A Day for Protestant Jokes

Tags

95 Theses, Anglican, Anglo-Catholic, Asian American, Chinese, Congregation of Holy Cross, death, denomination, Diet of Worms, ecumenism, Fun, funny, Halloween, humor, John Calvin, joke, Luther, Lutheran, Martin Luther, Michael Servetus, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Protestant, Rachel Held Evans, Reformation Day, Thomas Cranmer, Wittenberg

As CaptainThin pointed out, today is Reformation Day and All Hallows’ Eve.

I think it’s a good day for Protestant jokes.  Here’s one that my dad heard in seminary:

There was an interdenominational Protestant gathering, and a fire started in the sanctuary. The Pentecostals got up and screamed: “Fire!”  The Baptists shouted: “Water!”  And the Presbyterians said: “Order.”

Martin Luther once said that if he farted in Wittenberg, they smell it in Rome.  Recently, excavators found Luther’s famed cloaca, the secret place where he did a ton of writing.  It was a stone toilet.  Could this possibly mean that the 95 Theses originated from 95 feces?

More conservative Christians seem to be scared off by Halloween as a pagan holiday. This year, though, it’s not the Protestants but the Polish Catholic bishops who are decrying Halloween as a pagan holiday.

I think we could use a bit more holy humour on All Hallows Eve, though, and so does Fr. Jim Martin.

In light of this, I have a few suggestions:

1. Nail the 95 theses on somebody’s door.  This seems to be a yearly ritual between Valparaiso University (the Lutherans) and the University of Notre Dame (Catholic, Congregation of Holy Cross).  This year, Nashotah House even had this done in-house.  I guess this is what happens when you’re Anglo-Catholic.  Note, though, that they use Rite I.  Smells like Cranmer.
2. Tell a Protestant joke.  You know, for example, how some Protestants like to remember the Diet of Worms by portraying themselves as totally depraved worms in a fit of utter humility? Here’s Happy Reformation Day to them from Pope Benedict XVI.
3. Go buy Rachel Held Evans’s book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  Why? you ask.  For the simple fact that it came out yesterday.
   It also brings to mind Nadia Bolz-Weber being portrayed as a comic book “pastrix” in a pic worthy of both Reformation Day and Halloween.

1. Dress up as a morbid Reformation martyr.  For example, somebody could do Michael Servetus.

In the spirit of Chinglicanism, I’ll leave it at 4 things.  “4,” after all, is the Chinese superstitious number for death.

And that’s funny only if your hermeneutic for both Reformation Day and All Hallows’ Eve is the resurrection.

Reformation Day: In joy and sorrow

Tags

Protestant

Today is Reformation Day—the day Lutherans (and other Protestants of varying types) mark the anniversary of All Saint’s Eve, 1547. On that day, according to popular legend, Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses outlining papal abuses to the church door in Wittenberg. The church door acted as a kind of bulletin board, and it was a notice that Luther wanted to hold debate or discussion on the topic. If that’s all that had happened, perhaps history would have played out differently. But, the legend continues, readers of the theses were so struck by the force of Luther’s complaints that they decided to share them with others. They went off to the nearest copy shop (ie, printing press) and made multiple, bootlegged copies. These subsequently made their way across Germany and other parts of Europe, bringing Luther’s complaints to an audience far larger than that of little backwoods Wittenberg.

It was the first act in the theological drama to come.

Reformation Day is for us a bitter-sweet remembrance. On the one hand, we celebrate the theological movement that took place under the care of people like Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. They called for a “re-formation,” that is to say, a “forming again” of the Church. They believed the Church had strayed from the teachings of the early Church, especially on the question of how we are saved. The Reformers championed (rightly, I think) God’s grace toward sinners, received through faith—something that had been obscured by popular teachings on indulgences and works. Luther cried “ad fontes”—“back to the sources!” Back to the Scriptures. And it wasn’t just a call to theologians; the average person should have the Scriptures opened to them; to that end, he translated the Bible into the common language of the people. In all these things—grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone—, the focus was ultimately on Christ. For Christ was (and remains) the giver of grace, the perfector of faith, and the very Word of God made flesh. Yes, through Christ alone. And so there’s plenty to be thankful for come Reformation Day.

