True Life: I'm a single Christian Female (Part III)

Awhile back I wrote a blog about the movie Jerry Macguire. In it I criticized Renee Zellwegger's character for her line, "You had me at hello". She seemed to be settling for Jerry's return without seeing what he had to say first. I still think that post was an important look into gender dynamics in the church. Yet, as I watched Jerry Macguire on TV again this afternoon I think we need to take a look at that particular scene again.

First of all, the thing I didn't remember on my last exposition is that Jerry actually has a whole heart-touching monologue before she responds with, "You had me at hello". He walks in to the room, looks around and can't find her. To the aghast gaggle of women he says, "I am looking for my wife" and when he finally sees her he explains how the most exciting day of his career wasn't complete without she who completes him. Thus she knew what he was there for before she said her famous line. The more I think about it the more it seems that this scene fits better into an exposition on the biblical relationship between man and woman in marriage than it does in terms of gender in the church.

Lately, I have been listening to John Piper sermons online. Surprising statement coming from me, I know. But it has been helpful for me to investigate complementarian gender roles from the heart of a pastor and not the thesis of a book. It has been provoking for me to think about the importance of living out a marriage that is based in submission and headship for the simple reason that it demonstrates the profundity of Christ's relational love for the church. I am struck by the notion that there really is something at stake if we don’t commit to this model. One of the interesting applications that John Piper gives for male headship in marriage is the need to keep relationships with wife and children from allowing sin and brokenness to pervade the walls as the sun sets on their anger (Ephesians 4:26). Piper urges men to take Christ-like initiative in seeking reconciliation in the family, being the first to apologize even if the majority of wrong was committed by the other person.

I find myself standing in wonder at the type of love that would fuel this type of Christ honoring relationship. It’s the kind of love that requires such an intimacy of mind, body and spirit that two really do become one flesh. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). It’s the type of love that binds two hearts together, the kind of love that can only exist if it starts with a gospel based knowledge that “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

If we can go back to Jerry Macguire for a second we will see the separation that had prompted Jerry’s return in the first place. In the scene where they decide to take a break Dorothy finds the strength to confront the growing distance in their relationship and says that she had previously “was on some wild ride” where she thought that she had “enough love for the both of [them]”. But she didn’t want to “go the next 10 years just being polite” because she couldn’t live without truly being loved. Jerry sarcastically asks what else she could possibly want from him, his soul perhaps. Dorothy gives the profound response of saying yes that she does want his soul because she deserves to be loved like that. She deserves to be loved with the kind of life-changing love that makes two people become one. It's obvious in the film that Jerry's character can't handle this type of love as they both reflect on Jerry’s problems with intimacy. In an earlier video clip made for Jerry’s bachelor party, friends and ex-lovers reflect the curse that plagues Jerry’s character, that he is “great at relationships and bad at intimacy”.

The reason that Jerry’s return is so touching is that he comes from a place of fearing intimacy to tell his wife that she “completes him” as a person. And while we may want chuckle at the women whose hearts flutter with this Chick Flick line, I think we should avoid that temptation and hold onto this one. Mostly because its biblical. Two people coming together complete each other in marriage in a way that brings glory to Christ and reflects his love for the church. This is also reflected theologically in creation where Adam is not complete without the Woman as a companion who completes him (and humanity). This is of course not to say that single people are incomplete, which we need to fight against as a common and unbiblical undercurrent of Christian culture because we are fully complete in the love of Christ.

I don’t know if John Piper has seen this movie, Jerry Macguire. Lately I have been thinking about calling and telling him about it, but that might be weird. Marriage is not for the faint of heart nor for the timid of intimacy. We need to take this whole “one flesh” thing seriously enough to know that it’s a big deal. A friend and mentor once commented to me that the first year of marriage is like a "sin-mirror" where you see all the ways that you are prideful, angry and hurtful from the proximity of life together. I am growing more and more convinced that the messiness of relationships actually does call for some kind of guidelines to manage the process of such a profound union. We have been given these guidelines in the Bible and as much as I have been averse to their literal application before, I think that now more than ever we need the protection and wisdom found in scripture. In my opinion our only hope is to cling to God’s word and do our best not to distance ourselves from its messages.

