Archive - Culture RSS Feed

Integration

December 27, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 4 Comments

Blogsphere confessional: I hate New Year’s Resolutions. Mostly, this is because I’m full of myself. I tell myself that when I see something that needs to change, I just do it. Why wait for a new year to begin what I should have already started doing?

But I now repent in sackcloth and ashes.

Basically, what this tells you about me is that I don’t like something until I own it. Then it becomes the greatest thing ever. At least, until I leave it behind again.

(Note to self: talk to therapist about God complex: things become good by my involvement with and blessing of them, as I see the world.)

So to what do I now find myself needing to commit as the new year approaches? A more integrated life. By this I mean that I can no longer sideline everything else other than working and taking care of the kids.

A few weeks ago I had a flare up of a sometimes-recurring lower back pain. Put simply, this is “sitting on my butt” disease. Sit too long in the car. Sit too long in front of the computer. Your back ends up doing too much of the work, your other muscles don’t support you as they should. The lower back spasms. And you end up wasting a day of your life at the doctor and shuffling around at about the speed of a three-toed sloth.

This was a wake-up call to me: the life that I am given to live on this earth is not just a life of work and family–as important as those things are; it’s not just about mind and community. It is also an embodied life. And more…

So I return to the great command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and am reminded that applying this in my little world means adding some things that I have allowed to fall to the side.

I cannot love God with my mind if I have so neglected my body that it will not allow me the solace to sit and read and write.

Of course, once I start thinking about the holistic calling to love God, other areas of neglect surface soon enough as well.

And so, back to my original confession: I have a few days of vacation here before the New Year. Days in which to not only fret about the syllabus that has yet to be written for next Wednesday’s class, but also to take inventory of a life that does not fully lean God-ward as I would have it.

With a new year, a new quarter, and a newly awakened awareness, I think of restructuring my days and my week so that the care I take of my life might show in action the fullness of integration that I confess to need in theory.

So bring on the new year’s resolutions. And maybe even the actions that make good on them.

On Separating Church and State

December 18, 2011 in Church, Culture with 19 Comments

For all the ways that our country has moved toward separating church and state, one of the remaining points at which the two are bound is marriage.

Churches marry people in the name of the state. They are therefore bound to marry only those whom the state approves to be married.

This, of course, has some ramifications for the question of homosexual marriage (do ministers have to marry gay couples if their states allow it? must they not if their states forbid it?). But its ramifications reach further. For example, it leaves the church without a way to marry illegal immigrants.

Image: Sharron Goodyear / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I had a student whose ministry was in the Latino/a community. This entails ministering among undocumented residents.

So what do you do when a couple starts dating and wants to get married?

The state says they can’t. They don’t have the documents to get a marriage license. Must this couple choose to either not get married and thus remain apart or to give up on their conviction that joining of themselves in every way, including sexually, is to be reserved for marriage?

We have lived so long with pastors saying, “.. and through the power vested in me by the State of _____…” that we don’t even realize how weird that is.

Can you imagine Jesus performing a wedding and saying, “through the power invested in me by Caesar Augustus and his Governor Pontius Pilate…”?

My point is not to say that pastors should definitely marry people in either of the two situations above, my point is that the church should be free to make its decision in the sight of God irrespective of the rites one is allowed to perform in the sight of Uncle Sam.

The church can do one of three things here. It can continue to serve as the state’s emissary and thereby bind itself to marry only within the confines of secular law rather than the conscience of its people.

It can keep doing it, but attempt to raise up a change in state law so that civil ceremonies are for the state’s purposes and church weddings are for God’s purposes. (This is the way it worked in Holland when my grandparents got married: one set of paperwork and vows for the state, the other in the church.)

Or, pastors could just stop marrying people on the state’s behalf. Really. You can do this. Tell the couple that you maintain your religious freedom, in part, by not allowing the state to dictate whom you can and cannot join. The state is free to agree or disagree as it will, and Christian people are free, and encouraged, to join that debate as a state issue. But you, as a pastor, are free to perform a religious wedding ceremony that carries no civil approval or disapproval with it.

We don’t have to wait for the state(s) to separate itself from our work as the people of the church. We can say, “No, thank you” to the state’s offer to allow us to function as its proxy.

We can put asunder what the state has strangely joined.

