Living in the Tension

I have a large amount of updating to do, but I wanted to, needed to write about this before the shock wears off.

I have discovered--yet another--superbly interesting book at the library tonight (this would be book 3 in 2 days...I've checked the other two out and will probably check this one out too).  It is called "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle.  I've only read a few pages of the introduction and the first chapter, but already, I am deeply chilled by what she has to say.  She proposes in the introduction, and uses as her subtitle, "We expect more from technology and less from each other." (pg xii)  She comments on watching her daughter grow up from age 6 to 19 with various technologies (social networking, texting, but also robots including Furbies and more advanced robotics), and the questions and comments she raises about the robots' lives and their use in place of animals at museums lead her to comment on how we understand the value and purpose of life, ie, 'why should we/other living thing do x when a robot could do it?'  She references a book by David Levy called "Love and Sex with Robots."  And here I find the most chilling comments: "Levy argues that robots will teach us to be better friends and lovers because we will be able to practice on them...[R]obots are..."other," but, in many ways, better.  No cheating.  No heartbreak."

My heart breaks because I know that statement is fundamentally wrong.  My heart breaks because I know that statement is fundamentally wrong, but I also find a resonance with the enticement of no relational hardships.

I think the sheer number of articles, blogs, and books about our interactions with and potential addictions to technology are warning enough that something is happening, something devious, dangerous.  What's chilling is what Turkle has to say in less than 10 pages of a 300+page book.  What's chilling is that I see similar things, and have, though with much less eloquence and knowledge, written my own paper for a college English class about how we keep people at our fingertips--and no closer.  What's chilling is that I notice a difference when I turn off my smartphone for a day.  How I approach the day, what I think about throughout the day, and how I choose to handle problems when they come.

Those differences I notice of myself are enough for me to remember that having days free from technology are wise, but her comments in these ten pages are sending messages deep into my being that not only are they wise, but vastly important.  I need to cut my cord with technology regularly so that I remember that hardships are part and parcel of life and of relationships.  As uncertain as these are, learning to live into that tension is crucial for the development of vibrant life (both internal and external) and relationships.  The vibrancy of life comes from taking risks to discover, the vibrancy of relationships comes from giving of yourself, of your heart to another, in full knowledge that they can choose to use and abuse them...and, hopefully, finding that they choose otherwise.

Working Women?

I love this article.  It somehow sums up how I feel about conservative viewpoints that uphold being a wife and stay-at-home motherhood as the only respectable role for Christian women.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/june/my-calling-as-female-breadwinner.html?paging=off

The last paragraph sums it up quite nicely: "Whatever you do, lady reader—and however much or little money you make doing it—do it with all your heart, knowing that you receive your calling and identity from God, not from fellow Christians who play exegetical leapfrog with Scripture."

And I am encouraged by her reference to Colossians to support her viewpoint.  Because it is removed from the passages of Timothy and Corinthians that are the ground zero of such a charged topic.

Collected Quotes, Episode II

"'George,' Alanna said.  The other two looked at her. Her face was bewildered.  'I--I don't understand,' she stammered.  'Why do this for me?  You went to a lot of trouble.  Why?'
George looked at her for a long moment.  Finally he replied, 'And why do you find it so hard to think someone might like you and want to do things for you?  That's the way of friendship, lad.'
Alanna shook her head.  'But I haven't done anything for you.'
'That's not how it works,' the thief said dryly."
--Tamora Pierce, Alanna: The First Adventure

Collected Quotes, Episode I

"Holiness isn't about sticking to a list of rules.  It isn't something you either have or don't have, keep or lose.  It's a way of life, filled with twists and turns, mistakes and growth, uncertainty and reward." --Rachel Held Evans

Boys

The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys'

via kateelliottsff.tumblr.com/

For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!” 
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning.  How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.

(Source: lastlifeinuniverse)

(Reblogged from neuralwiles)

Your thoughts?

Why I Don't Listen to Focus on the Family

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/03/focus-on-the-family-feminism-is-the-way-of-death.html

For real??

My favorite bit:
"Kassian: Women come to me, saying “I want to have a ministry, I want to help others,” and I just look at them, and I wonder—don’t you have children? Don’t you realize how important that is? How much more wise would it be to invest in your children’s lives than try to fix a Humpty Dumpty situation when they’re teenagers?"