10 points of discernment

I've spent a lot of time baffled by how I'm supposed to weigh the fullness and theological depth of scripture when making a decision and seeking Godly discernment. It helps me to think through a process that will help me to weed out my prideful and overly-analytical mind. I started listing out some questions to ask myself in order to discern if a decision or thought process is of God. It's really just a compilation of things, I'm sure it's not that original. But let me know what you think and what processes you go through when seeking wisdom, guidance and discernment.

10 points of Discernment

1. Does this decision or though process reflect the fullness of the gospel?
2. Does it glorify God and the principles God has given us for life in His Word?
3. Does it allow me to live a healthy, fruitful life in God's provision (is God providing for this)?
4. Will this produce fruit?
5. Does this allow me to express the fullness of how God created me?
6. What are my motivations for this decision?
7. What do voices of mentorship & accountability say about this?
8. Does this keep me in the freedom of Christ OR chain me to something that is not of God?
9. Am I expressing submission to Christ and the authorities God has laid in front of me?
10. Am I pursuing this out of love or fear?

Searching for Guidance

I'm going to take a break from gender to try and think about how we as Christian seek God's guidance. I'm going to try and avoid sounding bitter but you should know I am in a self-proclaimed "Guidance Vacuum" right now and I'm being sucked dry. Hopefully some of you can relate. I know that God has brought many of us to a place to challenge the ways that we seek him and prevent me from equating God with a specific spiritual experience. I am convicted that we cannot fully be willing to seek God if we always approach God expecting a specific response or answer. God is not a vending machine. Seeking God means pursuing God's word to see who he tells us he is.

I'm not always the best at seeking God's character in scripture and wind up only looking for an immediate spiritual answer to my question of the moment. I need to work on this, especially as I didn't grow up in a Christian home and didn't get all my Sunday School bible stories. There is much of the old testament that I don't really understand. Despite what I missed, I am thankful for the way that God pursued me as an individual- which often times included Christian music. I really felt the spirit of God and felt connected to Christ through these songs and would hear lyrics roll through my head at the exact moment I needed those messages of strength.

One of my favorite cheesy christian music artists is of course, the classic Third Day. There's so much truth in their lyrics and I have always been encouraged by their music. I'm awful at scripture memorization and need to be more intentional to have the word of God fill my mind when I'm in trouble. Nevertheless, I think Third Day will work for now. In the song "Blind", Third Day talks about how we are often "blind" to what God is doing because we are looking in the wrong place. The chorus lyrics are:

My heart I could not trust

'Cause it lies to me too much

And my mind just couldn't

Understand it all

These words very accurately describe my situation right now. I feel like I've spent a lot of time tring to understand God's direction through the way that I "felt" the spirit leading me. But at this point I've come to think that I have to be incredibly careful not to confuse my emotions with the Holy Spirit. My heart and my emotions equally lead me in opposing directions sometimes and I know they can't be God's direction. God is not a God of confusion, but man, my heart is definitely is. I also spend a lot of time trying to analyze situations from every possible angle to understand where God is leading, but its clear that my mind cannot fully understand the mind of God and I am just as baffled as I was when I started my over-analytical processes.

I constantly want answers to things, and I want to "do" something about my problems. But right now I am convinced that all I can do is wait on the Lord. I am in a place of incredible humility and brokenness. After over a year of feeling like I was following God in certain ministry initiatives I am angry and confused about why nothing has worked out and feel like I have failed to listen from the beginning. It's a really humble place to be because I know that right now my broken-heart would lead me out of the Chuch and away from God. But that's not physically possible right now because I can't take care of myself and need God so badly. These are the moments when I am utterly convinced that the Gospel is true and that I need Christ's mercy to save me. Because, at the end of the day I am the prodigal daughter who would have run away long ago if Christ weren't holding my coat-tails pulling me back.