And yet, while we celebrate the Reformation, we must also recognizing the division in the Church it brought about—division which exists to this day. Luther was excommunicated by the Roman Church. And to be fair, Luther could be a particularly vicious opponent; it’s not terribly surprising he was likewise met with fierce opposition. But even the more peaceful Melanchthon could not broker peace between the Evangelicals (for that is what the reformers called themselves—those devoted to the “Evangel” or “Gospel”) and supporters of the status quo. Despite Melanchthon’s contention that the Evangelical faith was well within the boundaries of historic, orthodox Christianity (a contention I obviously agree with), the Roman church disagreed. The Council of Trent drew the final dividing line: if you believed in salvation by faith alone, you were anathema. And it’s hard to have a discussion with someone who believes you’re anathema. (Though, no doubt, the Pope likewise found it difficult to hold discussion with those who called him Antichrist.)

Today is a day of mixed feelings: a matter for rejoicing as well as a matter for great sorrow. We rejoice over the doctrines rediscovered in the days of the Reformation. We sorrow over the divisions which rent the body of Christ in that time and continue to rend it today. Ours is gratitude tempered by the painful awareness of separation. The Church ought not be divided. And yet it is—or at least the Church visible is.

We earnestly thank God for the Reformation. But we do so with heavy hearts; we grieve its necessity. And we pray that the Desire of nations would at last come and bid our sad divisions cease—that He would make us one openly and visibly, just as spiritually the Church of Christ truly is one.

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us.

——————–

This post is published concurrently at Captain Thin.

A Poetic Meditation on Yesterday’s Lectionary Reading

Tags

Christ, Job, Poetry, silence

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know”

-Job

Will wonder still us or start us?

Should we be silent beset by things

Too wonderful to understand?

Then speech is impossible.

Words unraveled from tongues telling,

Oh, telling till telling is told,

Run threadlong back,

A fuse of fire seeking source,

The shape of the shaft momently unmade

In the making –

The making unmaking,

The matchlight of measureless love.

Every twitch a twitch upon the thread,

And every gig a trot on graves –

Yes, graves, but groaning for glory at doom.

What if speech is the deepest silence there is,

And stammering gloss the gargoyle crown

Of the Christword?

Link letter to letter and letter to spirit

Link letter to letter, these letterbones dance and sing.

Inexpressable expressed, pressed,

Crushed for transgression;

The life giving tree is tapped for the balm of his blood.

Two days I grant, but three cannot hold him,

This shout from the mouth of God

Is God

And the cosmos all reels ecstatic,

The Beloved has whispered her ear:

Let her hear;

Let her bear

Creation

Boldly,

Bodily,

Be still.

Review: Theology of the Body for Every Body, by Leah Perrault

Tags

Catholic, Catholic Church, Christianity Today, depression, Evangelical, God, Good Friday, mental illness, Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body

If you have spent any time with Catholics, or Evangelicals who have become frustrated enough with a quasi-gnostic perspective to look outside their tradition, you have probably encountered John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, whether through reading his work itself, being exposed to populist and less nuanced versions of it, or in magazines such as Christianity Today. Personally, I have encountered all sorts of reactions to it; I have seen it help revive the faith of some, and I have also encountered some who are frustrated by dumbed down versions of it that don’t account for the nuance of John Paul’s work. Of course, there are also those who mistakenly think that the Theology of the Body is solely about a controlling sexual ethics, and they accordingly reject it. Whatever your position, I hope that what I write in the following paragraphs will convince you that it would be a good idea to read a new book by a longtime friend of mine, Leah Perrault – whether you are Catholic or Protestant, married or single, frustrated by populism or elated and waking up to the realization of possessing a physical body.

