The question over whether or not women should serve as deacons has been hotly debated within the evangelical tradition. Because of the Scriptural priority of male headship, many evangelical traditions have felt that appointing women as deacons would in some way threaten the authority of men. Others refuse to appoint women to the office of deacon because they interpret Scripture as teaching directly against it.

Now to be perfectly honest, I believe there are a lot of passages in Scripture that are quite clear about those roles from which women are to abstain, but I’ve never understood this to be one of them. And that’s what has surprised me about evangelicalism. Many a church that defends the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, holding it up as one of the most foundational doctrines of the Christian faith, seems to run in contradiction with Scripture’s clear teaching on deacons. In Romans 16 Paul speaks of Phoebe, a deaconess he commends, describing her great work in the church. In a tradition that weighs every jot and tittle as being divinely inspired, the denial of women as deacons seemed like a gross evangelical oversight given that Paul himself worked with a female deacon.

This led me to engage some fellow believers on this issue, and I have since learned that there is a plethora of arguments explaining why Paul did not, in fact, permit women to be deacons, nor does the larger context of Scripture.

But interestingly enough, respected evangelical Tim Keller (Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York) disagrees with many of these voices. In an essay defending the place of female deacons in the Church, Keller addresses the objections to appointing women as deacons by carefully examining the Scriptural defense of the practice. To read the whole essay, you can click here.

I won’t rehash all of Keller’s points, but there was one concluding remark that really stood out to me. After delving into all the ways in which Scripture supports the appointment of female deacons, Keller notes that many evangelical churches have nevertheless abstained from this practice for fear of the culture’s perception. There is a worry that in an effort to defend the authority of men in the church, a “perceived authority” related to the office of deacon could be problematic. In response to this concern, Keller writes,

“Many people have said to me over the years they thought that our practice of deaconesses did not flow from our reading of Scripture, but was a capitulation to the egalitarian culture around us. I have tried to show that our reasons are solidly biblical, but I continually try to examine my own heart regarding this. I would only ask our critics to recognize an opposite but equal error. 

In other words, the Bible probably allows it, but let’s not do it because of the culture. Isn’t that also responding to the culture rather than to the text?”

What an important point! We must always be wary of a practice that treats Scriptural teachings as though they are “not practical” in light of our present circumstances, as if the Spirit inspired Words of God did not anticipate the cultural tide of the centuries to come. When we do this, we reveal ourselves to be far more influenced by the culture than we have ever dared to admit, under the guise of prudence.

Today marks the 10 day count down until my WEDDING DAY (woot woot!) which means I will not be posting many new blogs in the next couple weeks (And none during my honeymoon…I hope you understand that I’ll be otherwise occupied). Til then, I’m going to re-post some of my older entries for those of you who missed them the first time. Enjoy!

Yesterday as I sat by the pool reading, I overheard the following conversation between a guy and a girl who were sitting nearby. The young man was criticizing a friend of his who treats women badly:

“The guy talks down to her all the f—ing time! I’m sorry but I could never be such a d—head and f—ing talk to girls like that.”

The girl nodded in full agreement. I imagine her heart swooned to be in the presence of such a gentleman. “Who says chivalry is dead?!” she must have thought.

Can we please back up and review that conversation? Even now I sit in amazement of how ridiculous the whole thing was. While condemning another man for supposedly treating women poorly, this guy was simultaneously showering the girl’s ears with profanity. While criticizing another man for disrespecting women, he was disrespecting her.

And what’s even worse is that she ate it all up! Not once did she see the hypocrisy of his actions. It never dawned on her that he was dishonoring her by speaking so obscenely. In her eyes, his passionate distaste for another man’s sins was chivalry enough.

Sadly, this kind of “chivalry” pervades our culture. For another pertinent example, just look at popular song lyrics today–it’s now a term of endearment when a man calls a woman his “bitch.” Women feel flattered when guys ogle their bodies like pieces of meat in a butcher shop window. And it’s even gotten so bad that women will excuse their husband’s infidelity as long as he doesn’t leave them. These women proudly state, “He may go out with those other women, but he always comes home to me!”