Women in New York

Last night I walked the 2.5 miles home down the sundry trail of 8^th ave. I thought a lot about womanhood and its many representations in this city. I walked past the charming families of the upper west side, through the power-suited women of midtown and past the “live fantasy girls” of adult novelty stores that surround Port Authority. This last category seemed oxymoronic to me. If girls, women, are real live people than they cannot by nature be a fantasy. Real live women have emotions, problems, mouths to feed and wounds to tend to. Those stores make me exceptionally angry, on so many levels.

I just kept thinking that our city has a very interesting perspective on womanhood and by extension, a very interesting perspective on community. We have a transient community and a lifestyle, which poses significant logistical challenges to raising small children. These questions of life and lifestyle have an interesting influence on New York women as we seek to understand our balance between work and family, staying in the city and moving away. Single Christian women face overwhelmingly female church communities and an overwhelmingly sexualized secular community. It's a unique context and I think it’s also important to think through the ways in which our context has affected us as women as we explore how our experiences and dreams fit in with different ideas of womanhood.

On that walk I sat for awhile on the steps of the post office across from Penn Station. I had the New York experience of an “overheard” conversation whose context seemed to stand out but whose content was all too familiar. A happy couple took a lovely bike ride to the post office on a warm summer evening, a strange concept considering the grueling image of biking in New York. The wife ran up to the post office at 10:05 pm only to find that the windows had closed and she had to either put her envelope in the slot or wait until tomorrow. She returned to her husband frustrated and dejected pleading with him to go back in there and yell about it and get them to take the letter ny hand. Her request may not have made any sense but her motives clearly did. No matter how hard we as women try to cling our own self-sufficiencies we still want someone to take care of us. We still long for men to “step up” and take more leadership. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard you all say that, yes my small group of blog readers, I’ve heard you use that phrase so don’t deny it.

I am here to say that I have no idea where my future will take me and am quite confused about what womanhood really means. But I’m going to try and work through it in freedom and intentionality. I’m going to post my thoughts as I go. Comment as you see fit and we’ll see how it goes in the world of womanhood. But seriously, comment, please. It’s the only way my technologically challenged self knows that people are reading. Men too, post your thoughts.

I'm going to be listening to the podcast series below to explore ideas of biblical womanhood. Join me-http://www.truewoman.com/?id=317

Committment

It occurs to me that in the past five months not only have I failed to post anything at all, I've failed to continue a blog series on the book of Daniel and failed to complete another series on gender roles. In an odd, melodramatic kind of a way I feel as though I've lost out on on something. There's so much these days that I feel I've lost. But this time I know that I'm the one who has walked away. I think what's more accurate is that it's me over-committing to something I cannot provide. I committ to something like a blog series or an over-zealous project and then feel lost when I cannot complete it. I often complain that I lack guidance and a clear sense of calling. But maybe I self-indulgently through myself into an ocean with the lofty dream to calm it, only to climb out of a kiddie pool ladder and realize its wasn't my pool.

This morning I read a few chapters in 2 Peter and was crestfallenly convicted that I'm missing the boat. "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given is very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires". (2 Peter 1:3-4). There's a simple and albeit over-used story about a man who sits on the roof of his house during an awful flood, begging for God to resue him. When the rescue boats come, he refuses help saying that God will save him, the same with the helicopter and the other forms of rescue. Well, I am here to say that I think I am missing my boat.

I still think that it is incredibly important to fall at the feet of the Lord and beg for guidance for the troubles that bring us down. But in the moments when we can't hear him calling out an answer, I think we need to pursue the answers he has already given us through his word. Our response simply cannot be that we do not have the committment to get up a bit earlier in the morning and actually seek His guidance the old-fashioned way.

Daniel: God is my Judge, Part I

When I was in high school we had an art project that involved looking up the meaning of our names and using those meanings to construct some kind of visual representation of ourselves. This was a fairly inconsequential event for me, mostly because I felt like the meaning of my name was inconsequential and had no bearing on who I really was. But I have recently been challenged to further explore the meaning of names and the way that God gives names in scripture.