So, just because I'm a woman, you automatically assume that I have children?  I'm not even sure where to start with that one.  I am female, I therefore have children.  Let's forget about the fact that the average marrying age now is somewhere like, what, 28?  That leaves about 14 years of perfectly biologically viable child-bearing time where women aren't having children.  What do you expect them to do?  What about empty nesters?  And what about couples that can't have children?  What about them?

I don't disagree with her that raising children is an important and valuable investment and ministry.  But what I do take issue with is her unwillingness to accept or understand other ministries beyond that. "And I just look at them, and I wonder..."  She seems completely confused by their requests.  And instead of asking them about their desires to be involved in ministry, she questions their parenting.  I don't have a problem with families or stay-at-home moms or anything like that.  What I do have a problem with is an unwillingness to imagine or understand anything other than that.  An unwillingness to understand the life of a single person that isn't focused on finding The Perfect Relationship.  An unwillingness to understand callings to the university, to the mission field (using here the traditional definition of mission field; overseas cross-cultural intentional ministry), to healthcare, to anything that isn't being a wife and mother. 

I know this isn't a well-written, carefully planned and researched post.  Attitudes like these have rubbed me wrong for *years* and with John Piper's comments on being able to read commentaries written by a woman because then he can ignore her female personhood, it's at the surface.  I know I've felt this for years, but seeing it in text, and reading it and others like it, and being able to understand it as a young adult, ...all I'm left with is this question, "Are you serious?"

I'm not even going to touch the bit about abused women.  Do you not see how your attitudes perpetuate the abuse?  (Okay, maybe I am.)  That, as Christians, men and women are supposed to accept abuse because we are to lay down our rights, by your logic.  I have wrestled with this.  Not because I've been abused, fortunately, but this idea that being a Christian means being a doormat.  Christ does call us to humility, to sevanthood, to turning the other cheek.  But  if we extrapolate that to mean that we have no worth, no personhood, no value, we are ignoring the other part of the gospel that says, "You are worthy!  You are a person!  You have value!"  We ignore that the gospel proclaims freedom for the captives and a restoration of broken things.  Jesus died for each of us.  That is how much we are valued and loved.  We must always understand humility and servanthood and surrender in this context.

Oh, that we may understand!  Help us to understand the world you created.  Help us to understand your purposes for the world, and help us to understand how you invite us to participate in it.   Help us to respect each other, and also ourselves.

Journaling

Good news!  I have filled my paper journal!  Now it's time to start a new one!

Isn't that an awesome feeling??

He is Risen--He was DEAD but is Now Risen

I'm finding such gratitude and sanctuary in the church calendar as of late.  Most of my church life has been spent in non-denominational contemporary Protestant churches, but the past three of it has been spent in this lovely little Lutheran congregation--somewhere I never expected to find family or a place to call home.  In this time in this church where sacraments are performed seriously and joyfully, where scripture is read aloud betwixt songs and sermons, I have found new awe.  There is purpose in the liturgy, in the church calendar, in the liturgy.

Just as we set aside time leading up to Christmas to anticipate Jesus' birth, we also set aside time leading up to Easter to anticipate Jesus' resurrection.  And that time builds to a climax during Holy Week.  On Palm Sunday, we enter the crowd welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem...with recognition that five days later we are in the crowd again, shouting "Crucify him!" At my church we are given palm fronds to wave during service.  I saved mine from last year, and had them sitting on my dashboard.  And every once and a while, I would consider that, and reflect on that.  (I think that season is now come and gone, and it's time to get rid of the palm fronds.  But only did I realize that this weekend.)  On Maundy Thursday, we consider the Last Supper, where Jesus washes his disciples feet.  On Good Friday, we reflect on the crucifixion   We remember the nails driven into his hands and into his feet, we remember the crown of thorns shoved onto his head, and we remember the flogging and the piercing and the hanging and the death of Jesus.  My church reads through the passion story in a Tenebrae service--Service of the Shadows, where as the story is read responsatorily, candles are extinguished and lights are dimmed, until the sanctuary is in total darkness.  We leave in complete darkness and silence.  This year, the part that struck me most was the loud sound played to signify the closing of the tomb.  I resisted shrugging off the (emotional and physical) reverbs of that sound in discomfort, and let the finality of that sound register.