Seriously? Is that the best we can hope for?

The ironic thing is that women have encouraged this behavior as well. In addition to dressing in ways that provoke the exact kind of attention we should be discouraging, some women actually punish men for being gentlemen.

I will never forget the time a guy friend of mine was riding on the bus when a young women got on. There weren’t any seats available, so my friend stood up and offered his seat to her. The girl’s response was surprising. Instead of gratefully taking his seat, she was indignant: “I don’t want your seat! It’s not like I’m too weak to stand!”

This isn’t the only time I’ve heard stories of this kind. I know numerous men who’ve been reprimanded by young ladies when they held the door for them. The mindset, I assume, is that men are treating women as weak, fragile, inferior beings when they condescend to offer such gestures.

This is the backwards world we live in. We have become so confused that we interpret honor as insult. Women are actually demanding disrespect as a sign of respect. Not only do we tolerate it, but we invite it.

But why?

This is a complex question that has many, many different answers, but at the heart of it all is a complete loss of our identity. Women have forgotten that they are the crowning jewel of creation, designed to glorify God with their beauty, requiring honor and respect from the men created to care for them. Women have forgotten that they were made in God’s image, so they should expect men to treat them with the appropriate respect that such an image deserves.

Ladies, we must refuse to participate in a culture that renames dishonor as valor, cowardice as courage, and dominance as strength. We may twist and rationalize every misbehavior possible, but at the end of the day it is still utterly detestable to God Himself, so we must work to view the world through this lens.

And if you have a female friend who is allowing herself to be romanced with this new form of chivalry, please tell her. Remind her that God created her for more than she realizes, so she must not stand by while her beauty, and the beauty of God, are spit upon. We are better than that. And more importantly, God is better than that.

Last week I wrote about Bishop Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, and her denunciation of “personal relationships with Christ” at their General Conference. Though I only alluded to it in that post, there was a second controversial element to the conference, and that was the Church’s decision to ordain homosexuals into the priesthood.

Now I am by no means trying to pick on the Episcopal Church by highlighting them twice in one week, but I came upon a response to the Episcopal Church’s decision, written by N.T. Wright, that I found worth noting. If you aren’t familiar with him, N.T. Wright is a renowned British theologian, and he is also a member of the Anglican Church (the Episcopal Church’s British counterpart). He makes some incredible insights into the the Episcopal Church’s decision from which we can all learn. Not only does he appeal to Scripture and tradition in his defense, but he does so without the emotional work of name-calling or mud-slinging. What follows are some of my favorite excerpts:

On sexual chastity in the Christian tradition:

“Many in TEC (The Episcopal Church) have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional. That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.”

What an important reminder that sexual purity is not just about being holy, but providing a witness for those around us. We are meant to be different, to look different, and our sexual lives are one way that we set ourselves apart from the rest of the world for the glory of God. When we conform to the sexual norms of our surrounding culture, we become like a salt that loses its saltiness (Matt. 5:13).

Wright also responds to the TEC’s notions of justice in relation to human identity–that is, treating all humans justly, regardless of sexual orientation. This was also a great point:

“The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.”

It is always ironic that many of the Christian voices who preach the loudest about community tend to ignore the greater community of Church tradition. We must not be so arrogant as to think that we know better than the 2,000 years of Christian brothers and sisters who preceded us. That is not to say that we shouldn’t hold Church tradition under the scrutiny of Scripture, but in this instance the two are clearly aligned. With that in mind, it’s important that we love those with whom we disagree, but loving them does not mean we are so shaped by the culture that we no longer resemble the Church established by Jesus Christ.

To read Wright’s entire response, click here.

You might remember this past Spring when the news broke about insurance heavy weight A.I.G. providing its employees with $165 million in bonuses. During any other year, no one would have even blinked at that amount, but not this year. Why? Because AIG had just been bailed out by the U.S. Government, receiving more than $170 billion of taxpayer money. To the watching world, these bonuses seemed ludicrous–why reward the very people who brought the company to the brink of collapse?

