Theology for Women

Today I realized something interesting about typical strategies of evangelism. The realization came after spending a couple hours at UNC tonight handing out free lemonade as an exam outreach initiative. We weren’t asking students to sign up for anything or come to church in exchange–we were giving the lemonade out with no strings attached.

Surprisingly, the students were still very suspicious. A lot of people ignored us when we asked if they wanted something to drink. And the ones that did come to the table were immediately apprehensive when we told them that we were from a church. You could just see it in their eyes–they were waiting for something Christiany to be thrown at them like a Gospel tract or the Four Laws. They were bracing themselves for it.

As I was driving home tonight, I was reflecting on these students’ reactions and the reason behind them. The easiest scapegoat for their skepticism is judgmental Christians who scream at people and tell them they’re going to Hell. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that it probably wasn’t judgmental Christians that these students were tired of, because most Christians aren’t actually like that. Sure, non-Christians may run into a couple scary Christians along the way, but the majority of their experiences were probably with “normal” Christians, which means their opinions of the church were probably shaped by such “normal” Christians.

It wasn’t the crazy Christians alone that were scaring non-Christians off, but rather the majority of Christians who are nice, but are constantly scheming to convert people. The way we do evangelism may not be scary or loud, but it nevertheless sends non-Christians running in the opposite direction, and I think I know why.

Tonight, as I looked in the eyes of these young people and saw the distrust therein, I was startled to realize that I recognized that feeling, because it is the feeling I frequently get when interacting with single guys. In the last several years of my life as the pressure to get married has been mounting on everyone my age, I have become extremely hesitant about meeting new guys, even Christian ones, because many times guys will start flirting with me, to some degree or another, the moment that we meet.

When this happens, it’s as if they don’t see me at all–all they see is my potential as a wife. And I hate that feeling, because I know that it is not based on their desire to care for me, but their desire to care for themselves. All I am is a means to an end–the end being marriage.

I think that is the same vibe that we often give off to non-Christians. It’s not that we’re mean or judgmental, but our evangelism is about as sincere as a pick-up line. In the same way that a guy’s initial advances are inherently insincere since they don’t know me, non-Christians receive a similar message because we don’t know anything about them.

And in the same way that guys hit on girls because their vision is dominated by dreams of marriage, non-Christians know that all we can really see is our hopes for “conversion.” Our eyes are so focused on that goal, that we miss seeing the person. Though unintentionally, they become just a number to us, a means to an end. And non-Christians are no more impressed by that kind of evangelism than a girl is impressed by some cheesy line about how her legs must be tired from running through a guy’s mind.

The advance is lacking in any sort of genuineness, and it has little to nothing to do with the actual person. All it does is make people want to run away as fast as their “tired” legs will carry them.

And this analogy can be taken even further. One of the reasons that Christians keep on engaging in this kind of evangelism is because it does, occasionally, work. Of the hundreds and hundreds of people you talk to, at least one or two take the bait. But I suspect that the kinds of people who respond to that type of evangelism are no different than the kinds of women who respond to pick-up lines–they’re desperate.

There’s a reason that guys keep using pick-up lines–they actually work from time to time. If you approach enough women, you’ll eventually find someone who is either insecure enough or desperate enough to accept it.

But that success is not so much a commentary on the quality of the pick-up line as it is the state of the girl. In the same way, I suspect that the people who are most likely to respond to formulaic evangelism are those people who are at the end of their ropes.

Granted, it is important that we reach those people, and for this reason we should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading in case we are called to this kind of evangelism, but we should be extremely discerning about this method because, if used incorrectly, it can do quite a bit of damage in the mean time.

Just think about it–because so many guys indiscriminately hit on girls, I am now suspicious of any attention a guy gives me as soon as I meet him, thus making it that much harder for any genuine guy to pursue me, even as just a friend, in the future. Similarly, non-Christians become so jaded by the impersonal outreach strategies of the Christians they’ve encountered that it becomes more and more difficult for Christians to reach out to them in a genuine way in the future.

So yes, pick-up lines do work, but in general, they tend to do more harm than good. Why? Because pick-up lines are never sincere. They are never the reflection of a person who genuinely wants to care for and love another person. They are the fastest, easiest means to getting something.

And I think that is what Christian evangelism is often reduced to. Christians comfort themselves with the knowledge that we are not being hateful or narrow-minded, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually loving people in an authentic way. Real love is the kind modeled for us in Christ–it is personal, intimate, sacrificial, and patient, so just because we share the Gospel with someone doesn’t mean we’re actually loving them.

More likely we are conveying the same cheap imitation of love that you can find at a bar any night of the week–a love that is fast, easy, and requires very little of us to get what we want. But whether the target is a cute blonde at a party or a non-Christian in the student union, the fact of the matter is that pick-up lines almost never work.

“If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.” –Ezekiel 3:18

Yesterday afternoon my roommate and I went to the pool to lay out while we studied, and I brought my dog along. Ellie is pretty sweet and cuddly, so she tends to be the kind of dog that attracts people, and this afternoon was no different. As Rachel and I sat there reading, two teenagers swimming in the pool began to migrate in our direction. Eventually one of them got out of the pool and began talking to me about how much she liked my dog, asking what kind of dog it was and how she would love to get one too. I kid you not, when this girl opened her mouth, she sounded exactly like Paris Hilton. And of course her best friend was no different…it was like chilling at the pool with Paris and Nicole. They were lathered up in tanning oil as they floated on little inflatable chairs sharing a cigarette and inserting the word “like” about 5 times per sentence. They asked Rachel and me if we were in school, and when we said we were in “seminary,” they looked at us blankly. I’m pretty sure they’d never heard the word before.

But, as unintentionally entertaining as these girls were, they were also super sweet, and we eventually struck up a conversation. They were both 18, just out of high school and not yet in college but they had big dreams. When they finally got around to asking what seminary was, Rachel and I explained that we’d both be working for a church one day, so that launched us into a discussion about religion. One of the girls had actually been to our church a couple times and liked it. The other girl didn’t go to church, but she said she believed in God and thought that was good enough. Rachel and I both listened, and talked about the reasons why we like our church and how it was different from a lot of other churches. This conversation went on for awhile, but eventually they had to leave, and that was the end of it.