Houston Conference

December 17, 2011 in Church, Culture with 2 Comments

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a reminder. For anyone in or around Houston, I will be speaking at the Christians for Biblical Equality conference in April:

My talk, “Walking by the Light of New Creation’s Dawn,” will be working out the importance of finding our place as participants in the New Creation when dealing with issues of gender in the church.

You can register here.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

December 16, 2011 in Book Reviews, Culture with 2 Comments

“June Star said her hair was naturally curly.”

Hear this, and all the other moments of glory and wonder that are, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” read by Flannery O’Connor herself.

Here’s a recording made apparently shortly before her death:

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Joy

December 11, 2011 in Church, Culture with 0 Comments

For those of you all up into joy today for advent, here’s the Kirk family’s favorite joy song nowadays:

Everyman

December 3, 2011 in Brew, Culture, Food, Humor, Spirituality & Prayer with 11 Comments

Since my somewhat iconoclastic Trinity post from Thursday ruffled a feather or two, I figured that I would move into a post that has a little something for everyone today.

You see, at heart I want everyone to have something to grab onto that really works for them. And so, to celebrate this everyman spirit that I hope will define Storied Theology, here is a celebration of “something for everyone.”

First, for those of you with a sweet tooth, or who are theologically committed to the vision of a land flowing with honey, we have a celebration of mead:

Land Flowing with Milk and Honey Mead

But I realize that on the other side of the spectrum, many of you are simply not going to be happy with anything you can see through. In the slightest. But this doesn’t mean that your life is filled with bitterness, no matter how dark things might be. So for you, a celebration of chocolate oatmeal stout:

Man of the Cloth Choc-Oat-Chip Stout

Still others of you celebrate neither honey nor chocolate but rather the natural fruits of the earth. And so, with all its citrus overtones and the copper color of that is Americana, behold the celebration of the American Pale Ale:

Nipples of Mary Pale Ale

But I understand that still others need to remember that God is at the center of all things. In honor of the life devoted to God, we remember how our brethren in the abbey devoted themselves to cultivating the good gifts of the earth. And so, the Belgian Abbey style dopple red:

Stigmata Abbey Red

Bitterness and gall defines not a few of my loyal readers. And it would be remiss of me not to celebrate your place in the body as well. Wife put a heart on top to underscore that the heart is as bitter as the IPA:

Bitternes and Gall IPA

Finally, there are those of you whose high Christology is only going to be honored by a beer named after the eternal Logos himself. And so, the beer whose name we might imagine is so derived. Behold the Lager!

Not-So-Eternal Logos Lager

The point, as I hope you have noticed by now, is that at heart my desire is that we all find something to celebrate together. I realize that the body had many members, and all do not offer the same things, nor do all receive the same things. And so, a celebration of a little something for everyone. Let’s not bicker and argue.

But just in case these creations of mine have left you still wanting more, I have one other creation lying around the house that we can all enjoy, whatever we might drink alongside of it.

Behold the… Lobster?

November 23, 2011 in Culture with 0 Comments

Last night Laura and I engaged in a moment of post-SBL de-tox by watching Brooklyn Lobster. A film about a lobster company that is on the verge of going under is a film about family, raw reality, and forgiveness.

The father figure in the film, Frank Giorgio, is depicted as rather lobster-like himself in a couple of scenes. In one, he is sitting in his car at a stoplight, and the red light makes him as red as any lobster in the film.

Frank is attempting, through various shenanigans, to save his business. And he is refusing the help of everyone around him–many of whom actually offer viable ideas for keeping the business afloat.

The turning point in the movie comes when Frank confronts a wayward lobster on the floor of his shop. As the scene begins, we get the God’s eye view of the escapee, which has its claws out a curiously right angles from his body. Cruciform lobster, anyone?

When Frank goes to apprehend the culprit, it pinches him. Frank shrinks back, but then as he grabs the lobster to put it back in the tank he says, “It’s o.k. I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Frank needed to forgive; most of all, I think, he needed to forgive himself.

Not everything becomes perfect at this moment, but the needful transformation has begun.

Frank is the lobster. And the lobster is forgiven.

Love & Labor

November 3, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture, Spirituality & Prayer with 5 Comments

The first house that Laura and I bought needed a lot of cosmetic love.

The first day we owned it I pulled out the avocado green dishwasher with a couple buddies. And, yes, the old shut-offs were leaky so water was soon cascading into the basement. Within a couple of months, though, we had laid the kitchen tile, painted the cabinets, replaced the counter tops, changed the sink fixture, moved in the new appliances–and voila! The kitchen was beautiful (and all decked out to the Night Kitchen theme).