It was also a slap in the face. After bailing out an undeserving company from its almost certain demise, A.I.G. was taking advantage of that generosity.

Well I was reminded of the A.I.G. fiasco last night as I had dinner with my fiancé. We hadn’t gone out on a date in a long time, so we decided to do it up right! We picked a nice restaurant that we couldn’t normally afford and got all dressed up for night on the town. As we sat down at our table, we noticed that at the table next to us sat a group who clearly attended church together, if not served on staff. One of them was, in fact, the pastor. They talked about baptism services, Bible commentaries, and church attendance. They seemed like a fun group, and I was really close to interrupting their conversation with a socially awkward, “Hey, I overheard you talking and we’re Christians too!”

But then something happened that stopped me. When the bill came the pastor paid for all of them, and I heard one of the members of the party say how nice it was for the church to treat them all. Even with their small group, the prices at the restaurant were so expensive that their bill would have easily been hundreds of dollars.

And the church was paying for it.

I’ve been processing this experience ever since, and I still feel very torn about it. Granted, I do not have all the information, but this sort of thing is not uncommon. I spoke with someone the other day who said their church pays for their pastor’s meals with church members at the local country club. But is this really how we should be spending our church budget?

In economic times like these, Christians are giving sacrificially to their churches, providing for staff salaries that are often higher than their own, and trusting that those pennies are being used to further the Kingdom of God. So while I don’t believe that a pastor should be poorer than the poorest member of their congregation, I wonder where we should draw the line of extravagance. Even if a member or potential member is a high profile person in the community, and the pastor feels it is more appropriate to meet with them at the country club than Bojangles, I would think there are a lot of cheaper options on the spectrum between the two.

Now there is an extent to which we must “be all things to all people,” but how far do we take it? My dad actually agrees with pastors who do this, and he reminded me of the importance of trusting my pastor’s judgement. That point cannot be understated. So I’m going to open up the floor to other people’s input. I’m going to be honest, I am VERY skeptical about all this–Jesus didn’t exactly schmooze people into the Kingdom with steak dinners–but I’m open to having my mind changed. What do you think?

Greek mythology tells the story of a man named Narcissus who was exceptionally cruel, even to those who loved him. As a punishment from the gods for a life poorly-lived, Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Not realizing it was his own, Narcissus was so captivated by his image that he was unable to leave until he eventually perished there.

It is from this story that we get the term “narcissism”–an inordinate fascination with oneself, or excessive self-love. Vanity.

In extreme cases, this narcissism has been diagnosed as a type of personality disorder.  In fact, the disorder has served as a scapegoat in the face of bad decision making–such as that of former senator John Edwards, whose explanation for committing adultery was “a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want.”

Now as much as these political scandals are almost becoming cliché, studies are now showing that such narcissism is not just for politicians anymore–it’s becoming more and more common among average Americans. A new book by psychology professors W. Keith Campbell and Jean Twenge entitled The Narcissism Epidemic charts the dramatic rise in the number of Americans who have the narcissism disorder. In a nationally representative sample of 35,000 Americans, one out of 16 respondents registered as a narcissist on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. These are people who agreed with statements like: “If I ruled the world it would be a much better place,” or, “I will never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve,” and, “I find it easy to manipulate people.”

And young people appear to be the worst, registering highest in the population. Nearly 10 percent of twenty-somethings reported narcissistic symptoms, compared with only 3 percent of those over 65.

But what I found most interesting about the study was its conclusions about narcissism’s effect’s on society as a whole–and more specifically, dating and marriage. Interestingly, the rise in narcissism has been proportionate to the rise in the American “hook-up culture,” which the researchers explain as follows: “One of the hallmarks of a narcissist is short-term relationships that don’t require a lot of emotional investment…The current trend right now, especially among younger people, is that ‘I’m going to focus on myself, not on forging an emotionally close relationship.’”

Unfortunately, the consequences don’t end there. Narcissism has even more severe consequences for marriage. Because of the self-help culture mentality which teaches “I am great,” Americans have begun to scrutinize their romantic partners with a kind of “You better be great too” mentality. Twenge and Campbell have therefore concluded that the solution to having a healthy romantic relationship is NOT learning to love yourself first: “There is no evidence that people with very high self-esteem are any better in a relationship than people with low self-esteem.”