Even though I really enjoyed talking to them, and was glad I could encourage them to check out our church, I ended the conversation wondering if I had totally sold out. When the one girl said that she believed in God and thought that was enough, neither I nor Rachel protested. We just sat there and listened. Was our response the right, or the wrong one? On the one hand, what she said was completely false, but on the other hand, I hadn’t really earned the right to be heard. I am a firm believer in establishing a relationship with someone as part of ministering to them, so that they know you’re not merely trying to convert them, but that you actually care about them. In this instance, I figured I could come back to the pool and get to know the girls better, and keep the conversation going. I comforted myself with that, put it in God’s hands, and left it at that. But is that the right response?

Well today I was reading through Ezekiel, and God smacked me upside the head, big time. I read the above verse, and felt some major conviction. While I am not responsible for changing someone, I am definitely responsible for getting the word out there, rather than backing down like a wuss. And when I do back down, God holds me responsible. That’s exactly what he told Ezekiel, and I think that message still holds true today.

But the question remains, when do we intiate, and when do we wait? We all know the Christians who leave Gospel tracks in the bathrooms at restaurants, and go around knocking on doors and sharing the Gospel. I never want to be that Christian, because it seems so disingenuous, like it’s nothing more than a numbers game. But at the same time, we have this inconvenient passage in Ezekiel hanging over our heads. Every time we back down from sharing the Gospel, that person’s blood is on our hands. Is that what this passage is saying?

I actually happen to think there is a balance here–there is a time to be bold, and a time to be patient, but it all depends on the leading of the Holy Spirit. But the reason I think this passage is particularly helpful is that it woke me up to a disturbing trend in myself, and I wonder if others struggle with it too. I am, for all intents and purposes, a Calvinist, and I have always rested soundly in the knowledge that God is in control, and that He will save whomever He wants to save, that I don’t have to place that burden on my shoulders. But as a result of this doctrine, I have become lazy. I have let friends and family live their lives without me ever having shared the Gospel with them, because I was able to walk away thinking that even if I hadn’t shared the Gospel, they are in God’s hands so He’ll take care of them with or without me. This is actually a typical mentality of hyper-calvinists, and is one of the chief reasons why men like Charles Spurgeon have condemned hyper-calvinists in the last couple hundred years, so I was mildly mortified when i noticed it in myself. Yet that is perhaps the greatest danger in calvinism–it has the potential to take all the responsibility off of us.

The Ezekiel passage, however, reminds us that that kind of thinking is thoroughly unscriptural. While God is in control, and salvation lies in His hands and His grace alone, we are held responsible as well. There is an enigmatic balance between God’s will and our responsibility in Scripture…it’s tough to reconcile, but both elements are there. Yet aside from making sure our theology is firmly balanced, this passage is important for another reason. It reminds us that God did not give us a message for our own sake, but for the sake of the whole world. He blessed us so that we might be a blessing to others. To go through our day without mentioning Christ to those who are perishing, and all the while comforting ourselves with the fact that God is in control, is to use the Gospel in an unnatural way–using it selfishly. By not sharing the Gospel, we are not only robbing God of the glory that is rightfully His, but we are also putting the full burden of loving others in God’s hands. When we choose to not share the Good News and instead rely on God to do it, we actively choose not to love them. It is as though we are saying, “God loves them, so I don’t have to.” Sharing the Gospel is one of the ways, if not the greatest way, that we fulfill the command to love our neighbors, so when we opt not to share, we choose to disobey God.

Now this doesn’t mean we should go stand on street corners and preach hell fire and damanation, but we should probably be doing more than we are right now. If we truly believe that the Creator of the Universe became Man and sent His son to die for us, then this knowledge demands far more than a neutral response . You can either reject God’s existence and do nothing, or accept it and never be the same, but there is no middle ground. I think I have been inhabiting that middle ground for awhile now, so I pray that God will give me the courage and wisdom to be prudent but bold. If I say I love my neighbor, but don’t tell them the greatest news to ever hit the planet, then I am lying to myself. That is not love.

Today I had my very last seminary class EVER! It was definitely bittersweet, but I have to say that I couldn’t have asked for a better one to end on. This class was on the book of Acts, so we spent a large portion of the time reflecting on what we’d learned about Acts throughout the semester. At the end of the class, however, as my professor made his final remarks and drew things to a close, he revealed to us that all semester long he has been teaching us in a manner that runs against the grain of our culture. He explained it to us as follows:

“We are a culture afflicted by clichés and soundbites and modes of communication that work against patient wrestling with the profoundest and deepest matters that we know of. T.V. and internet, by their modes of communication, tend to erase the possibility of dwelling with a question or with a text. And the more you expose yourself to these modes of communication, the more you begin to communicate in these modes. As a result, our capacity to wrestle with a text that doesn’t communicate in clichés and soundbites becomes contracted. And when our modes of communication run counter to the way the text is written, then we inhibit the text itself.”

I think my professor hit the nail on the head with this observation. Just a couple months ago I had the opportunity to hear a Catholic theologian named Richard John Neuhaus give a meditation on love, and it was so moving that I wept at the end. Afterwards, I asked a friend what he thought of the meditation, and he indignantly replied, “I didn’t like it. I mean, where was the take-away? What was I supposed to get out of it?”

The “take-away”–isn’t that what we’re always looking for when we listen to a sermon, read a book, or study Scripture? We want something here and now, a catchy phrase that’s easy to remember and might fit well on a bumper sticker, like, “Let go and let God” or “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” That kind of faith doesn’t require a whole lot of thought or work, but it’s symptomatic of the the consumer culture we live in. Our culture demands its product right away in an easily consumable size, so we’ve domesticated Scripture to that standard. As a result, soundbites and cliches have become our preferred mode for approaching Scripture and all other things spiritual.