In my opinion, Leah’s book, Theology of the Body for Every Body, starts exactly where the Theology of the Body should start, and does start for John Paul II. That is, if we only start talking about TOB when we talk about sexuality and marriage, it is I think a sure sign that we have missed what it is about, and have already fallen into a cultural dualism that has come to view romance in near materialist terms and conversely given up on material and bodies in many other spheres of life. What Leah does is defer the discussion of sexuality to talk about all the other ways that people in all walks of life might learn to appreciate the “bodied-ness” that God has given them. In doing this, she implicitly recognizes one of the key insights we should take from TOB; the problem in some of our churches is not so much that we need to change the way we talk about sex, but rather that we need to start talking about (and doing) everything else in ways that are more than thin. Out of this will come changes in the way we think about sexuality, but we may also realize that there are other things in the world – and very embodied things at that – that matter besides sexuality.

One of the most welcome implications of Leah’s book is the way it decenters Christian discourse that conceives of life as meaningless without marriage or sex.  There has been something of a crisis about this in Evangelical circles – what if those who save sex for marriage never in fact get married? (there are statistically three Evangelical women for every Evangelical man) – and thinkers in this area would do well to take a page from Leah’s discussion of John Paul II. She goes out of her way to offer examples of embodiment of people in all situations, not just marriage, and surely thinking about this is part of what we must do if we are to have a cogent understanding of Christianity that does not lean too heavily on marriage as the sole vehicle of meaning.

Another important thing about this book is that Leah does not think a Christianity informed by TOB will be a quick fix for the world. I must admit that, as someone who relates to God after the manner of St. John of the Cross, I sometimes worried that the book was at some points too optimistic (though conversely the book also challenged my own sinful proclivity toward cynicism), but by the end my fears were dispelled. In one of the most moving passages in the book, Leah describes her own Good-Friday reflection as she was going through a very difficult time in her life: “Jesus enters the tomb, and the wisdom of our tradition has us go there with him, every year, commemorating his suffering and death. God goes into the darkness and we can do nothing to change his circumstances. But we can go there with him and he with us. I thought of how supportive my family had been…They could not fix it, change it or take it away. They just surrounded me with care. So many times, I begged God to intervene, to make things go my way, and all of a sudden, on Good Friday, I was moved to tears by the God who simply and respectfully sits with us in darkness as well as light.”

Though I am largely Catholic in my theology, I grew up Evangelical and so speak with an Evangelical twang; on account of this, I am not in much of a position to give advice to my Catholic readers, but there is one caveat I want to make for Evangelicals, particularly of the emergent sort. Such emerging Evangelicals have played, and played loudly, the problems of Evangelical neo-gnosticism, and rightly so (cf. Parker’s Back by Flannery O’Conner). However, in disabusing themselves of gnosticism, Evangelicals, with the much chronicled scandal of their minds, do not have the deep liturgical and philosophical traditions of the Catholic church, which is the home of TOB. Thus, whereas Leah and John Paul II can reject gnosticism but also imagine a form of Christian embodiment different from secular materialism, I am not sure that emergent Evangelicals have the tradition necessary to give them the imaginative capacity for this. Let me put it this way: When I go into the Cathedral at Notre Dame U in South Bend, I am certainly called out of my gnostic proclivities – here is an entire building where every stone cries out to God – but there is a difference between this kind of embodiment and the materialism that a secular person might consider embodiment; in the former, heaven and earth meet, while in the latter, there is just earth. However, when I go into an emergent “pub church” or “coffee shop” church, I suppose I am embodied insofar as I am enjoying the material culture of a secular world.  However, I am not made uncomfortable by the fact that there must be something more than coffee shops and pubs – there is no yearning – and so while I may be very embodied, that embodiment might be too comfortable to be church, however commendable it might be as a social activity; the Church should pique in us a longing for embodiment of a holy kind, the kind that hungers for the Eucharist, and that experiences this as an expansion rather than a reduction of meaning. So, while Catholics and other churches with liturgical and philosophical traditions in some ways have built into them a safeguard against mere materialism, I would caution emerging type Evangelicals to be careful because they do not have this safeguard.