As Hannah Seligson of The Daily Beast summarized the situation,

“Narcissism, even in small doses, has shifted courtship into a high-stakes relationship culture. Now that people think more highly of themselves, expectations of what a relationship should be like have skyrocketed into the realm of superlatives. Twentysomethings not only expect to waltz into high-level career positions right out of college, they also expect partners who have the moral fortitude of Nelson Mandela, the comedic timing of Stephen Colbert, the abs of Hugh Jackman, and the hair of Patrick Dempsey.”

People are no longer encouraged to compromise or be patient. It is all about being fulfilled and making yourself happy, a practice that is not only toxic in marriages, but can lead to larger family problems. Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity explains, “Think of parenting. When your kid is being a pain, parents have to see the bigger picture—that being a parent has so many benefits and a deeper joy. It’s a perspective that people in good marriages have. Narcissists, however, have a big blind spot. For them, it’s about being fulfilled all the time.” This would perhaps explain why Americans are waiting much longer to have children, and on their own schedule.

It also explains why so many marriages are crumbling. Perel explains, “The culture of narcissism is about your personal happiness coming first and your partner coming second. It’s what’s at the core of divorce.”

So what does all of this mean for the self-help movement that seems to have fed our narcissistic culture? Some experts are saying it’s time to dump it. Therapist and relationship expert Terry Real concludes,

“There is a national obsession with feeling good about yourself. We have done a good job teaching people to come up from shame, but have ignored the issue of having people come down from grandiosity. Everything from feminism to 12-step recovery to religion has become about ‘I was weak, now I’m strong, go screw yourself. The danger is in narcissists taking this too far and blaming their partners if they’re not 100 percent satisfied in their love lives.”

All of this research seems to indicate that the Greeks had it right thousands of years ago when they first spun the tale of Narcissus: an over-emphasis on self leads to death. Perhaps not a physical death, but the death of everything around you–relationships, marriage, and family. And as Christians, we should not be surprised. All that narcissism really is is a form of idolatry–worship of the self. So while we should learn to love ourselves in a way that is healthy and recognizes the divine image in our created being, we should never be in the business of pushing self-help resources. Too many Christians teachers and writers fall on the wrong side of that line.

* For more on this, check out Hannah Seligson’s entire article here.

This week the Episcopal Church created yet another stir at its General Conference when the presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori denounced the idea of a personal relationship with God through Christ as heresy (that is, a contradiction with the truth of Scripture and belief of the Church). She explained,

“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy –- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being.“

She later added,

“I said that this crisis has several elements related to that heretical and individualistic understanding. We’ve touched on one – how we keep the earth, meant to be a gift to all God’s creatures. The financial condition of the nations right now is another element. The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity – and that’s just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail. If we want to be faithful, we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones.“

The great irony of the Bishop’s statement is that the Episcopal Church has embodied this very individualism against which she rants, by departing from the bulk of Church tradition in their ordination of homosexuals. In doing so, the Episcopal Church has actually isolated itself from the larger community of faith, a move that some might call ecclesiologically individualistic.

But aside from that minor detail, I actually think there is something to her words. Bishop Jefferts Schori is right in critiquing the idea of “my personal Jesus”–an understanding of Jesus that not only enables one to isolate one’s self from other Christians, washing their hands of any responsibility to others, and refusing accountability from the larger Church, but it can also turn Jesus into a kind of custom order Savior who serves your particular needs–namely, not going to Hell.

In the face of such distortions, I can understand why Bishop Jefferts Schori would raise an eyebrow. The language of “personal relationship” has been used in the name of some very unscriptural practices.

However, Bishop Jefferts Schori goes awry in her identification of the problem’s source. The problem is not the language of the personal–the problem is how we’ve used it. A healthy understanding of “personal” is that God knows you intimately as a person. He “knit you together in your mother’s womb” and he knows “when you rise and when you fall.” Just read Psalm 139–it doesn’t get much more “personal” than that.