The problem is, Scripture wasn’t designed that way. Sure, isolated verses can certainly encourage us when they’re taped to our steering wheel or bathroom mirror. But oftentimes when we take a verse out of its Scriptural context, we do violence to it, because it was meant to be interpreted as part of a larger whole, not standing alone. What’s more, we are often reading Scripture in a way that it was not intended to be read. For instance, Jesus spoke in parables, not easy to digest soundbites, so in order to comprehend what he is talking about, and I mean *really* understand (not come up with a quick answer and move on) we must read the parable over and over and over again, and we must read the Old Testament passages Jesus was alluding to through it, and we must refer back to Jesus’ other sayings that shed light on this one. We must dwell in the Scripture, meditate on it, let it shape us every day. And only then, after it begins to mold our minds into conformity with Christ, do we even *begin* to understand what he was talking about.

But most of us are not patient enough for this. We want to know the answer now. We want the take-away message now. We’re too busy to invest that kind of time. But as a result of this mentality we have missed something. We have missed the reality that we are not the ones who get to consume Scripture–Scripture is to consume us. Scripture is not to submit to our schedule, or convenience, or opinions; we submit to Scripture. And it is only by living in Scripture, dwelling in one passage, studying its cultural context, its relationship to the whole of Scripture, its perspectives on Man, Christ, sin, love, and the world–only then will we begin to approach the tip of the iceberg of its meaning. The depths of Scripture have yet to be measured, and its wisdom is inexhaustible, so we deceive ourselves if we think we can dumb it down to cliches. One cannot plumb the depths of the ocean with a dixie cup.

So while there is indeed a time and a place for practical application and tangible lessons, shake things up a bit by resisting the urge to find an obvious take-away when you read Scripture. If we insist on approaching Scripture superficially, then we will only be superficially formed by Scripture, so we must be patient, and we must wait for it to form us, slowly yet steadily and entirely. The layers of Scripture are llike an infinite onion–the more you peel away, the more you will find, and the treasure is infinitely better than any bumper sticker I have ever seen. So pick a passage, and commit to it for an extended period of time. Memorize it, meditate on it, study it, and internalize it. The longer you do this, the more that it will unfold, and what still amazes me most is that the unfolding will never EVER end. Scripture presents us with an unending journey, so rather than resting contently as you drink from your spiritual sippy cup, it’s time to start acting like a big kid by taking in some solid, meaty theology. It takes some work, but only the meat will leave you feeling truly satisfied.

In the last 48 hours I have had two different conversations with two different girls that were frighteningly similar to one another. In both situations, the young women–amazing, beautiful, smart, talented, godly women–were being pursued by men who were treating them terribly, but both girls were struggling to walk away from the situation. I pleaded with both of them to walk away, reminding them how wonderful they are and how they deserve so much better, but both responded to me with the same exact question: “But what if no one better comes along?”

For most young women, we don’t have a ton of guys banging down our doors, so in the rare event that a guy does come along, a guy that we are attracted to and enjoy spending time with, we don’t want to let him get away. Nevermind that he may not be where he should be spiritually, or that he doesn’t guard your purity, or that he doesn’t respect you as his sister in Christ–he’s cute and he’s funny, so you’ll take what you can get. Inherent in this mentality is the need to be realistic: “Sure, the Bible tells me I’m a precious daughter of God, and that I should only date guys who are going to treat me as such, but let’s be realistic–given my track record, what are the odds of that “perfect guy” coming along? And even if that guy existed, it’s not like he’d ever go for me.” It’s easy to see the holes in this line of argument when you’re not currenrtly interested in someone, but as soon as that cute guy in your sunday school class starts showing some interest, all logic gets thrown out the window. He’s a Christian, you’re a Christian, so nothing else matters. I’ve even done it myself! I’ve dated some real bozos, and rationalized it in some fairly impressive ways, but in the end it came down to the fact that they made me feel attractive, which didn’t happen all that often, so I reasoned that I might as well take what I could get, and have some fun in the mean time.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this behavior is that it is completely founded upon lies. There is no truth driving these thoughts processes. This is important to take note of, because we as women are frequently tempted to stand on the lies that our emotions are feeding us. For this reason we need to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (1 Cor. 10:5). Every thought that sets itself up against the truth of who we are in Christ needs to be quickly identified, and swiftly dismissed. This process begins by knowing what those lies might be, so here are just a few…

Lie #1: “I need to be realistic”–The idea here is that while my pastor and my Bible study leader and that book I’m reading all tell me that I’m “beautiful” and “precious” and yada yada yada, my experience has not proven those descriptions to be true. I don’t have guys knocking down my door to “adore my beauty.” It’s quite the opposite, in fact. So while Scripture may tell me one thing, I live in reality, and should therefore have realistic expectations. No solid Christian guy is out there who would want to date me, so I should simply adjust my standards a bit…… The problem with this thinking is that as soon as you call Scripture “unrealistic,” you call God a liar. You also accuse Him of being stupid–even though He created the world, He apparently has no idea what’s actually going on in it, otherwise He wouldn’t have given us such unrealistic expectations. Yes, that logic is as moronic as it sounds, but that is often the logic we live by. We allow this sinful world to be more determinative of truth than God, so the moment you find yourself tempted to be “realistic” and date the first fish that bites, remember that in doing so, you are pointing your finger in God’s face and accusing Him of either being incredibly deceitful, or just plain dumb. God is not unrealistic–we have simply let the world determine our reality, instead of God.

Lie #2: “I don’t deserve better”–I have to tell you that it absolutely breaks my heart to hear a young woman say this. The funny thing is, most of us look at women in bad relationships and say, “That will never happen to me! I will never stand for that.” And yet, at some time or another, most of us do. Why? Because we are so desperately insecure, and we are so desperately afraid of being alone for the rest of our lives, that the attention we receive, the feeling of being pretty and desirable, is worth being treated poorly for. The pay-off is worth the price. And don’t think you’re so strong as to avoid this kind of relationship, because it creeps up on you. When things first start out with a guy, you’ll only see his good side, so you gradually get addicted to his attention and his presence in your life. Eventually, very slowly, his bad sides will begin to come out, but because your confidence has become so dependent on him, you will be willing to put up with it. He may treat you like dirt, but he also says he loves you, and those words are enough to sustain you. My pastor calls this kind of behavior emotional prostitution, because we are accepting payment in return for letting guys use us. That payment comes in the form of emotional validation.