I would like to conclude with one of the quotes I most appreciate from Leah’s book, and a brief reflection on my own recent experience of embodiment. The quote is that, “if we take Theology of the Body seriously, then we have to shift our mindset away from issues and start to see, hear and love the people who are affected by them, just as we do when we are the ones facing hunger, fear or oppression.” Recently, I moved from the West side of Vancouver – one of the richest neighborhoods in Canada – to the North side of Winnipeg. We are not in the “rough area” proper, but we are close enough that, when I went to get a new prescription for my antidepressants, the clinic I went to was one that dealt largely with addictions – with helping some recover and turning away others looking for yet another prescription for the painkiller to which they are addicted. And I was struck by how glad I was to be there. Not because I was going to rush in and save these people, or because I romanticize their lives – I know their lives are often gritty and brutal and joyful in ways I do not yet understand. What I do know is that I was glad to be out of a community that prided itself in its issues and ideals but could not recognize themselves in the broken bodies lying on the street.  I will be the first to acknowledge that I am not good at loving my neighbor, but seeing them – and seeing them in the flesh – might not be a bad way to start.

He’s Got Wisdom in His Soul, He’s Got Whiskey in the Jar: Appreciating Malcolm Guite

Tags

Arts, C.S. Lewis, Gawain, Green Knight, Green Man, Imagination, Literature, Malcolm Guite, Music, Poetry, Rich Mullins, spirituality

In my second last post, I talked about the problem of imagination in Evangelical circles; in this post I want to talk about someone who is doing something to redress it, a modern English poet, priest, and scholar by the name of Malcolm Guite. Guite was brought to my attention about a month ago at a concert by Canadian singer/songwriter Steve Bell. At some point after the concert, I looked him up, and was duly impressed with what I found. He dares to write sonnets in the 21st Century. He has written a book on theology and imagination (which I need to order), and includes a discussion of Old English poetry. His work that I have thus far become most familiar with is his CD, “The Green Man.”

This CD has a lot of good things going for it, both from a literary and theological point of view. The title track is – at least I would argue – an oblique reference to Gawain’s green night interpreted as a synthesis of Christ and the personified fertility of nature (a little like Chesterton’s Thursday). Like Gawain’s Green Knight, this “green man” cannot be beaten no matter how careless his human foes are; the chorus states “If you cut me down, I’ll spring back green again.”

Guite’s reference to the green knight is typical of the rest of the album. He inhabits Biblical and literary phrases but  puts his own slight enough twist on them to ensure they don’t become preachy or cliched. Though he lacks the cultural and politico-religious fabric from which poets such as Donne and Herbert wove their work, he nonetheless attempts to follow in their footsteps. “New TV” is a brilliant satire of modern society (no matter where you plug it in, you won’t get any love from your new TV), while “Our Lady of the Highway” takes Marian devotion to Highway 61 – and includes a good chunk of quotation from the Magnificat. “Open Door” is reminiscent of something Rich Mullins might have written, an infinite riff on the Biblical image of Christ as the door to heaven. “Angels Unawares” discovers grace in the midst of humble earthy romance, and “Texas Farewell” includes some treats for C. S. Lewis fans (I’ll let you discover those for yourself).

It is encouraging to me that people such as Malcolm Guite manage to exist somehow in the modern world; it is encouraging to see someone daring to imagine things outside of both secular narrowness and its cloned Evangelical narrowness so often found in Christian singer/songwriters.  It is encouraging to find someone who measures time by liturgical seasons and sings about nature, whiskey, and God like some kind of Johnny Cash turned celtic. And it is in the hope of encouraging others that I  share his website.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Sandal

Tags

Evangelical, Evangelicalism

The scandal of the Evangelical sandal is that there is one.

http://www.ministrymarket.com/followthesonjohn812sandals-mens.aspx

The Future is Friendly

Tags

Poetry

With idols ground to dust,

And sad-branched trees all leaf-lost,

We would have hung our harps if we had any;

There are no more infants left to smash on rocks

Our enemies are infertile

Our enemies are us.

 

They have granted us a reasonable amount of time

To deal reasonably with the casualties;

Some love the dead,

Some love the dying,

Some love themselves.

There is a man I have seen in the rain;

I know not the list of his lust.

 

Tricks of atomic light

Play at freedom,

The sound of freedom flashing;

The modern saints have eaten fire,

And biolumescent halos moulder on their heads.

 

Oh, child of gender neutral being,

Can these bones live, can these bones dance?

If not, can we grind them

To fodder for feed?