With saws and nails and hammers in hand, we loved on the dining room by tacking up wainscoting and chair rail, painting with a silver linen look, and changing out the light fixture.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I love that first house, not because it was an awesome house, but because we poured our labor into it.

Last weekend, I finally made good on a vision for planting some flowery vines and other things in front of our house here in San Francisco. It wasn’t much, but it makes a huge difference in how I see the house. And I’m proud of the my house here for perhaps the first time. I love the way those changes enhance the way it looks.

It wasn’t love that made me labor, it was labor that made me love.

John Locke proposed that mixing your labor with the soil was how property rights developed. I don’t know about his theories of government or his history, but I know the feeling he’s talking about. When you mix your labor with something, you feel like it’s yours.

The same goes for our relationships.

Once upon a time, the main pre-marriage counseling that my circle was into was a set of bootlegged Tim Keller sermons. He was talking at one point about how we treat children differently from our spouses: “By the time that child is 18 years old, even if he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, you love him. Why? Because you’ve spent the past 18 years pouring yourself into him.” Conversely, in marriage, we hope to find our fulfillment by having our own needs met by the other rather than discovering love in pouring our life into our spouse.

And there’s the trick. Too often in our relationships we look for someone, or something in the case of organizations, that are worth loving, and then envision ourselves laboring there–at least for as long as the initial infatuation lasts.

But perhaps that is only a quick fix. Perhaps real love doesn’t work that way. Perhaps real love, be it of an individual or a community, is not about responding to love with labor, but cultivating love through our labors. Perhaps the dynamic that more truly satisfies, the place where more profound love, develops, is not in the discovery of the lovely, but in the cultivation of love through our giving ourselves to our beloved.

Can we ever love a church if we ask it to meet our needs? Or will we only love it if we give ourselves to it? Can we ever love a city if we only use its resources to meet our expectations? Or will we only love if we pour out our lives in making it better?

Mix a little labor. See what happens.

Dark Side of Chocolate (et al)

October 30, 2011 in Culture, Food with 5 Comments

It’s Halloween season. In my world this translates into candy season. Actually, I’m not a huge candy guy. I pretty much have my needs met in this department by Twizzlers for movie-watching, and chocolate to accompany the right red wine, port, or stout beer.

Chocolate. There’s the rub.

In honor of our great day to honor sweetness and gluttony, we hosted a viewing of The Dark Side of Chocolate.

The film documents the prevalence, and even the process, of enslaving children to work in the cacao plantations of the Ivory Coast. A child can be procured for less than 250 Euros ($350 Dollars U.S.). Delivered.

Of course, children smuggled in from the surrounding countries are not paid. Or educated. Or taught the local language.

Ivory Coast produces over 1/3 of the worlds cocoa. And it is widely understood that their practices of child slavery are not unique.

Child slaves are the labor force that provides you withe very Snickers, Hersheys Bar, Mars Bar, Kraft Bakers chocolate, and brownie mix we use to give ourselves our chocolate fix.

Here’s the deal: the U.N. and Interpol know, they create agreements, and at times even work to enforce bans on child slavery.

The corporations who produce chocolate know. But they simply do not care. Their job is not to bring morally upright products to market. Their job is to make money.

There is only one way to make the corporations care: start buying only fairly traded, slave-free chocolate. How can you do this?

  • When you have a choice, only buy fair trade.
  • If your grocery store does not offer fair trade options, ask the manager for it and then leave the store without purchasing chocolate.
  • When you store gets it, buy it.

This simple practice is more likely to make a difference in the trafficking of children than writing letters to congress, picketing in front of the U.N. or sending $25 to an anti-slavery organization.

Slave owners will keep using slaves, and corporations will continue to profit off of the cheap labor they provide, until the world-wide market tells them that we will not fund their slave plantations.

A couple of years ago, Laura read Julie Clawson’s Everyday Justice.

Since then, we have made a commitment to purchase only fairly traded coffee, chocolate, and bananas. This means that we eat a lot fewer bananas (fair trade is hard to find, and expensive) and less chocolate (ditto). But by expressing our need for fair trade to the manager of our local market, we also have been able to cultivate a regular supplier: there is always fair trade chocolate at the store, now, and there are regularly fairly traded bananas as well.