Lie #3: “But I know he really cares about me.”–Another reason why women will believe they deserve to be treated poorly is because they believe these men care about them. After all, this guy says he cares about you, which means he wouldn’t hurt you for no reason, so you must simply deserve it. Well let me offer a friendly reminder that abusive alcoholics “love” their wives, but they still abuse them. You need to remember that just because a guys says he loves you or cares about you, does not necessarily mean he does. Sometimes men will say those words simply to get what they want from you. When a man does this, his intention is not to care for you, but to use you. I know this is hard to imagine or understand, because a lot women attach a great deal of significance to words, and the concept of merely saying those things solely for the sake of using someone is quite foreign to us, but it’s reality. 1 John 3:18 reminds us, “let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” If he says one things, but does another, then his words mean nothing. The difficulty here is that most of us so strongly desire to believe a guy’s words that it’s easy for us to look past the inconsistencies and believe him anyway, so it’s helpful to have someone holding you accountable, an objective person who can look at the situation and tell you it’s unhealthy. Otherwise, our insecurities will drive us to rationalize just about anything.

Lie #4: “He makes me feel attractive”–Some guys are total charmers. They know just what to say when. They make you feel attractive and feminine, and that is a nice feeling to have. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean he is atttracted to you as a person. Sometimes the attraction they feel for you is akin to the attraction guys feel when they look at pornography, and this is not an attraction based on real feelings. It is your body that they are after, not you. In order to determine whether the guy is sincere or not, look at what he says. First, if he makes remarks that are overtly sexual, then clearly his intentions are wrong. But in addition to that, if he makes gradiose statements about how wonderful you are, but he doesn’t even know you that well, then his attraction may not be not based on anything substantive. He’s likely not thinking with his brain. Granted, not all compliments from guys mean they are trying to us you, but don’t be naive either. Some men know just what to say to make a girl do what he wants, so don’t fall prey to those empty lines, even if they do make you go weak at the knees. Right away, recognize them for what they are–lies. I am personally very wary of guys who immediately start flirting with me as soon as we meet…even Christian guys. Why? Because they don’t know me. All I am is a face to them, and if that’s the main reason they’re attracted to me, then whatever they feel for me is not real. They may be attracted to some idea of me, but they’re not attraced to me. So be intentional about distinguishing infatuation from genuine feelings, and lust from healthy attraction. Feeling attractive is not always a good thing if it is based on a guy’s desire to use you.

Lie #5: “What if no one else comes along?”–This is perhaps the easiest lie to fall into because there’s no way of knowing whether or not you are meant to get married. I can’t tell these girls to stop worrying because God definitely has someone picked out for them down the road. He may not. But that doesn’t mean you should settle for some jerk in the mean time. Looking back on my past relationships, I wish I had stayed single. The damage done to my self-esteem was not worth the temporary fun that I had. Yes, it is hard being single, but it’s even harder being in a bad relationship or getting over a break-up. The reason I say this is that as long as you’re single, you can fight for your integrity, your self-worth, and your confidence. You can decide to be picky, and you can decide who is or is not good enough to date. When you’re single, it’s much easier to stand on what God tells you about yourself because there is no one in your life actively telling you that you fall short. But in a relationship, it’s much harder. You trust the person and care about them, so when they treat you badly, you believe it is a reflection of who you really are. It’s one thing to fight feelings of insecurity when you’re single, but quite another to fight insecurity when your boyfriend treats you like dirt. Soon you’ll believe that you are dirt. The truth of the matter is that lonely, insecure, single people make for lonely, insecure married people, so whatever feelings of incompleteness that you have will not be solved by a guy. Sure, you might feel giddy for awhile, but once those feelings subside, you’ll come back to the reality that all the things you didn’t like about yourself are still there. So instead of wasting your single years pining away after your Prince Charming, enjoy them! If you do get married one day, you’re going to look back on those years and kick yourself for wasting so much of your life on something that God had already taken care of. Or, if you don’t get married, you’llprobably still kick yourself–being miserable over something about which you have no control is pointless and adds up to a lifetime of misery. so don’t worry about tomorrow–you could meet Mr. Right tomorrow, or you might not, but neither possibility means you should miss out on today.

So those are just a few of the lies that women believe about themselves. And if you are tempted to believe any of them, don’t you dare try to rationalize that you are somehow the exception to the rule. I can just picture someone reading this and thinking, “I know she says that all women are beautiful and precious and should be loved well, but she doesn’t know me. My situation is different.” well let me be the first to say, YOUR SITUATION IS NOT DIFFERENT! When I say you are precious and valuable, that is not my opinon. that is a fact. We are all made in the image of God, and we should not take that reality lightly. You may not think that you deserve better, but God certainly does, so if nothing else, stand on that. We cannot stand by and let guys desecrate the image of God by treating us badly. No, there is no perfect guy out there in the sense that you won’t find a guy who never ever hurts you, but God wants more for us than being treated like an object. And more importantly, He wants more for Himself. So when a guy treats your poorly, it’s not merely your honor and integrity that is in jeopardy–it’s also God’s. If nothing else, that knowledge should be enough to make us fight for respect, since we are not merely fighting for ourselves, but for God’s glory. That is the truth we must stand on in the face of all these lies.

I decided to assign this post the above title because it’s the name of a book that I recently heard about for parents raising teenagers, and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I also thought it was right on. How many kids treat their parents like dirt, and then expect their parents to obey their beckon call? But the sad thing is that most of us don’t stop acting that way once we mature beyond our teen years. Have you ever noticed that the people you have the most trouble being nice to, are your family members? It really is quite remarkable, because they’re most likely the people who care about us the most in this world, and somehow we treat them the worst. Just last Christmas, I was a reduced to a “he said, she said” argument with my brother in which my dad was forced to mediate. He’s 24, and I’m 26, but we acted like were were both about 8.

You know, I wouldn’t treat anyone else in the world that way, so why my family? Or for an even more convicting question, why is my Christian witness so inconsistent? Most of the time I am so careful about being a solid witness to Christ, whether I’m interacting with my closest friends or the cashier at the grocery story, so why does my witness suddenly wither in the face of my family? Why do I suddenly become this selfish, ugly person?