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

 

For only pennies a day,

You too can change the world

And feel good about yourself;

Martyrdom is melodramatic, don’t you think?

Last year martyrdom was the new black,

But fashions change.

 

I look into your eyes and see emptiness,

But not what you imagine.

What if yours is the emptiness of a tomb?

What if your blindness is due to the dazzle of angels?

There was a time we knew no difference between “mess” and “mass,”

And silent assent may be pregnant with glory;

No crying he makes, Herculean Christ,

But power resides in his heel.

Runes are in hands, his feet, his sides,

Cinquefoil seals of doom that is hope.

 

But why bother to read them?

That language is dead;

Who gives a damn for the dead?

You are not like to meet them

Anytime soon.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Imagination

Tags

Bible, Christ, Christian, Evangelical, God, Holy Spirit, Imagination, John Donne, Milton, Scandal, Tradition

One of the things that has most annoyed me about Evangelical culture is the lack of imagination. I think part of this has to do with the fact that we don’t know how to read the Bible in an imaginative way. Please don’t think that in making this criticism I am in any way suggesting that we read the Bible as merely an inspiring piece of art over against the church’s claim that it is deadly serious in speaking the truth about matters of eternal life and death.  It is certainly the latter.  But when I think of the Christian authors who have most inspired me, their imaginative treatment of the Bible, though often appreciated by Evangelicals, is something I would argue the latter do not have the capacity to replicate.

What I mean by this is that poets like Donne and Herbert, or the Old English poets, or Milton, seem to tap into what I would call a Biblical/Christian atmosphere. If you try to pin down by Biblical chapter and verse the metaphysical conceits of Donne or the extrapolation of the Genesis story by Milton, you can’t; much as most Christians believe in something like Milton’s conception of the fall, the devil, etc., there is no scripture they can point to to back it up in the strictest literal sense.  The serpent of Eden is only identified as the devil by later Christian (and possibly Jewish) tradition. And if we pared Donne’s poems down to only things that could be found in the Biblical text as understood by a modern Evangelical, they would be impoverished indeed. Though we recognize these texts as deeply Christian, they are not “biblical” in the modern Evangelical sense, but rather their roots are in a whole imaginative superstructure built via tradition atop the basis of Scripture. Like the best of Cathedrals, it took centuries of medieval trial and error (and councils) to build, and though we can’t always see immediately how the lines trace back to God’s word, our loss of vision does not make the superstructure less scriptural.  If you put yeast in grape juice and let it brew, it will become something different and better, even though it is no less the original grape juice with which you started.  I suggest that Christian tradition, in its best instances, is exactly this – scripture left to ferment in the wineskin of the church inspired by the active agent of the Holy Spirit. Yes, if a fly gets in the wine it can become vinegar, and even so can heterodoxy and sin produce sour batches of tradition – Christ on the cross is made to taste vinegar. But when it goes right, it goes very right, and produces exactly the sort of the thing that Miltons and Donnes and Herberts of the past could draw on, and exactly the sort of thing Evangelical churches have tossed out as “superfluous additions” to Scripture understood in the narrowest sense possible.

Lest my critique here should sound like a typical romantic idolatry of imagination, I do want to clarify that the imagination and imaginative works are not pretty toys we can bring out at parties, and then put away when we are done with them. No, if we dare imagine, we will be captured – whether by something good, or by something bad, for the imagination can engage in and promote both, as can tradition. But I feel like Evangelicals, seeing the negative side of tradition (that is, the imagination of the church), have gotten rid of it entirely.  It is a little like reading Proverbs and presuming that because there are some figures of temptresses, we should eschew women altogether – thereby missing the central figure of the text, Woman Wisdom.