If you look up the name Daniel you will find that it means, "God is my Judge", which seems to echo the faithful life of Daniel in serving God as a Jew in a Babylonian kingdom. Daniel seems to intuitively understand that even though his citizenship may have shifted to Babylonian rule, his heart remains fixed to the rule of God. Daniel pleads with his Babylonian masters to permit him and his Hebrew brothers to not defile themselves by eating the king's food, but to keep the Lord's standard for their bodies. Later, the Hebrew men refuse to bow before the king's gold image, risking their lives to only bow in worship to the one true God.

This is a powerful testimony of what it means to be faithful to God as the one true judge of our actions, even if its easier or safer to bow down to the standards of our earthly citizenship. Its easy for us to praise this kind of faith. Everyone loves a rebel. Everyone loves a rebel for God's cause. But our tendency to read into these acts of civil disobedience with any kind of flippant tone is sorely misplaced. It's easy to read the name of Daniel, "God is my judge" with a flippant air of disregard to authority. "God is my judge, not you, not your authority, not your administration". But if we cop an attitude and claim "he's not my president", I think we are missing the beauty of the story of Daniel and we are missing the point of the long tradition of Civil Disobedience.

Daniel pleads with his masters to allow him to eat to a different standard of food, fully recognizing that it is their choice to allow him this change in diet. He does not stage a hunger strike to achieve his demands, he pleads his case and respects the authority of those placed over him. When the Hebrews refuse to bow before the king's golden image, they do so fully accepting their punishment and being thrown into a pit of flames. They do not angrily cry "you're not my judge" and demand a jury of their Hebrew peers be brought in on a provisional basis. They accept the authority of their rulers and know that they have remained faithful to their true Judge. [It should be noted that a similar interpretation can be made of the Classic story of Antigone who is willing to accept her punishment for securing a proper burial for her brother, considered a traitor to the kingdom.]

I guess it just strikes me that Daniel can perfectly hold in tension the concept of his dual citizenship. He completely understands that "God is [his] judge" and lives his life in utter submission to God's standard. But he and the other Hebrew men do so in compete respect for the authorities that God has placed over them. So it seems as though he have much to learn from the faith and name of Daniel. I'm sure there is still much more for us to learn from this ole Danny, but I will save those thoughts for another post...

Walking in the Gospel: Part II

We spend a lot of time in our lives wondering if God is listening and trying to interpret what He may be saying to us. Especially college seniors and recent grads, who spend a lot of time thinking about what God is “calling” them to do, fervently praying and seeking God’s will for their lives. This is great. We should always seek the face of God and pursue His will. But all too often I am blindingly disappointed by the lack of a clear call in my life to pursue a specific course of action. I fall on my knees and ask God what I should “do”. And what do I hear? That I should “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God” (Micah 6:8). The last time I checked this did not answer my question about whether I should move to Africa and serve in Global missions or pursue a job in the US.

I have sat down to right this sequel to “Walking in the Gospel” too many times, with little result. These failed attempts, and the events of recent times, have shown me that I actually know very little about what it means to “Walk in the Gospel”. We experience the conversions of our lives to the ways of Christ without ever really realizing it. We wake up one day to find ourselves overcome with prayers for those who have hurt us and completely content with our seeming lack of stability.

Walking in the gospel, walking with Christ, is ultimately a series of decisions to be made. Often times God asks us to make the big, risky decision to sell everything and move to a distant country to use our skills to build His kingdom; or to evade our parent’s desires to seek a high-paying job to become a campus minister. Over the years we as Christians have followed “God’s Call” to the ends of the earth and back.

For many of us we await our “calling” and humbly plead with God to show us a little bit more of His plan for us. But I think we may overuse this word, “calling” in a way that over-spiritualizes our decision making processes and denies the work of gospel conversion in our lives. Because as we are stressing about which path to choose, we forget that the Gospel decisions have already been made. We have already chosen how we will treat the people that cross our paths while fitfully debate the complexities of where that path will go.

The Gospel in our lives changes our perspective on the world, the way we interact with others and the decisions we make on a daily basis. It enables us to make those risky decisions with faith and to have faith that even our smallest decisions are the bricks which build His kingdom.