And then there’s that awful Christian self-righteousness. Oh how I wish I could take back those arrogant and condescending rants I went off on my parents about concerning matters of faith! They are really solid Christians, and were Christians long before I was born, but I somehow thought that the little bit of knowledge I attained while I was in college gave me the authority to go home and lecture them about how they should or should not be living their lives. Forget about the fact that they had worked hard to support me and send me to a good school, while also being intentional about discipling me in the Christian faith. Somehow, in my mind, the experience I had gained leading a Bible study for a semester in college trumped their lifelong pursuit of God. Haha, it sounds absurd to think back on now! And it is an even greater testimony to their patience and grace that they actually sat there and listened to me, instead of ignoring me and walking out of the room, which they would have certainly been within their rights to do. I was a complete idiot, but they loved me anyway. Why, then, has it been so hard for me to do the same?

For some of us, the difficulty comes from the fact that our families don’t treat us or love us well. Our families know us better than anyone else, so they know how to push our buttons, or hurt us where we’re vulnerable. Families can be downright manipulative at times. In that situation, loving your family is akin to loving an enemy. But for a lot of us, our behavior stems mostly from the fact that we take our families for granted. Because they’ll always love us, we can treat them however we want. And so we do.

In both instances, whether your family loves you well or treats you poorly, your family relationships will almost always reveal your true character. If you come from a family that treats you well, then you know that they’ll love you no matter what, so you stop people-pleasing and your real nature comes out. And even if you have a family that treats you poorly, try comparing the way you treat them with the way you treat other people you don’t like. The need to people-please is so powerful that it will often drive us to be kind and sweet to those people we don’t like at all, but when it comes to our families, the gloves come off.

So no matter what family you come from, If you want to get a real indication as to where you are in fulfilling God’s command to love others, your relationship with your family is a great spiritual barometer. We may treat everyone we know with kindness and care, but if we still cop an attitude with our parents, then our true motives will be revealed–we are more concerned with pleasing people than pleasing God. A love driven by people-pleasing is conditional, because it is an ultimately self-serving love, but a love driven by God is unconditional. And perhaps that’s what God was up to in commanding us to love our parents. God gave us this commandment in order to reveal our true motives. If we can love everyone but our parents, then it’s probably because we care more about other peoples’ opinions than we do about God’s. The kind of love that God requires of us is a love that knows no boundaries, so this commandment is a great indicator of the ways in which our love falls short of the kind of love God calls us to.

So today let me encourage you to honor your parents. Many times, this is an honor that is long overdue because our parents are simply amazing individuals who left a legacy of love and faithfulness. Other times, honoring our parents takes a great deal of humilty and even pain, but it in either case, it is an exercise in learning to love others, as well as God.

So you don’t have to look at many of my posts to figure out that I’m long-winded. I was an English minor–I like to write. With that in mind, I decided to turn my thoughts on the VT shooting into two posts instead of making it one drearily long post (this one being significantly shorter than the last, so breathe a sigh of relief…) So here’s part 2…

In my last post I discussed the way in which the VT shootings can open our eyes to the suffering that is in the rest of the world. Our broken hearts give us a window into understanding others who suffer in the world, and once we form that connection, we will be more able to love them. In the same way that God connected to us by coming down and suffering alongside of us in this fallen world, we are called to do the same.

But there is a second reason I believe the VT shootings can give Christians insight into the world around them: It enables us to take Sin more seriously. Many times we are apathetic to the suffering of others because we only think about sin when it affects us–whether we struggle with a temptation, or have been hurt by someone else’s selfishness, in general we only think about sin when it impacts us, and that is the extent of it.

Let me give you 2 reasons why this me-centered understanding of Sin is inherently problematic:

1. It Leads to Inaction–Like I said, most of us don’t think about the ugliness of sin until it affects us in some inconvenient or painful way. Only then do we take it serisouly, though probably only for a moment. And while these eye-opening hardships can be helpful in that they force us to confront the reality of sin in the world, they don’t happen very often, which means the times in which we truly reflect on the cost of sin are few and far between. For most of us living in America, our lives are easy enough that we are not confronted with the harsh realities of sin on a regular basis. For this reason, we have gotten used to ignoring the power of sin, so it’s not something we perceive as being an active threat to our faith. In fact, we probably benefit from sin at times, so we don’t often perceive it to be the “crouching lion” that Scripture describes. And because we don’t think about sin that often, or realize just how destructive it truly is, sin goes out of sight and out of mind, which leads us to underestimate its power in the world. We don’t give it much credit for being the source of so much pain and evil in the world, since it’s not often the source of *our* pain, so we feel little need to fight it or resist it, at least not in the ways it affects other people. Why resist something that’s not really a problem for us? So as long as Sin is not affecting us, it’s not really our problem, and we can just keep on letting the rest of the world suffer. Sin runs rampant, corrupting governments, enslaving children as prostitutes, and causing wars, while we sit idly by in our comfortable homes because none of that has anything to do with us, forgetting that when sin is left unchecked in the world, chaos ensues and the power of sin will eventually touch us…much like it did Monday. Let us therefore not forget that sin is very much a real force in this world, and as long as the world is affected by it, we will be affected by it sooner or later, even if we don’t bear the consequences right away. Hopefully, however, we will not wait to act until the oppressive power of sin affects us. If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, then we should respond to their pain as quickly as we would respond to our own. And that is what’s at stake here–when we ignore the sin in the world, and how it affects others, we also tend to ignore God’s second greatest commandment.

2. We Forget That This World Is Not Our Home–By ignoring the extent of sin’s presence in the world, we forget that this world is not, in fact, our home. Hopefully the VT shootings have jolted us out of that self-deception. The more we grieve for the sin in this world, the more we will yearn for the New Creation in which there is no more pain and suffering. We are strangers in a strange land, and weeks like this should remind us of that truth. Not only will it prevent us from becoming so comfortable here that we compromise our identity as disciples in favor of the easier path of the American dream, but it will compel us to spread the hope that we have in a future life. Most people in this world don’t have the luxury of being comfortable on this earth. What’s more, most people don’t have the hope that there is redemption after this earth. We have both, so we often forget those other people and their hopelessness. But on the occasion when we are hurt by the fallen world in which we live, it will hopefully wake us up to the fact that others are suffering because of it too. Such knowledge should compel us to go out and share the hope we have. Salvation is not a personal luxury that privately reassures us of our secure future–it is Good News to be shared with everyone. Suffering reminds us why.

