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?"

More on women's ministries:

The other day, I e-mailed our church office manager (who is also the preacher's wife) and asked about the whole women's ministries thing. Today I got an e-mail from her saying that she and a group of women had been wondering some of the same things had decided to organize a women's ministry and would I like to help.

God really does have a sense of humor.

Women's Ministries Ideas:

I'm doing what former English majors do best: research.

There are a ton of pages online concerning women's ministries -- unfortunately, nearly all of them try to sell me on Beth Moore video classes. I admit it's a better fare than women's classes tend to get, but it's still not good. I think we can do better. Much better.

There were some useful things out there, however. One church in particular listed some of the ministries it offers specifically for women which, if modified, could apply to my home church. The first is something they call "Heart-to-heart." It's a once/month evening for women. Our church has home groups that meet on the first Sunday evening of every month. Maybe a modified version of this -- homegroups for women in similar life stages and special groups for adolescent girls with an older mentor(s)/facilitator(s) -- that met on the third Sunday evening of each month or another convenient night.

I think it'd also be a neat idea to match up younger women with older female mentors who are already in the direction the younger women are headed: i.e. mothers/wives mentoring those who know that's their calling/gift/interest/whatever, college age women mentoring teens, older professionals mentoring younger, etc. Just similar intergenerational matching -- for encouragement and mutual learning. Also to develop friendships among the generations. Could also work for accountability.

They also have a women's retreat, which would be a nice way to unite the various groups set up by other aspects of the ministry. Even though a large focus of the ministry may be a mentoring model, it'd be a great thing for all the women to get together at least once a year (fall? spring?) and have a day or two to mingle -- and experience relevant speakers and topics. Other "group specific" retreats could be organized, too.

Bible studies that aren't Beth Moore, Kay Arthur or any of the others I've run into so far. Prayer groups.

Outreach. If women knew there were places for them in our churches, women would respond. Meeting needs opens doors. Women's shelters, high schools, etc. Volunteering.

Just thinking out loud...

If there's one thing I've learned...

... it's that if you have a question, ask it.

I've e-mailed the one person at our church who knows everything: the office manager. Maybe something more "formal" will begin to take shape...

Anyway, it can't hurt.

Can it?

Thoughts on Women's Ministries (redux)

Laying aside the issues of women's "roles" in the church, the issue of women's ministries is still embarrassingly un- or under-addressed.

Currently at my church, the closest thing to an active women's ministry is the Wednesday night Beth Moore class. I'll admit that the Beth Moore studies are perhaps a little more indepth than the normal Bible class fare -- but that doesn't make them good.

The state of Bible classes in general is frustrating. I don't mean that all Bible classes should be along the lines of those offered at the grad school -- I don't think it's necessary for every Christian to learn Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and the historical-critical methods of interpretation (though I think it also wouldn't hurt...). I just think that a Bible class ought to teach.

Beth Moore has arguably made a small dent in the lack of material for women's classes in particular. But it's not enough; it's not adequate. And it's not even that good.

I don't want just to complain. I want to do something. But I honestly have no idea where to start. In a church of roughly 1200+ in which the topic is rarely (if ever) addressed, I haven't got a clue how even to begin.

As far as structure, I've actually been looking at men's ministries rather than traditional women's ministries: women and men today face many of the same problems, temptations and situations in every day life. The needs a women's ministry must address are no longer exclusively learning better child care tactics and how to make a good casserole. Those are important parts of ministry -- developing strong mothers and feeding the hungry -- but they aren't all relevant for all women. Not all women can cook. Not all women are "naturally" good with children. And many women today don't intend to get married -- and those who do are waiting later and later in life to do so. So what ministries are relevant to those who don't have husbands or children, are young professionals earning their places in what was once believed to be a man's world?

There are temptations today that are common to age groups regardless of gender. In much the way Promise Keepers works, so ought there to be a corresponding women's ministry.

And whether a church believes women can serve in "official roles" or not, women need to be shown where opportunities to serve lie. By the time the young men are beginning to be trained to give lessons, lead prayers, serve communion, and to lead singing, the young women are being told (again) about dating and finding a good Christian mate. No wonder we lose so many girls around the age of 16: they're being taught that if they aren't interested in becoming wives and mothers, there's really no place in God's church for them -- any other talents they may have or may think they have are irrelevant. It's sad, but this is the message many young girls are getting.

I work with girls in their early to mid teens at Christian camps in the summer. I've volunteered with countless youth groups. There is a need there that is being unmet and, worse, largely ignored. They're disillusioned by the repeated implication that God only intends for men to serve and women to ... do what? They don't know. None of them could give an answer to that question.

So what are women to do? This is why we need at the very least a stronger women's ministry, a system of women to teach and to mentor other women.

Prayer

Prayer fascinates me. For however long I'm willing to pray, I have the ear of the God of everything. For as long as I talk, he listens -- not tapping his foot and checking his watch, but listening intently. And when I learn to listen, he talks, too.

I don't mean that I hear the audible voice of God. I mean that when I learn to be silent in prayer, to simply be instead of simply begging, I realize I'm in the presence of God. It's humbling and awe-inspiring. It's praiseworthy.

That presences strengthens me, builds my faith, convicts me and sometimes breaks my heart.

Sometimes I realize I'm standing before the God of All ... and I have nothing to say. Needs I can't express, sins I can't confess. No excuse. No words. But:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.



Romans 8:26

And prayer isn't just the formal, stopping everything and deciding, "All right. I'm going to pray now." That's part of it, part of the discipline of prayer. But simple determinance and method aren't the sum total.

God is listening always.

I tend to think we're praying nearly always, that to "pray without ceasing" is a statement of fact, not simply a command. God is attending to our unspoken, unformed, maybe even unknown prayers. He hears the things we don't know how to say, the things we don't know how to ask -- or the things we're afraid to, just as a father observes the needs of his child when she may not know them herself.

What is man that you take thought of him? And the son of man that you care for him?



O LORD, our lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!



Psalm 8:4, 9

If prayer, then, is such a priviledge, why do so many men who are called upon to lead them in the assembly grumble as though they've just been given diaper pail duty?

Particularly from the standpoint of a woman in the c's of C, I can think of few things sadder in our worship services. Over the years, I've heard men turn down the opportunity or accept it grudgingly, leading a half-hearted prayer on behalf of us all.

I find myself praying for him, wondering if he is aware that he's not just addressing those of us seated in pews, but also the one who fills not only the auditorium, but all of creation.

If we all prayed with the awareness that God truly is listening -- even to the things we can't or don't say -- I have to think we'd hear fewer formulaic prayers, fewer bored tones. Maybe we'd hear his answers more clearly, too. Churches flounder at times for lack of direction.

God's listening. Are we?