In Lent, in Holy Week, we enter a season of remembering the hardship and the price of the cross.  We enter a season of recognition that the life of Jesus was not an easy one, and that our lives as his followers are not either.  I hope that we take the season of Lent seriously.  I think it's important to enter the season of Lent, and not rush to Easter, as would our inclinations be.  Because as amazing as Easter is, it cannot have it's place, and it's worth cannot be fully grasped without Good Friday.  We must grow in our capacity to understand the death of our Savior in order to grow in our understanding of the life of our Savior.  And I am grateful for the church calendar that reminds us that there are seasons.  That there is a time both for joy and for mourning, and each season brings new growth.

Sunday, we celebrated that He has risen!!  Hallelujah!

And this week, I celebrate that HE IS STILL RISEN! Hallelujah and Amen!

Celibacy: Understanding Love in the Sacrifice

Some interesting thoughts on celibacy in light of the pedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church.

"Celibacy is not only an ancient tradition of asceticism, but more important, it is an ancient tradition of love. Celibacy is, in short, about loving others. Those who opt for celibacy (or to use religious terminology, those who feel ”called” to embrace it) choose it as a manner of loving many people deeply, in a way that they would be unable to if they were in a single relationship. It is certainly not for everyone. And it is not a better or a worse way of loving than being a married person, or being in an exclusive relationship with one person.

The criminal acts of a few do not negate the value of celibacy, any more than spousal abuse or incest can negate the value of marriage or marital love. And even if women or married men were admitted into the Catholic priesthood, celibacy would inevitably remain a choice for many. Because for many — myself included — it is not a disciplinary restriction, it is the best way they have found for living a meaningful and committed life.

...

Throughout the history of Christianity, celibacy has been part of a religious life dedicated to serving others. Jesus of Nazareth was celibate, as was Francis of Assisi, and so were more recent and much-admired figures like Pope John XXIII and Mother Teresa. All of these people are model celibates: not because of their unhealthy approach to life or because of some perverse notion of sacrifice, but rather for the way in which they understood love."

by James Martin, Choosing Celibacy (New York Times)

Holy Spirit Scheming

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. ~Psalms 37:4

Friends, this has been a big week for me.  True, I called in sick to my teaching job for the first time on Wednesday, and I moved over the weekend, and my 4 year old car hit 50,000 miles, but what I’m really talking about here is the fact that I have a boyfriend.  For the first time in my life (at 25), I have a boyfriend. 

His name is Jon.  He’s a philosopher, enjoys in particular the philosophy of science and religion, teaches at a community college, is involved in student ministry through Cru and InterVarsity, listens to Christian metal, and plays electric guitar.  We met when we carpooled together to a Christian faculty conference IV was doing in Ohio in September.  We had a mutual friend who suggested this carpool, and, whether or not he hand a real hand in orchestrating this, we have now labeled him as a schemer.

But really, the true schemer in this is the Holy Spirit.

Jon has his own story of the way God worked in his life up until this point, and how God led him as he pursued me in the beginning.  For me, in the past several years, I have been growing in my understanding of how God wants me.  Just plain and simple: God. Desires. Me.  He is not a distant God, but a God of relationship, who is intensely emotionally and passionate.  And that the object of his passion is his people (ex. Deuteronomy 32:9)—including me.  He is jealous and passionate for me.  For *all* of me.  Including my heart.  My faithfulness, my loyalty, my affection, my joy, my hurt, my brokenness.

Weddings have been hard.  As a 20something, I’m watching friends from college, from high school, from church, get married left and right, when I had yet to have my first boyfriend.  And I always had to indicate that I did not have a Plus One to bring.  After one wedding a few months ago, I was feeling especially concerned and alone.  The chair next to me at the reception had been sitting open for a while at the beginning, causing me to wonder if the bride missed the fact that I did not have a Plus One and had left that seat open for him, and therefore the empty chair become a source of great discomfort for me.  ‘Look at the empty chair next to Rachel!  She doesn't have someone next to her!’  (Turns out, the other single girl who was supposed to sit there was running very late.  I actually had the privilege of praying for her!!) As I was driving home, God called me out on my dissatisfaction.  He called me out on the promises I had made to him to find my peace and wholeness in him.  Why was I despairing and looking longingly at the table up front, when I had promised that my heart’s focus was His heart?  Please note here that I am not saying that the desire for a husband is wrong.  What I am saying is that what is wrong is staking my value and my hope in it.  What God wanted (and still wants) from me was my attention, not (necessarily) my wedding vows.