So as we continue to mourn the loss that our country has experienced, let us not forget that this kind of tragedy happens every day all over the world. We live in a world that is plagued by sin, and this week’s events remind us of just how devastating that sin truly is. Hopefully such knowledge will move us to action, action being the only reasonable response when we possess the one true hope in a hopeless world.

In the past couple days we have all been reeling in the wake of the Virgina Tech shootings. To be honest, I still can’t believe it. How could this happen? How could that young man so callously target student after student after student, and shoot them in cold blood? It’s truly horrifying.

In memory of those who were killed, Duke held a prayer vigil yesterday at 2pm, the same time that Virgina Tech was holding a service for its students. In solidarity with the VT community, hundreds of Duke students came together in front of the chapel, and the Dean of the Chapel offered words of comfort. We then stood in silence for 2 minutes, after which the bell tolled 31 times, one toll for each victim. As I stood there on the grass for what seemed an interminable length of time (31 tolls takes a long time. I’d never realized what a large number it is…) I wept as each gong startled me and chilled me anew, each toll a fresh reminder of a young life cut short.

This week, our entire country is indeed wounded and mourning a tremendous loss.

Yet in reflecting on my feelings and on my reaction to the tragedy, I have realized something quite disturbing about myself. This realization occurred today when I hopped in my car and turned the radio on to the news. As I listened to the top stories, I learned that today has actually been one of the bloodiest days in Baghdad since the start of the war. Five different car bombs exploded, killing a total of 175 people. The station played audio from the disasters, and it sounded like mass chaos. Screaming, confusion, terror. But the startling thing is that this news, and these graphic audio clips, didn’t really affect me. I felt sad for a fleeting moment, but nothing like the grief I felt two days ago upon hearing the news of the killings, and nothing like the sadness I felt yesterday as each bell toll reverberated through my being. It just didn’t bother me that much. What’s more, this news wasn’t getting nearly the amount of press the VT shootings had. More than 3 times as many people had been killed, but the story got about 5 minutes of air time, and then they moved on.

This experience in my car has since led me to discover something about myself: I don’t really care about another person’s suffering unless they are like me. I don’t take seriously the reality of suffering until a tragedy like this one transpires, a tragedy in which the victims have faces and lives that are much like my own. When the pain and destruction is happening far away in some remote corner of the world, it’s easy to turn a blind eye, but when it happens close to home, I suddenly wake up, and I suddenly care. Only when it comes close to affecting me and my comfortable life, is my heart stirred.

Sadly, such a mentality is selfish at best. When the grief we feel for 30 fallen students contrasts so starkly with the apathy we feel towards the rest of the world, we are able to see how little our hearts reflect that of God. The Dean of Duke’s chapel described it this way:

“For those of us who are people of faith, we are given a glimpse through these events into a reality we don’t often
perceive. For a moment we see the world as God sees it – full of wonder, beauty, fragile glory and passionate
devotion, and yet at the same time cruelly mutilated by violence, horror and terror. We see it that way today.
God sees it that way every day.”

God’s compassion is not biased. He grieves whenever *anyone* suffers, anyone at all. This is an aspect of His heart we have yet to embody. Our compassion is limited and highly selective. We may be horrified at the white faces we saw in German concentrations camps, but the black faces in the Congo often slide under the radar. Unlike God, we tend to care more about “our kind.” God, on the other hand, isn’t quite so selective, because every kind is His kind.

But how do we imitate God in this kind of indiscriminate love? How do we love so universally that when we turn on the news and hear of more deaths in Iraq, or Sudan, or anywhere else in the world, our hearts are broken with the same degree of anguish that we have experienced these last two days? I think it begins by recognizing the image of God in our Iraqi, Sudanese, Korean, Venezuelan, etc. brothers and sisters. Have you ever stopped to think of these other members of the world as made in the image of God? Really, have you? Or are they too far away to think that hard about? Or when you do think of them, do they have a generic face and live a life so different from yours that you can’t possibly relate? Do they look more like uncivilized barbarians than someone you might be friends with? I frequently fall into the latter category. Yet those far away foreigners were all made in the precious image of our King, just like us. that means they love the way we love, and they suffer the way we suffer. They are not a faceless mass of strangers, but individuals, each crafted in their mothers’ wombs for a special purpose by God. God knows the number of hairs on their heads, He knows when they rise and when they fall. He knows their hopes and their dreams. And when they grieve, He grieves.

In this light, the challenge to “love your neighbor as yourself” takes on new meaning. Loving your neighbor as yourself does not merely mean wanting the same good things for them that you want for yourself, but also grieving for them in the same way you might grieve for yourself. This concept may at first seem challenging, because it’s difficult to grieve for strangers in the same way you might grieve your own loss. But interestingly enough, I think that’s what we’re all doing right now in the midst of the VT tragedy–we are grieving for strangers. It happens very naturally, in fact. If only we could work at being less selective in our compassion.

In this way, suffering with another may actually become a means for loving them. After all, if it is easiest to love individuals those who are most like us, and we realize that everyone suffers regardless of who they are or where they live, then this “likeness” in suffering should enable us to love strangers quite easily, because they have the same capacity to suffer as you do. Given that we are all made in God’s image, we all suffer in the same way, and perhaps that knowledge will serve as a bridge between our hearts. Perhaps it will enable us to love more easily, because we have finally found a point of connection. And in this way, the call to grieve alongside someone is not a call to masochism, or even politically correct sensitivity, but instead a call to love in the same radical way as Christ.

That is why we must pause for a moment’s reflection when we hear of more deaths in Iraq and other parts of the world. If we casually dismiss the suffering of the victims, then we belittle their suffering, a belittling that is only possible if we believe their suffering must be less than ours, that they do not suffer the way we suffer. If we truly believed that they suffered like we do, then we would not be able to brush them off so easily. So instead of forgetting about the fatalities the moment we hear about them on the news, we must instead think about the families left behind. Think about the bereaved mothers who have been robbed of their children. Think of the wives who have lost their husbands. The suffering that the VT parents are experiencing right now is no different than the suffering of Iraqi parents who have also lost their children, but we simply haven’t stopped to think of them that way. So please stop, please take a moment to grieve for those strangers. Only then, I think, do we stand a chance at loving as radically and universally as God did. God loved us by sending His Son to suffer with us. Our calling is the same.