But what can be done, and who can do it? I will post more concerning this in some following posts, but one thing I do think necessary is for Evangelicals to quit pretending that faith is a respectable and reasonable (by 21st C standards) business. I have seen many Christians attempting to defend Christianity by betraying their sisters and brothers in Christ from the past – and betrayal of Christ’s body is the betrayal of Christ. Yes, they will say, those awkward, ignorant, backward Christians in the past were entirely stupid, but we Evangelicals are eminently reasonable and easy to get along with – we will make good neighbors in your middle class suburbs (but don’t expect us to cross the street for you if you get beat up). Please notice I am not here saying that modern Christians should not own up to the sins and errors committed by Christians in the past – the place to do this is on our knees weeping before God in repentance.  What I am saying is that more often than not, our apologetics become a means of dissociating ourselves from those “weirdos over there, a couple of centuries back.” Christ bears the sins of the church on the cross, and as part of his body these sins are ours to bear as well. One of the best places to learn to love our enemies is the church, for on more than many occasions we will find ourselves called to love those we pray with and hate.

I suppose what I am getting at here is that addressing the scandal of the Evangelical imagination will be more than a mere shift in “worldview” or an attempt to be sensitive and emergent. What it will require is the ability to stand beside the historical church and say that we are one with them, for better or for worse, in poverty or plenty, in sickness or in health. To do this is to be the bride of Christ, and it makes sense that in neglecting this commitment we have lost the rich and fruitful imagination – the imagination of the Song of Songs – that was once part of our marriage.

Does the Church make it hard to be a man?

Tags

Chelsea Batten, christian masculinity, Converge Magazine, masculinity

Some of you may recall an article on Christian masculinity that I wrote for Converge some months back. Well, Converge published another article on the subject for its September/October issues that takes a slightly different approach. It’s called “Stud service: How the Church makes it hard to be a man” and is written by Chelsea Batten.

While Batten’s essay raises some important questions (and for that I am grateful), I can’t help but wonder about some of the conclusions she draws in the essay. Batten—referencing Douglas Wilson—writes that women want men to assume more overt, unapologetic leadership in the Church, pushing back against their own attempts. That may well be the case—though it’s certainly worth pointing out that woman have often taken on leadership over and against their husbands, for better (Esther against Xerxes) and worse (Jezebel over Ahab). I assume this idea for men to rule over women comes out of Genesis 3:16 (“Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you”), though the essay itself never references it.

At any event, Batten writes, women want men to take on more leadership and push back against the feminization of the Church. I certainly agree with her that there’s a distinct lack of strong male Christians in the Church today. But it’s what she says after this that gives me pause: “men need to be allowed a more liberal learning curve, as they face their fear of failure and begin to practice leading.”

So let’s summarize: many (most?) Christian men (as they currently stand) are too immature to effectively lead. But we want them to lead anyway—to let them “practice?” That seems to be asking for trouble.

I appreciate what the author is trying to do: encourage the Church to “develop men with confidence, direction, and mastery.” The Church certainly does need stronger males willing to lead. But I’m afraid that Batten might be doing things the wrong way around: she seems to want men to take up the reigns of leadership now, and then let them become better leaders over “a more liberal learning curve.” But surely we should inculcate leadership ability into people before letting them lead. Surely the bare fact that they are male is not, in and of itself, the only requirement necessary for leadership. Surely we should insist on their being wise before letting them make decisions over practical and spiritual matters. (And surely, only some men will ever demonstrate the skills necessary for leadership; not all men are called to be leaders of the Church).

At any rate, the fact of the matter is, most Christian men today are neither wise nor intellectually clear enough in their theology to effectively lead the Church (or their families or whatever else anyone could possibly want them to lead). I’m not saying that’s a good thing: I’m just saying it’s true.

It’s helpful to note here, I think, that the woman’s desire for a husband who will rule over her is spoken of by God in the context of a curse. The desire for a husband who rules over her is a consequence for Eve’s sin, just as the difficulty accompanying work was a consequence of Adam’s. That doesn’t mean, of course, that work itself is sinful just because it’s hard; nor does it mean that male leadership is wrong just because a woman desires “to be ruled over.” But it does remind us that who a woman chooses “to rule over her” is an important concern: Eve allowed herself to be tempted by the snake in the garden, to allow it rather than God to rule over her. Women seeking male leadership today should similarly be concerned with choosing God-pleasing leaders—who will lead “as Christ loved the Church”—rather than those who would draw attention away from God through their own malice (or foolishness).

So what kind of male leadership is Batten suggesting? What “type” of man does God call Christians to be? You can read my Converge article on that subject elsewhere, but here we’re discussing Batten’s vision. Her idea? An “evangelical James Bond.”