I have been waiting and seeking God in the area of relationships over these several years.  Truly *seeking.*  Watching, looking, evaluating, searching—with all the emotion that goes with that.

Then in January, this boy that I had been talking to since this conference in late September, asks me if I saw potential for anything more.  Though I had seen potential, I had kept myself from making anything of it, from dwelling on it or measuring and weighing it.  So I told him yes, but requested his patience with me, as this was new for me.  And he said that I was more than worth being patient for and waiting for.

And he has.  So much more so than I imagined.  But not in a casual way.  He actively waited for me, engaged with me in the process of sorting out this new thing, but always respected where I was.  For example, when we went out on Valentine’s Day, he gave me a peach/pink rose, with the explanation that if red was for love, and yellow was for friendship, then this color fit the fact that we were neither, but somewhere in the middle.  I saw his respect and patience in this.  And on Monday (February 18^th), I said, Okay.  Let’s do this, this relationship thing.  And he agreed.

Friends, I have waited.  I have waited for the Lord, and I have found hardship but also joy in pursuing Jesus.  I have delighted myself in him, even when my delight looks much more like sitting at his feet in the darkness and questioning.  And he has given me a *good* gift in Jon.  God knows the desires of my heart, and he knows how *best* to meet them.

Friends, please understand that this is not a formulaic idea.  That I just need to read my Bible more or pray more or give more or serve more or whathaveyou, then that will prove to God that I am delighting in him and he will give to me a boyfriend or a promotion or whatever it is that I feel I need to have the perfect life.  Firstly, delight is simple.  Delight is pure.  Delight is innocent, without motive, purpose, or end.  Delighting in the Lord is not more things.  It is more of him himself. 

And even if your delight is true, that doesn't mean he will give you what you want.  This post is not a post about how God made my dreams come true, about how God made my life perfect-looking.  Because it's not, and having a boyfriend doesn't "fix" that.  Because in my delighting in the Lord, I have been given so many good gifts, that do not have anything to do with my relationship status, my income, or anything like that.  Yes, one of them has been Jon.  But as I've sought the Lord, delved deeper into knowing him in this particular way, he has also given me

-a group of ladies in my small group who have helped me do that, and who have been a source of deep healing, in ways that I’m not sure they’ll ever truly know

-the opportunity to move back to West Michigan to work with InterVarsity

-the opportunity to hop over to Russia for a summer to teach teenagers

-grace,

beauty,

wholeness,

knowledge,

joy

and on…

Delight yourself in the Lord.  He adores you.  He wants you—all of you, and just you.  He loves you.  And he gives *good* gifts.

Invitations

God is [...]sending invitations. Sometimes they seem less compelling than anything on my to-do list. Why would I want to say yes to the invitation to rest when I'm already so far behind? Why follow when I could lead? Why accept invitations to weep or to admit I am wrong or to wait? Saying yes might slow me down, sabotage my agenda and even undo who I think I am.

--IVP review of the book "Invitations from God: Accepting God's Offer to Rest, Weep, Forgive, Wait, Remember and More" by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun

Redemption

"This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." --1 John 5-10 (ESV)

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." --Colossians 1:13-14

"Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has cleared away your enemies."
 --Zephaniah 3:14-15a (ESV)

No Storm Can Shake My Inmost Calm

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart!

InterVarsity/International Students

*sigh*  Life has been moving at a break-neck pace over the past three weeks...I'm stealing little moments where I can to process things, and in those small moments when I stop to pray, God has been faithful to meet me, in new places.