Don’t worry, those aren’t my words. The man who made this statement was a pastor of a church in California named Francis Chan. You may have heard of him–he’s probably one of the greatest up and coming pastors in America today. And while I have no idea if he made this statement for dramatic effect, or if he sincerely desires to see the institution of the parachurch done away with, I’m going to tell you why I think he’s on to something.

One of the biggest problems plaguing college ministry today is that college students have no idea what the church is, or what their role in the church should even look like. For most college students, they have a church that they attend every Sunday morning so they can check “weekly sermon” off the list, but they walk in, walk out, and never engage in the church anymore than that. Why? Because for all intents and purposes, their parachurch is their church. This mentality stems from some sort of vague understanding of the Church in which the Church is “invisible,” composed of believers all over the world and spanning throughout history. And if this is your understanding of the Church, then as long as you are coming together with other believers in some kind of capacity on a weekly basis, that’s church enough.

And who can blame them? Parachurches are way ahead of the curve when it comes to campus outreach. When churches weren’t reaching college students, parachurch ministries stepped up and filled that ministerial void. They went onto the campuses where students were, became accessible to them, shared in their daily lives, and equipped them for living out the Christian life in the university environment. Only in the last 10 to 15 years have churches really started waking up to the reality that college students need ministery too. Only recently have churches poured time and energy into their college students. But compared to most parachurch organizations that are now well-oiled machines, church college ministries are often awkward at best, still trying to find their niche without competing with parachurches for students. So when faced with the choice between an on-campus parachurch with accessible leaders and great programs, or an off-campus church ministry with only one college pastor, I’d take the parachurch any day. In fact, as an undergrad, I did.

Unfortunately, this trend teaches college students bad habits concerning their relationship with the church. It fosters a relationship with the local church in which students merely use the church for their own spiritual needs, but give nothing back in return. There is no sense of ownership in the church’s well-being, functioning, or future. This can be seen most clearly in how few college students tithe. One of the things Jesus spends the most time talking about in Scripture is money, because how we use our money is one of the greatest indicators of where we are spiritually. That being said, college students are notorious for not tithing (and don’t give me the “I’m a poor college student” excuse–I used it too, but I also somehow had enough money to buy myself new shoes, outfits, and other accessories on a fairly regular basis. even if you’re still on the dole from mom and dad, that money belongs to God!).

So by the time a student graduates, they have spent 4 years workin on a habit of not engaging in the local church, not tithing to the local church, and only using the local church for their own needs. For them, the church is a building–they have no concept that the church is a community of which they are not only a part, but that the church *belongs* to them. Interestingly, the college student mentality is one that is quite foreign to Scripture. Take Acts, for instance. In this New Testament book we are told that the community shared with one another according to everyone who had need. No, this was not a vision of Christian Communism–this is what a local church is supposed to look like. You take ownership of the community. You take responsibility for the fact that the church has electrical bills to pay so that you can sing the songs on powerpoint, or that the pastor has to have money to feed himself and his family so he can deliver that sermon you hear each week. Not to mention the fact that there are other families in the church who suffer great financial hardship, and the church is only able to help them when everyone pitches in. That’s what a church really is–it’s a community, not a building. And that is what it means to be a part of a body–when the head hurts, the whole body hurts, and when the leg is injured, the whole body limps. Yet college students function like a bunch of autonomous elbows, walking around like they have nothing to do with the rest of the body. They don’t realize that the rest of the body belongs to them, is a part of them, and that others’ well-being affects them (and vice versa). But that is what Scripture tells us a local church is supposed to be–we are all *one* in Christ.

Now here is where this trend becomes a problem: When college students graduate. Because these students have spent the last 4 years creating a relationship with the church in which the church is merely there to serve them, this habit continues on long after graduation. Mark Driscoll, a senior pastor in Seattle, experienced this hardship first-hand when he found himself leading a church of mostly young people. No one would do anything! He writes in his book “Confessions of a Reformission Rev, “The college kids and singles who had sucked resources from youth groups and parachurch ministries for their entire life without serving or giving were generally just more dead weight to drag around. ” Because they were using the programs of the church but not giving back to it, the church’s leaders and resources were being slowly but steadily drained, because a small minority of people were carrying the entire weight of the church. And this is the kind of mentality that involvement in parachurches *can* (though definitely not always) lead to. In a comsumer driven society in which we judge commodities based on what they can do for us, the church is no exception–young people are no longer joining churches because of how they can contribue to a church’s vision and make it a better church. They join a church because it has a good preacher, or they like the music, or it has a singles ministry where they can shop for a spouse. It’s all about what the church can do for them. And when one segment of a church’s body is demanding most of the church’s resources without giving anything in return, the church will become lop-sided, at best. At worst, it will begin to die, because no church can sustain a congregation in which a large portion of its members serve as dead-weight.

Yet in addition to all of that, students are missing out on something valuable during their college years if they are not involved in a church. They are missing out on the fullness of what church membership involves. The church is not merely some invisible, universal institution to be engaged in at one’s discretion–Scripture also describes the church as a local body, and it does so in very specific ways. Having said that, the parachurch is a “local body” to some extent, but it is not a body in the fullest sense of the term. All throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul explains that the Body of Christ is a body of many members with different gifts and perpectives to add. Together, these varying parts make up a complete whole that reflects Christ in all his fullness. So while no local church does this perfectly, it does surpass parachurches in this area because of the diversity in ages and stages in life. By involving yourself in the lives of others who are older or more experienced than you, they can give you direction and guidance in ways that your peers cannot. What’s more, when you spend time with a family or a married couple, you can learn more about what it looks like to be a godly spouse or parent. In return, you can serve the church so that those older families are not always serving you. Volunteer at the nursery so that parents can go to a church event. Work with the youth groups so parents can go to their own Sunday school classes. In this way, we help one another, and in so doing, are more effective for the Gospel. After all, young people have the most time and energy to give to the church, so if young people actually began engaging in the local church, there is no telling how much more effective churches would be at reaching the community!