But I have to ask the question: maybe the desire for an “evangelical James Bond” is itself a working out of the curse in Genesis 3:16? It seems on the face of it little different than the cliché of the “handsome-ne’er-do-well guy out misbehaving” who is saved through the Christian girl’s intervention—a trope explicitly rejected a few paragraphs later in the article. But isn’t the desire for a Christian James Bond—devout yet dashing and dangerous—itself just a recycling of the Christianized bad boy?¹

If we want to raise up solid Christian men, we need to ensure that they approach faith seriously—and the best way of doing that is to ensure they’ve spending time in the Word. Able leadership arises from wisdom and knowledge. Yes, it’s important that men be confident. But they first have to have something to be confident about in order for their confidence to be a good thing.

Batten suggests that one of the problems keeping men from taking on leadership is “the fear of failure.”  And yet, Batten notes, “most of the resources aimed toward male godliness are couched in the language of telling them how far they fall short. If I were a man, I’d have checked out long ago. It’s not surprising that many have.”

While I understand what Batten is saying, I have to disagree, at least in part. If Christian men are going to be able leaders in their churches, families, and communities, they need to understand this one thing: that they are failures. They need to understand that they are sinners. But Batten is right to say this shouldn’t be the only thing they are taught. Here’s why: This sort of teaching is Law-driven. Now, I’m not saying the Law isn’t good. It is. It’s intended to show us in a mirror our sins. And they are many.

But unfortunately, too many resources on Christian masculinity (and too many sermons in wider Christianity in general, for that matter) are focused solely on the Law. But Christian teaching was never meant to stop at the Law; Christians are to be led on to the Gospel. Yes, Christian men are unworthy to lead; they are sinners. But the Good News of the Gospel is forgiveness. It is mercy. It is the knowledge that God’s grace comes to us despite our deficiencies—in fact, because of our sinfulness. The Gospel tells us that we do not have to rely on our own, sinful selves; Christ Himself has accomplished our salvation. The reason any man called to be leader can, in fact, lead is because he becomes like Christ—because Christ works though him. God’s strength is found in man’s weakness. But you can’t appreciate that unless you first realize you are weak. [See my Converge article for more on this.]

I do want to point out here that Batten says some very good things, especially on the subject of lust and sexuality. She’s right in noting that the Church too often makes men “feel embarrassed at best, and guilty at worst, for having a sex drive at all.” “Until, of course,” she continues, “they’re married.” Then they’re expected to have it all together. And whether you’re a guy or a girl, expecting to go from 0 to 100 mph in six seconds is pretty unlikely. The goal shouldn’t be suppressing sexuality, but rather (as Batten rightly notes) channeling that sexuality in healthy ways. To that end she tells an insightful story about a 32 year old single man who doesn’t pretend sexual desire isn’t in him; he instead actively uses it to learn restraint—to grow in godliness, not by pretending the temptation isn’t there but by struggling with it. And this self-mastery creates in him confident, competent leadership qualities.

Despite these good things, I fear that Batten’s article in the end feeds more into the macho-Christianity movement so prevalent in evangelical discourse than it challenges it. “I like to daydream about a world,” Batten writes, “where the evangelical church is known for the manliness of the men it produces.” But this idea—this desire to be recognized by the world as a-man-among-men—has been the dominant voice in Evangelicalism on what it means to be a Christian man for well over a hundred years. If it’s not working, maybe we need to look at a different model—one that focuses more on the men’s ability to lead wisely and faithfully rather than on James Bond-esque confidence.

——————–

1 As an aside, I think the author does well to highlight the unhealthy Christian-female seeking to convert non-Christian-male relationship model some women take—but not because it puts women in the “leadership” seat. My greater concern is that it puts the woman’s faith also in danger. There’s a very good reason that the Bible warns against being “unequally yoked” in any situation. It’s especially relevant when considering a spouse. I have no statistics on this, but allow me to speak anecdotally for a moment: most Christian-girl/non-Christian-guy relationships I’ve seen have ended with the girl’s faith suffering (or disappearing), not with a spontaneous conversion by the man.  [If anyone does have statistics on this sort of thing, I’d love to hear about it.]