One of the things on my mind lately has been the way that InterVarsity has shaped my life.  I remember showing up to a weekend conference called Genesis and having no clue who this guy named Curt Wilson was and why he was clearly trying to make an effort to engage me in conversation.  I remember showing up late to my first Chapter Focus Week because my car broke down in Gaylord on the way up, and being new to the camp and anticipating what was in store for the week.  Never would I have imagined having Curt's Christmas family photo on my fridge, nor staffing Chapter Focus Week.  But what has been one of the most important things that InterVarsity did in my life was to show me the value in community.  InterVarsity began to walk me into the riches of living in community in the Body of Christ.  It continues into my life today.  I have found a wonderful group of ladies at my church, which is wonderful in its own right.  This is my home, my family.  Something I never imagined could be mine.

I'm thinking about these things as I watch new generations of InterVarsity students come and go.  I watch them consider going to Compelling, to Chapter Focus Weeks.  I watch them consider what they are risking in making choices to follow Jesus from wherever they are.  And I watch their hearts change in response to that.  What an incomparable pleasure that is.  It is this that had me considering staff.  But that's not quite where I fit.  Instead, I get to participate in that as a teacher.  I'm seeing sparks of that...I'm waiting for it to catch.

I'm also thinking about these things as yet another chapter of InterVarsity faces de-recognition--this time, the Asian chapter at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where I am friends with the staff member.  I pray for her, the leaders, the chapter's students, the study body, the council.  That Christ would shine steadily in all that goes down.

Anyway.  What I really opened this post for was this:
Urbana 96 - Across the Hall from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Twenty-one-hundred, you make great videos.  I love the power in the moment in the middle, when he knocks on the door.

Little Prayers

I know Jesus must be tired of me asking him for help finding my keys.  But he adores me.  And he's always come through for me. :)
*heart*

Waywardness: Proximity and Intimacy with the Father

Wow. Check out this video from Urbana '12. I wasn't at Urbana (triennial missions conference attended by 16,000+ students, recent grads, missionaries, and church leaders) this year to hear it, but it's posted on their webpage. I am so glad for the technology that lets me hear Ram speak on Luke 15:11-32...and then to rewind and pause it to consider his words again.

Ram Sridharan from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo.

Peace, Sin, and Advent

Bonhoeffer’s Argument Against Religious Blackmail
December 19, 2012
Wesley Hill
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/12/bonhoefferrsquos-argument-against-religious-blackmail

(Bolding by yours truly, to highlight what I find most interesting/striking/confounding/etc.)

Krister Stendahl’s classic 1963 essay, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” makes the case that Augustine and the Western (Protestant) Christian tradition, preoccupied as they were and are with personal human guilt, present us with a drastic misreading of Paul. Unlike his fourth-century reader who poured out confessions of sin and misery to God, Paul was relatively untroubled by a sense of personal failure. According to Stendahl, himself an ordained Lutheran clergyman, Paul was very different from Augustine and Luther insofar as Paul possessed a “robust conscience.”

When Paul looked back over his life prior to his conversion to faith in Jesus, Stendahl argued, he considered himself a successful keeper of the Jewish law. Where Augustine and Luther narrated their respective conversions as a transition from oppressive feelings of condemnation to the relief of forgiveness and justification, Paul presents a very different picture: “as to righteousness, under the law [I was] blameless” before I became a Christian, he says (Phil. 3:6).

In drawing this distinction between Paul and Augustine, Stendahl is not simply interested in making a point about the distant past. He suggests, rather, that Paul’s freedom from feelings of guilt may have something to teach us about our contemporary Christian experience. Paul’s witness may enable us to break free from an oppressive Augustinian preoccupation with human unworthiness. “Did Paul think the only way to become a good Christian was out of frustration and guilt?” Stendahl asks (in the book in which the “Introspective Conscience” essay was eventually collected). No, he answers. “It may be that the axis of sin and guilt is not the only axis on which Christianity revolves.”

Another Lutheran clergyman—the theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer—may offer the best rebuttal to Stendahl’s view of Paul. In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer worries that some versions of Christian apologetics and evangelism elide the distinction between sin and feeling guilty. As theologian Ian McFarland put it in his excellent book In Adam’s Fall:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was highly critical of those styles of evangelistic preaching that seek first to persuade people how wretched and miserable they are and only then introduce Jesus Christ as the cure for their condition. He called it ‘religious blackmail’ and thought it both ignoble and completely inconsistent with Jesus’ own preaching. . . . Bonhoeffer objected that such preaching confused sin with personal weakness or guilt.

