so that he exhorts a woman to submit to her husband in the same way a slave submits to his master.

And so my quandry is still if the abolition of slavery is a good thing -- although it's obviously not a concept the biblical writers entertained, nothing Paul ever seems to have expected to happen in this life, and really an alien concept to the new testament world -- why would the continued submission of women "in the same way" be seen as virtous? And conversely, why would its eradication be such a downfall to the church and to society?

I dunno.

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* "Radical Feminist Heretic" trademark Grant Boone, 2004. Except the t-shirt idea. ^_~

Sometimes what you see is what you get.

Being a Christian today comes with a lot of baggage. The world has a pretty unflattering view of Christians and Christianity: judgmental, hypocritical, intolerant, hateful, exclusivistic, narrow-minded and ignorant, suspicious of science or reason come pretty quickly to mind. Why is that?

Some say it's because they've had bad run-ins with the church before. They've met the intolerant, hateful, exclusivistic, etc. Christians before -- several times and many of them. Christians say the world just doesn't understand or has got the wrong idea.

How'd they get the wrong idea? The negative idea that is so popular has a basis somewhere.

I admit that the perceived intolerance may come from some Christians simply standing up for what they believe. We're called to be light, after all, and to teach the truth even when it's unpopular. Narrow mindedness can come from a misunderstanding of the Christian proclaimation that there is only one way. But what about the others?

Hateful. Christians are thought of as hateful, judgmental, hypocrites. Is this in part because of the ways in which we choose to stand for our ideals? If homosexuality is a sin, does that mean that the best way of imparting that truth is to wave banners proclaiming it? Join in marches, shouting slogans? It's no worse than my sins of pride -- but no one has organized marches against me. Yet.

We should seek to teach the truth the same way Christ did: actively. It does little good to enact legislation against homosexual marriage if we don't reach out to the ones who are part of that lifestyle. It doesn't help to change laws regarding abortion if no one is going to be there to help the single mother with the child she'll be forced to bear. And there will be many more like her if no one reaches out to the young women who think they are good for nothing else or the children who believe that sex is love. We'll never have unity in our churches if we're so busy watchdogging and biting each other. And with that sort of internal strife, why would anyone seek to become a part?

If the church has a bad image, it's our fault. It may sound harsh, but it's true:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

--John 13:35

And if we truly have love for one another, the love that fills us can't help but spill out into the world.

"Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. "




"I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."


--Matthew 12:33-34, 36-37

We can't keep uttering careless words and bearing bad fruit and still call ourselves the people of God.

Freedom

This is the first 4th I've celebrated as a part of the Sycamore View family. I was uncertain what to expect in view of the national holiday, but I was presently surprised.

Yes, I'm glad to live in the US. I'm glad that I have the freedoms and rights that I do and I am grateful for the blessings I receive as a side-benefit of my being a citizen of this country -- and I'm grateful for the ones who have fought past and present to preserve the way of life I daily enjoy. But I don't meet with my Christian family to celebrate the works of man.

I was afraid that SV, like so many other places I've been , would celebrate today the human spirit, the achievements of our past, and "why we're so good; go us." But we didn't.

Curt talked about freedom, but he talked about real freedom. He didn't exalt our government or remind us of the sacrifices of man. He exalted our God and reminded us of the sacrifice of Christ.

The freedom I enjoy as a US citizen means that I have an entire platter of rights -- any of which I can choose to exercise at any given time. In the US, "freedom" is synonymous with a quantifiable representation of rights, what I may do because of who I am: a citizen.

The freedom I enjoy as a Christian is entirely different. In this freedom, I have no "rights." God doesn't believe in democracy. Freedom, in this sense, is not having the right to do whatever I want to, it is instead being given choice -- the choice to do what I ought to: to answer the call of God to love my fellow man.

You know, I think if I still had residual Baptist in me, I'd be caught up in the miasma of rapture fever like the rest of them. I know "there will be wars and rumors of wars" for all time, and maybe I'm just more aware now than I've been in the past, but the world seems rocked to its core. In every way.

Right now, there are a host geological, astronomical, economical, political, environmental, historical and even a brand of spiritual events going on right now in degrees I don't remember ever having seen before. But then, I've also never been an adult in a warring world before, either. Every generation on earth has thought itself to be the last - we can see it from way back. Man has some inborn sense of the end of things - or maybe we're simply reared to be fatalists - but it seems like, collectively, every age has prophets of doom and wise men telling them the end is near. The end is coming.