Thanksgiving: On Being Thankful That I Am Not Like That Blogger Over There (I Post Twice a Week…)

Tags

Book of Common Prayer, C.S. Lewis, Canada, God, Holiday, Israelites, mental illness, Pharisee, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not part of the liturgical calendar, but giving thanks is certainly part of Christianity, and so I think it is not unfitting to put up some thoughts concerning it here (Note for my American friends: it is Thanksgiving in Canada). There are any number of texts I could have chosen for this, whether Biblical or extra-Biblical; I have chosen two, one that helps me convey my discomfort with Thanksgiving as a holiday, and one that I find challenging lest I should let myself off too easily.

The first is a familiar enough passage from Luke 18, which I quote from  Douay-Rheims because I am a quirky medievalist and because I like underdog translations:

⁹ And to some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised others, he spoke also this parable: ¹⁰ Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. ¹¹ The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. ¹² I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. ¹³ And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O god, be merciful to me a sinner.¹⁴ I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather that the other: because every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted.

Only one of these men give thanks to God, and the reason I am often skeptical about the amount of thanks actually given at Thanksgiving is because much of what I hear sounds a lot like the thanks of the Pharisee here. We express our thanks, yes, but it is a mediocre comfortable middle-class kind of thanks, designed more to remind ourselves that we are not like those (insert pejorative word) over there. We are not radically thankful in the most literal sense, by which I mean thankful not only for the very root of our physical being but also for the root of Jesse that is the root of our salvation.

But giving hypocritical thanks is one thing, and grumbling is another, though it is equally serious. Over and over again, Christians conceive of themselves as the people of Israel, wandering through the desert and being faced with the temptation of hardening their hearts. We sing of this when we sing Psalm 95, the Venite, as part of our liturgical worship.  The book of Hebrews cautions us not to let our hearts grow hard as did those of God’s people in the desert. The tie-in to thankfulness here is that by and large what hardens the hearts of the Israelites in the desert is grumbling, against God, against God’s ordering of the world, and against the leaders he has chosen. From firsthand experience, I can say that those like me who are very uncomfortable with the “Pharisee’s prayer” kind of thanks often fall heedlessly into a state of grumbling which, as the aforementioned passages show, is a serious spiritual malady indeed.

But what can we do? How can we open our eyes to God’s miracles when we are the sort of people who, like C. S. Lewis’s Orual, insist on grumbling against a world we refuse to really see? The full answer is of course far more complex than I am going to deal with here, but I would like to share something that I think helps me as I practice it.

When praying liturgy, everyone has a particular phrase that catches in their throat – something that convicts them, something that seems unfair to them, or something that seems untrue – it is exactly what we might expect when sinners encounter the offense of the Gospel, and it is I imagine only Saints in their perfection who can pray thus without choking on a word or two; they no longer need such purgatorial effects in their liturgy. I suppose for many modern people the problem comes when sin is mentioned, or Christian exclusivity, or historical claims of the Gospels etc.  These I am fine with, but what always catches for me is the phrase in the Book of Common Prayer’s “General Thanksgiving”: “We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.” It is hard to say this when one suffers from ongoing depression and OCD.  It is even harder to say this when one has watched all kinds of tragedies – from depression, to fatal car accidents, to suicide – ravage the people you love. And when I think that mine is the experienced pain of only one person out of many who now live and have lived, it becomes impossible to say this – or nearly impossible, but for one thing.

This one thing begins with another word of Thanksgiving. The scripture is read, and the reader concludes: “This is the word of the Lord” – we respond with, “Thanks be to God.” The thanks here is thanks for the word of God in which the Word of God, Christ, is hidden.  And in this word, we are taught to have faith in God and enact thanks even when we discover that our creation, preservation, and blessing might lead us and those we love to a cross. We can give thanks, not because the crosses we see are beautiful, but because the resurrection we expect afterward is good, even if we don’t always see it now. For some, faith the size of a mustard seed is sufficient to move mountains; thank God it is also sufficient to move the hardness of grumbling hearts.