What’s more, God is not some far off entity who is only accessible through a system. If you need God, you can cry out to Him–yet another practice we see all throughout the Psalms. Yet Bishop Jefferst Schori elevates community to a level of near idolatry given how thoroughly she founds salvation upon it. If salvation is both by faith AND community alone, then we can offer little comfort to missionaries, both abroad and in the American workplace, who find themselves isolated from other Christians with whom they can fellowship.

But most importantly of all, I would like to know how Bishop Jefferts Schori would reconcile her idea of heresy with Paul’s method of conversion in Acts 16. The Philippian jailer, frightened by an earthquake that had freed the Christian prisoners, comes to Paul and asks, “What must I do to be saved.” Paul simply responds, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

When we depart from this said “formula,” we wander dangerously close to the heresy from which Martin Luther fought to free the Church 500 years ago. J.D. Greear once stated, “Salvation is by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” We must let this truth serve as a boundary for our language about “personal relationships,” but the personal aspect must remain. When we reject it, we not only stray from the model of salvation given to us in Scripture, but we lose any hope of reaching a human race that was designed to be inherently relational.

It’s been a couple months now since the controversy surrounding Carrie Prejean first blew up. Since then Prejean abdicated her Miss California throne and has been touring the Christian speaking circuit supporting traditional marriage and Christian values. I just watched a video of her appearance at Liberty University, and in it she is considerably more composed and articulate than she has typically been portrayed. You can check it out for yourself here.

Although Prejean’s interview was well-done and uplifting, I couldn’t help but get hung up on something. Over and over again the interviewers commended her unwillingness to compromise and her boldness to stand for Christ. Prejean herself challenged the students at Liberty to do the same. Yet every time she and Liberty’s chancellor discussed her strength under pressure and the importance of personal holiness in a worldly culture, one image kept flashing into my mind: The swimsuit competition.

I don’t know what Liberty’s dress code is, but I would be willing to bet they frown on women donning string bikinis, let alone parading around in one before millions of viewers on television. In fact, most church youth groups won’t even let their girls wear a two-piece bathing suit to camp.

But before jumping to any conclusions, I decided to do a little research. I found that Prejean did wear a skimpy bikini in the contest, but she was not the first professing Christian to do so. Last week the latest Miss America appeared on the 700 Club with evangelical Pat Robertson, and she talked about her faith in Christ and and the central role it played in her life. When I googled her name, a picture of her in a tiny black, barely there bikini popped up.

I tried finding photos of contestants wearing one-piece bathing suits in these competitions, but they were few and far between. In the process of searching I actually discovered that it was in the mid-90′s when the Miss America Pageant began encouraging participants to wear two-pieces instead of one. The organization highlighted the skimpier and less inhibited bathing suits in its promotions in order to boost ratings.

While I am not morally opposed to two-piece bathing suits (I own a few myself) I am bothered by 2 things about the nature of these competitions:

1. The Display Factor–these women aren’t just wearing the suits because they’re comfortable or to get a good tan, but to show off their nearly naked bodies to a watching audience. Displaying one’s body is the sole purpose of the swimwear.

2. The Face Factor–While there is some emphasis on personality, intelligence, and philanthropy, you don’t exactly see a lot of chubby girls up there. Try as they might to convince us otherwise, we all know that at the end of the day, a woman will not become Miss America on the basis of a great personality if she’s got a little junk in her trunk. That said, the pageant compares women on some characteristics that hold little value in God’s economy. In a culture of womanhood that is already so competitive, should we really be encouraging women to willingly subject themselves to it?

But what really concerns me more than anything else is the way Christian media outlets seem to eat this stuff up. In addition to Liberty’s broadcast, Prejean appeared on Focus on the Family and presented an award at the Dove Awards. Is that really wise? While some of these women do profess Christ in public and that is a good thing, does being pretty, Christian and famous automatically qualify someone as a role model for young Christian women? Even the young lady on the 700 Club admitted that she rarely goes to church because of her busy schedule. As a member of the Body of Christ, that is a significant problem, yet Pat Robertson nodded along with a sympathetic look that conveyed, “I totally understand.”