When I see huge global issues like child slavery, I often feel helpless. I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, and the ways that the would-be enforcers of law are complicit in the evils.

But with child slavery for the foods we want to eat every day there is something we can do. And I don’t just mean that we can avoid the stuff produced by slaves while the rest of the world profits from it and consumes it. I mean that a growing wave of people who refuse to eat the products of child slavery will make a sufficient dent in corporate earnings to change the slave culture of the chocolate, coffee, and banana industries.

Why not sit down with the family tonight over dinner and talk it through? Do you think that you, your spouse, and your kids would be willing to eat fewer bananas, drink a bit less coffee, eat less chocolate, so that your dollars will be funneled to fairly paid workers rather than slave-holding plantation owners?

If you were this global neighbor of yours, what would you want done unto you?

Homosexuality: Identity and Scripts

October 19, 2011 in Book Reviews, Culture with 29 Comments

I’d like your help.

I’m involved in some discussions about homosexuality in the church, and we’re using Mark Yarhouse’s book, Homosexuality and the Christian as our jumping-off point. There are two ideas he puts forward that I would love some broader feedback on.

First, Yarhouse issues a word of caution about quickly embracing the idea and language of gay identity.

Instead, he suggests we think about a three-tiered understanding (probably more like three points on a spectrum) of a person’s sexual predilections: (1) attraction; (2) orientation; and (3) identity.

The difference between 1 and 2 might be persistence over time or strength / prevalence of a given way of being attracted.

The third, “identity,” is something that has literally only become possible over the past century or so. To claim an identity based on sexuality is a relatively modern invention. People before wouldn’t have said, “I’m straight” or “I’m heterosexual” or “I’m homosexual.” Each is a sociological label that tends to carry with it a set of expectations of not only attractions but also practices.

And, since such an identifying label defines “who we are,” those attractions and practices tend to become normative. Living an integrated, healthy life is largely a matter of knowing who we are and acting in step with that.

Yarhouse suggests that avoiding the language of identity is important for giving people space to process how they will respond to attractions, and whether or not they will be in any sense defined or bound by them. Thus, someone might choose to say, “I am a Christian, and I am a Christian who is attracted to other men.”

This point dovetails nicely, it seems to me, with what Jenell Williams Paris wrote about in The End of Sexual Identity. We might do well to resist the notion that our sexuality defines who we are.

Do you think that such a separation is helpful?

The second place I’d like more discussion is on the idea of “scripts.” First, as we talk about scripts, it is important that we not look at these pejoratively. Each of us has an understanding of what it means to act out a part we have been given.

As a professor, I have a certain sense of what it means to faithfully teach or write or get mired in committee work that I perform based on my understanding of what script comes along with the role I’ve been assigned. Similarly, my understandings of what I do because I am husband or father.

Social setting and experience and myriad other factors come together to provide us with scripts. It’s part of life.

What Yarhouse contends in the book is that there is a powerful and compelling script for acting out the role of homosexuality on offer from the gay community, but that there is no compelling alternative coming from the Christian world–and this is a huge problem that we need to address.

Here is how Yarhouse sees the gay script (p. 49):

  • same-sex attraction signals something natural (even God-given)
  • same-sex attractions are the way you really are
  • these attractions are at the core of who you are as a person
  • same-sex behavior is an extension of that core
  • self-actualization in such behavior is crucial for your fulfillment

In other words, the script communicates quite strongly that sexuality is at the core of our identity, and that living in accordance with, and in expression of, that sexual desire is how we live healthfully.

In contrast, Yarhouse outlines what a traditionalist Christian script might look like for someone experiencing sexual attraction (p. 51):

  • same-sex attraction is but one of many distortions of nature that we all experience as part of life that is not the way it is supposed to be
  • [same-sex] attractions are not the defining element of your identity
  • you can choose to integrate same-sex attraction into a gay identity…
  • … or, you can center your identity around other aspects of your experience
  • the most compelling aspect of personhood for the Christian is one’s identity in Christ

I’m curious what you think.

Have we as Christians, both heterosexual and homosexual, bought in too much to the idea that our sexuality is at the core of our identity as persons? Do we all need to put sex on more of a back burner when it comes to who we truly are?

Also, is there a compelling, alternative Christian script–perhaps one that sits less like Yarhouse’s, as a counter-point to the homosexual script, that we should be promoting for everyone alike or for those who experience homosexual attraction in particular?

Page 2 of 13«12345»10...Last »