When it’s all said and done, I have to admit that I don’t believe we should “kill the parachurch.” What I do think is that something needs to change. If we are fostering a generation of students who believe the church is merely there to serve them, then we risk creating churches in the long-term which are all about Man, rather than God. Churches will become institutions existing for the purpose of serving us, rather than God’s glory. The present problems we are experiencing asa result of unengaged college students and singles are probably only a taste of what is to come. Yes, parachurches do have an amazing ministry to college students, they are able to reach students in unique ways that the church cannot, and God works through them powerfully. But, they are not to supplant the local church, so if you treat your parachurch as the local church, you will spend the next 4 years fostering a relationship with the local church that is not only thoroughly me-centered, but also thoroughly unscriptural. I know this because I did it myself, so help change this trend by taking ownership of your church now–not only with your finances, but with your time, energy, and prayer. We are the future leaders of the church, so we need to start acting like it today.

This week the press has been buzzing with the news that the charges against the Duke lacrosse players have been dropped. “Vindication!” has been the cry of the players, their family, their friends, and many members of the Durham community at large. Finally, this long nightmare has come to a close. Finally, they are given the title they so rightly deserve: innocent.

Yet somehow, at the long-awaited end of this whole messy ordeal, I still feel a little unsettled. Even though I was relieved to hear that the witch hunt had come to a close and that these boys could finally end the year-long battle they were unjustly forced to fight, something doesn’t feel right. Somehow I don’t feel that justice has been done and that our community can move forward, leaving this whole mess behind us.

But why?

Well perhaps it is the fact that this entire incident originated from a sordid series of circumstances involving alcohol, strippers, and blatant racism. No, rape did not occur that night, but these boys were not sitting at home reading their Bibles. No one in attendance that night was lily white. On the contrary, some of those players engaged in some ugly, disgusting behavior. So while I am glad that the rape charges have been dropped and that these boys have finally been set free, I struggle to join alongside the others who hail them as heroes. Hopefully these young men will redeem the incident by fighting for changes in the legal system that so sorely abused them, but until then, it’s difficult for me to forget the reason that this entire situation transpired in the first place. They may not be guilty of rape, but they, as well as the other men present that night, are certainly guilty of morally reprehensible behavior, and I struggle to exalt such men as “heroes.”

Now the reason I bring all this up is not to start a debate on what did or did not happen that fateful night. Nor do I want to be mistaken as saying that these boys deserved having their names dragged through the mud as payment for their bad behavior. I am by no means making such a claim. What I do propose is that we think about this situation theologically. What does it mean that these young men are both innocent *and* guilty? They are innocent of rape, but guilty of other vile actions, so how are we to label them? Or taken more broadly, what does it mean, in general, when a victim is also a perpetrator? What do we do when the innocent also have blood on their hands?

How do we respond when the innocent are also guilty?

This question is a deeply theological one, because my feeling of being unsettled at the pronouncement of these players’ innocence is actually an echo, though an infinitely smaller one, of what God feel in response to humanity. Though the world may look at many human beings as innocent and inherently good people because they do not murder or commit other atrocities, that’s not enough to satisfy God’s justice. We may be innocent on some counts, but we are guilty of hurting others, of ignoring those who are poor and oppressed, of abusing the environment over which God has given us dominion, of being selfish, prideful, and arrogant. And for this reason, any “innocence” that we pronounce over one another is an essentially cheap, superficial declaration. It is not real, true innocence. The innocence we possess is akin to that of the players in this scandal–it is a sullied innocence, a shallow innocence.

Now again, don’t mistake me as saying that these young men deserved what they got in the last year. I do not believe that, and I fully support their vindication. Nor am I saying that they are bad people–they may very well be great guys who just happened to get caught in a bad situation that is not representative of their character on the whole. But what I do want us to do in the wake of this case is to remember that the state of “innocent yet guilty” that we have witnessed in this scandal does not merely apply to the players, but to the whole of humanity. It is often difficult to conceptualize the nature of our innocence and the degree of our guilt in light of God’s awesome holiness, so when we are tempted towards self-righteousness, or tempted to believe that God is unjust when He condemns the innocent, this case can hopefully provide us with a tangible analogy. We can remember that our innocence is not that of our pure and holy Savior who always loved and never wronged; our innocence is a *guilty* innocence. It is an innocence mired in sin, which is really no innocence at all.

I don’t know if people ever read the comments posted in response to my writing, but I wanted to clarify a comment from my last post that referenced my crush on a guy named “Joseph.” Well, I hate to disappoint in case any of you were trying to figure out who this mysterious “Joseph” is, but the Joseph she’s referring to is the Joseph in Genesis. Either I’m a total nerd, a little bit of a loser, or just really really holy, but here’s the story…

Last week I was preparing Bible study for my college girls, and we were going to be talking about the life of Joseph, so I was reading all about him and how God worked in his life. Well as I was reading what happened to Joseph and how he handled everything in such an amazing and godly way, I realized that my heart had begun to flutter! That’s right, reading about Joseph made me swoon. I mean, seriously, the guy was a total stud! He honored his parents, worked hard, earned the respect and trust of everyone he served, fled from sexual temptation, cared well for those around him, was selfless, was a great leaders, was intelligent, and was even sensitive and quick to forgive. He is the whole package!

The story of Joseph is frequently compared to that of Christ because Joseph was completely blameless (in contrast with other Bible characters like Jacob or David who were definitely not) yet he was still betrayed by the people he loved and served And this comparison with Christ is one of the things I love most about Joseph–he presents us with a standard for our husbands that feels a bit more realistic. While we as women should use Christ as our standard when looking for a husband, the truth of the matter is that we’re not going to marry Christ–we’re going to marry a sinful man. And sometimes this truth makes me think it’s ok to settle…after all, what guy will ever live up to Christ?

But reading about Joseph restores my confidence. Here is a sinful man who was still above reproach in every way, and that is the kind of man I want. And if you ever feel tempted to settle, throw away that romance novel with Fabio on the cover and curl up with Genesis. You can be refreshed and encouraged that there are men of integrity out there.

So even though I was born several thousand years too late, I have no shame in admitting that I have a major crush on Joseph. He’s pretty much the man.