It may not be clear from my tone, but I do feel torn on this issue. After all, we need Christians EVERYWHERE–we need believers in the workplace, the government, Hollywood, etc. so that we can be salt and light to the world around us. But that doesn’t mean women should become strippers for the sake of reaching other strippers. The Miss America Pageant is not nearly that extreme, but it is a point worth considering.  Is it possible for a Christian woman to participate in a competition that compares her with others on the basis of their looks, shed their modesty as they stand before millions in a tiny bikini, and still be uncompromisingly faithful to God?

I’m not going to give an answer to that question, but I do know this–conservative evangelical institutions that are loud about modesty and personal holiness might pick their spokespeople wisely. Fame and visibility are the kind of qualifiers that will later come back to bite you.

Ever since I was a small child I can remember watching valiant attempts at effective, anti-drug campaigns on t.v. Who can forget the famous father and son drug confrontation??–”I learned it from watching you!” (In case you aren’t familiar with this 80′s classic, you can check it out here)

Twenty years later those commercials still pepper the television. And while some of them remain unconvincing, some of them are also pretty creative. In particular, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign  launched an ad this past May that I really liked:

This commercial is noteworthy due to its insight about motivations. Many of the “voices” that the young man hears are actually quite good ones. He would be foolish not to listen to them. They are providing healthy, compelling reasons to stay off drugs.

Yet this ad recognizes the pitfalls of listening to those “good voices.” Were he to follow their advice, even when it’s good, the teen would still be engaging in the same faulty decision-making that led him astray in the first places: It’s all a form of peer pressure. Whether it’s a pot-head friend at school or his concerned parents, these voices are all exerting a kind of pressure that sways his conscience in their direction, rather than helping him to form opinions of his own.

So instead of being tossed around by the various voices of others, this ad encourages teens to make their own decisions. In doing so, teens will have an immovable North Star amidst the storm of competing voices.

On one level, I think this perspective is brilliant. It exposes the human tendency to people-please, the vanity of it, and the ways in which this desire can pervert even the best of intentions. But what’s even more significant to me is that this type of well-intentioned people-pleasing is very present in the Church. Frequently Christians are motivated not by God’s opinion, but the opinions of other Christians. This kind of people-pleasing is sometimes hard to identify because it often results in a seemingly healthy Christian life. The opinions that are most revered are frequently very sound and good. Yet we go astray whenever our primary spiritual compass is determined by them. Rather than weigh our lives against the teachings of Christ and God’s Word, we listen more intently to those Christians whom we most respect.

And that leads us to the ultimate flaw with the anti-drug ad. It fails to actually identify the only voice that matters–God’s. Contrary to what the commercial implies, the teenager’s own voice is really no different from the other voices he hears. As fallible humans, our emotions and circumstances cloud our judgment and give us conflicting messages all the time. Discerning the difference between your voice and others can often be a nearly impossible task. At times, the two are indistinguishable.

And the same is true for Christians. When we are driven by the opinions of others, even if their advice is godly, we are doing little more than the insecure teenager who is enslaved to the opinion of her peers. While the outcome may look different on the outside–one lifestyle appears to be healthy while the other does not–the underlying motives are the same. Both the Christian and the teenager are building upon a foundation that will ultimately falter.

That is why our only true North Star is the voice of the Father. Only the perfect words of Scripture can anchor us amidst the voices of others and ourselves. That is why a better, more holistic closing to the ad would therefore read, “The only voice that matters is Yours.” In our culture, that is a message that every teenager, every woman, and every Christian needs to hear.

What is spiritual leadership?

This is a question about which there has been a great deal of confusion among Christians. Scripture teaches that we are to date and marry men who are spiritual leaders (1 Cor. 11:3), and Scripture also teaches us to date and marry men with whom we are equally yoked (2. Cor. 6:14).* The problem is that these two elements are not always discussed in conjunction with one another. Oftentimes Christians fail to view them as two equally important aspects of a dating relationship, aspects that hold one another in a complementary tension.