It stands to reason that some day, eventually, they have to be right.

I think, though, that Christ won't return in the middle of ragingly troubled times, but instead in the midst of the closest thing we've had to peace. When he talks about coming again, he talks about being a thief in the night while the household sleeps. Who sleeps when there are bombs exploding outside? Everyone expects the messiah when the world is going to hell. It's when we try to build our own heaven, though, that God tends to make personal appearances.

The Jews looked for him every time they were captured and carted off to the land of some foreign god - and they're still looking. Every time our men (and now women) are called off to war, when it gets too close to home, we have a spiritual revival. People look for answers. They're still looking, just not for him. They're looking for "peace" as the absence of conflict, not peace as the presence of God -- even in conflict. Our peace is founded in the security of a single fact: Our God reigns.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

Isa 57:21

1 Timothy 2:12

Too often I know the times I should have remained silent.

There is nothing edifying in expressing my frustrations regarding this. I don't have any better handle on the "ideal" than does anyone else. There are things I can't explain satisfactorily and there are things the "traditional" stance can't explain. I'm normally a logical person, but I have to admit that in part, I have to rely on my gut, my instinctual reaction to the damage I've seen done by clinging to tightly to the way things have always been done.

But I've seen haste fling people into deep chasms as well.

I don't know what the "right" answer is. I just cannot believe that God gives a gift in order to frustrate it, that the good news is a burden, that a God who is no respecter of persons has divided them pink from blue with walls made of the same stuff that used to divide black from white.

I would rather God had simply said that women are inferior, second class and faulty -- as Aquinas, Chrysostom, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome and others among the fathers of the church believed. If he had simply spelled it out, I could swallow it. How could I object? It would be as useless and senseless as bucking at the commandment "thou shalt not murder." I would much rather he'd simply said it rather than leaving us the nice, confusing grey area muddied by culture and perspective.

Maybe, along the lines of Calvinist doctrine, I simply have a gimped up soul, incapable of realizing and accepting the 'truth' of the matter, unable to acquiesce to the required life -- too unspiritual to be regenerate. I am certainly not beyond that suspicion and even at times that conviction. There must be some explanation for why the things my church promotes as God's word concerning women seem to me inherently wrong. If they are in fact the words of God, the problem must then be me.

And so I run headlong again into the brick wall.

"Jolie prays for you every night. She doesn't know who she's praying for, but she prays for you every night."

These are the words of my friend Jim to me last night. Jolie is Jim's 4 year old daughter.

Last summer, when Jim found out I had leukemia, he told me he'd be praying for me -- and I have no doubt that he has been, he and his entire family.

These words stuck with me. The last time I saw Jolie, she was primarily occupied with sleeping, eating and drooling. Not a lot of time to bond there. So he's right: from her side of things, she really hasn't got a clue who this Quiara person is or even, I'm sure, what leukemia is. But it also doesn't matter. She prays with the heart of a 4 year old, faithful that God will answer even the prayers she doesn't quite understand.

Yesterday I'd been thinking about the awful things that are happening in the world every day: genocide, murder, famine, poverty, sickness, needless death and senseless violence. Struck by how huge the problems were, my prayers turned immediately to, "Why, God?" I understand that we as salt and light are supposed to meet the needs of the world, but sometimes it seems there are more needs than we have hands. Why, God?

And why am I exempt?

I don't mean that my life has been problem free or that Very Bad Things™ haven't happened. But daily, I don't have to worry about where I will sleep, what I will eat, whether ongoing civil war will tear my family, my home apart. I don't worry constantly that my loved ones will be murdered, cut down because they happen to be the wrong tribe, the wrong faith, the wrong shade.

Do I ask God "why" because I think he hasn't seen what's going on? Do I think he doesn't care or can't help? No. I ask because I'm nearsighted. I can't see what God has done and will do with this an many other situations in the world. I ask why because I don't understand. I pray for people I don't know about things I don't understand, knowing God will hear. But I'm asking the wrong question. Unlike Jolie, I have a responsibility concerning even the things I don't understand.

The question has never been "why?" The question is "what would you have me to do?"