Better, Bonhoeffer argued, to present the total claim of Jesus Christ on a person’s whole life, rather than attempting to root out—in the fashion of muckraking journalism—a person’s hidden insecurities as a prelude to introducing them to Jesus’ forgiveness. At first glance, this makes it sound as though Bonhoeffer were agreeing with Stendahl that we have to break free of the old notions of personal sin and guilt if we’re to preach Christ in the changed landscape of modernity. But a closer read suggests there’s a deeper logic at work here.

Bonhoeffer suggests, contra Stendahl, that if we’re really to preach about the sin of humanity, we have to avoid yoking that preaching too closely to the feelings of guilt that may or may not be a feature of our hearers’ experience. Regardless of what a person may feel, Bonhoeffer implies, the gospel truly addresses them and lays claim to their lives. The truths of sin and redemption aren’t dependent on the rising and falling of human emotional states. And to dismantle a faulty view of the importance of those emotional states isn’t equivalent to a wholesale revision of Christian teaching on sin and redemption.

There’s an important lesson here, and not only for Pauline scholars (who, by the way, may agree with Stendahl that Paul possessed a robust conscience prior to faith in Christ but may nonetheless disagree with Stendahl about the implications of that fact). Distinguishing between the objective condition of humanity under sin and divine judgment (see Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapters 1-3) and the subjective feelings of guilt and shame may allow us better to defend, say, a Christian account of marriage in the public square.

Too often we Christians are heard as saying something along the following lines: “Your life of casual sex (or cohabitation, or homosexuality) surely must be leading you to feel empty, unfulfilled, and jaded. But we have the solution for those unpleasant feelings!” To which the reply is often: “I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t feel excessively guilty or ashamed or unfulfilled. On the contrary, my gay partnership has given me more emotional peace than I’ve ever had.”

In other words, we Christians are often found making Stendahl’s mistake: in our rush to defend our understanding of sin and human flourishing, we too easily assume that the same emotions must be the universal human result of certain behavioral choices. When those expected emotions aren’t present—when Paul, for instance, feels no guilt after persecuting the early Christians—we’re suddenly left wondering what went wrong with our doctrine of sin.

I submit that Bonhoeffer may provide us with a way out of this conundrum. Avoiding what he calls “an attack on the adulthood of the world,” we may realize that it isn’t part of our Christian calling to first expose (or conjure) guilty feelings before we commend, say, a traditional Christian vision of marriage. Rather, we can simply acknowledge that human emotions are unpredictable; “peace” and “fulfillment” may indeed be the outcome of practices and behaviors that, from a Christian vantage point, we must deem sinful. But no matter. The gospel lays claim to the whole human being in the midst of that “peace.” Here in Advent, we remember the One who told us he did not come to bring peace (Matt. 10:34). He came to demand our all—to ask for our death and our life. No matter how robust our consciences may be, he came to save us all.

--Wesley Hill is assistant professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. His book Paul and the Triune Identity is forthcoming from Eerdmans.--

Baggage, Leadership, Sex, and Freedom

‎"I came before God with baggage (and a hangover)." -Jessica Laporte

Jessica is an InterVarsity student at Tufts (where we've had some challenges to our ministry operating on campus). She wrote an incredibly humble and faith-filled op-ed today.

We are grateful that Jesus has saved Jessica and is using her on her campus. Read her words and share them.

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/op-ed-why-i-am-a-leader-in-tcf-1.2802263#.UMfwIoWs323 "

From InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's facebook page.

This is a stunning testimony of a junior at Tufts University who serves on leadership with the InverVarsity chapter there, especially in light of challenges that face the operations of a Christian group on campus.  I am awed by it--by the Holy Spirit's work in her life, by her openness and boldness to share that work with her entire campus, and also by the writing itself that invites others to experience God's transformation.  Just read it!

I Will Wait for You

This poem is brilliant.  It's been sitting in my inbox since April--I emailed it to myself once I saw it.  And it's long past time to share this wonderful work of art--get it out of my inbox and into...somewhere where it's more than a link.

I Love You, but...

Dear Jesus,

I love you, but I really need to finish this large stack of grading!!  Please stop distracting me with your awesomeness.

Too much love,
Rachel