For many women, we subconsciously interpret “equally yoked” to mean: “as spiritually mature as I am, but preferably more mature if possible.” That is, we want to date someone as mature as we are, but we would prefer someone who is more mature. Why? Because we want him to be a spiritual leader, and he can probably do that best if he’s already more mature.

This mentality is not only unscriptural, but it can result in several negative consequences. First, it can deflate a woman’s motivation to push herself spiritually. After all, you don’t want to be so mature that there aren’t many guys who can lead you. Second, this mentality can lead to a marital dynamic in which the husband is significantly more mature than the wife. Even if she is not noticeably immature, she may not be as radically committed to know and serve God. But since she doesn’t have to be the spiritual leader, it doesn’t seem as important, as long as she’s a Christian.

The problem with this way of viewing Christian marriage is that it fulfills one Scriptural teaching while ignoring the other–yes, the man is leading spiritually, but are the two equally yoked? Not necessarily.

Spiritual leadership does not necessarily mean that the husband is significantly more mature than his wife. If he is, then the two are not really equally yoked. What’s more, the man is actually doing himself a disservice because he has not married someone who can REALLY challenge him. While he may be the spiritual leader in the relationship, it is likely that he will grow less because he is not married to a woman who has the capacity to push him the way he needs.

That said, spiritual leadership does not mean that the husband spiritually dominates his wife. On the contrary, it simply means that the man works harder. He’s got to step up, think ahead, anticipate, pray for wisdom, and humble himself, because being a spiritual leader has nothing to do with spiritual superiority–it has to do with fulfilling a role. If a man leads a woman who is just as solid as he is, then it’s going to be challenging for him to be the leader, but he’ll grow tremendously because of it.

With that in mind, men and women both have a challenge before them. Men, don’t allow spiritual leadership to be your only criteria in choosing a girl. Even if she’s a nice Christian girl, it’s not enough to know that you can lead her. Make sure you two are equally yoked as well. Make sure she is at the same place as you spiritually so that she is sure to challenge you, rather than pulling you down to her level.

And ladies, don’t be afraid to push yourselves. Not only are you doing yourself a service by pursuing God with radical ferocity, but you are serving your husbands as well. Remember, it takes iron to sharpen iron, so we cannot sharpen our husbands if we ourselves are not made of the right material.

Date a spiritual leader? Yes. But be equally yoked as well. Never have one without the other.

*The first time I posted this, a number of people questioned my interpretation of the phrase “equally yoked,” taken from 2 Cor. 6:14.  Given that the context seems to deal only with unbelievers, and it is more broadly applied to fellowship rather than marriage, that is a fair critique. However, when this verse is read in conjunction with other passages in Scripture (such as Old Testament commandments against marrying pagans–Gen. 28:1, Ex. 34:12) it is clear that Scripture clearly stands against yoking yourself in marriage with one who does not share the same faith.

In addition to this point, verses that teach us about maintaining the integrity of the Church are also applicable to marriage, given that marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. That said, verses such as Proverbs 27:17 (“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.) not only apply to Christian friendship, but should certainly be present in marriage.

Finally, it’s important to remember the visual that “equal yoking” conjures for us. When two oxen were unequally yoked as they plowed a field–that is to say that one was stronger than the other–the oxen were unable to plow in a straight line. Their work was impaired by their unequal yoking, and while this analogy can clearly apply to relationships between Christians and non-Christians, it can apply to relationships between mature Christians and immature Christians as well. If a mature Christian marries a nominal Christian and subsequently discerns a call to the mission field, it will be difficult for them to walk in a “straight line” so to speak.

All of that to say, in using the passage in 2 Corinthians to advise Christians against being unequally yoked in marriage, this is not so much a reckless lifting of the verse from its context as it is a reading of the passage within the larger context of the whole canon of Scripture.

May we celebrate our freedom to express faith in Christ, but may we never cling to that freedom more than Christ.

Today I am celebrating the freedom bought for us on American battlefields, and the freedom bought for us on the cross. Happy Independence Day!