This week I was researching a topic for work when I discovered an interesting tidbit of church history. Apparently, birthdays used to be a big deal for Christians, and not in a good way. Early in the church’s history, birthday celebrations–particularly those of emperors or kings–were associated with pagan culture and were consequently condemned.

For instance, early church theologian Origen (ca. 185-254 ca.) wrote rather scathingly,

Indeed one of our predecessors has observed that the birthday of Pharaoh is recorded in Genesis and recounts that it is the wicked man who, being in love with the affairs of birth and becoming, celebrates his birthday. But we, taking our cure from that interpreter, discover that nowhere in the scriptures is a birthday celebrated by a righteous person.

At that time, Roman society was big on birthdays. You might even remember that John the Baptist was beheaded in celebration of Herod’s birthday (Matt. 14). The early Christians therefore rejected this practice as a sign of distinction from the surrounding pagan culture. As a result, Christians did not formally observe Christmas for the first 300 years of the church’s existence.

Today, the rejection of birthday celebrations sounds rather silly. Few of us have a lot of theological stock invested in this practice. However, this type of historical eccentricity is not uncommon. Throughout the history of the church, each generation has grappled with issues that were pressing at the time, but became less central or even marginal by subsequent generations.

For another example, consider Christian music today. There are more Christian recording artists than I can count, and worship pastors frequently lead with songs they have written themselves. The present-day church is producing new music every day.

But it has not always been so. Isaac Watts, who famously wrote “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “Joy to the World” created quite the scandal with his hymn writing. Born in 1674, Watts lived at a time when the only acceptable hymns came directly from Biblical poetry. Watts bucked this tradition by writing “original music,” a decision that invited tremendous criticism and character attacks. His music was described as “flights of fancy” and “Watts’ whims.” He was accused of arrogance, and his introduction of this new hymn tradition resulted in church debate and division. Today, we take this practice for granted.

For a final example, consider re-baptism. I have heard countless evangelical pastors encourage church members to get baptized on the grounds that the first one wasn’t “meaningful” or “you didn’t really know what you believed at the time” or “you did it for the wrong reasons.” Plenty of modern day Christians would be shocked by this language (in fact, I myself profoundly disagree with the theology behind those statements) but our disagreement is nothing compared to the horror such words would have elicited in the Protestant Reformers.

In his work “Concerning Rebaptism,” Martin Luther decried the above reasons for re-baptism as “godless and hypocritical” because they place greater emphasis on personal faith than on the free grace of God. On the grounds that re-baptism was the equivalent of re-crucifying Christ, many Anabaptists (which means “baptize again”) were executed for their beliefs.

Although baptism, as a central component of the Christian faith, is of far greater importance than birthdays or hymns, I think we can all agree that the Reformers’ response to re-baptism was, in the most extreme cases, wrong. No matter how much I may disagree with another Christian about their views on baptism, I am not prepared to kill them over it.

As you can see, it is easy for a generation to lose perspective. Whether the issue is small or large, our circumstances can magnify a problem in such a way that we cannot grasp its true perspective. Learning this lesson from church history, we do well to remember that spiritual stumbling blocks come in all shapes and sizes. They are not limited to sinful temptations. A theological truth can just as easily become a stumbling block as money or sex.

The church’s track record should humble us. It should also press us to wonder about our own generation’s theological stumbling blocks. What current debate will cause later Christians to snicker or grieve? What are our greatest theological or missional blind spots?

While I have my own suspicions, I also wonder how I can ever be sure. Either way, I think the very asking of these questions is bound to shape us in edifying ways.

Last week I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of my former professor, Reynolds Price. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Price and his literary contributions, he was a great Southern writer who taught English at Duke for over 50 years. Before establishing himself as a writer of vivid novels and poems, he studied at Oxford alongside poets like W.H. Auden while learning under the tutelage of thinkers like C.S. Lewis. He was one of Bill Clinton’s favorite authors, he spent the last 25 years of his life as a paraplegic after surviving spinal cancer, and he was a Christian.

Price was indeed a complex man. Although he was a man of faith his beliefs were rarely orthodox. In one of my classes with him, we studied the four gospels and used them as inspiration for creative writing. For our final assignment we were asked to write a gospel of our own, a fictional short story in which we drew on the Biblical gospels to imagine how we might have felt in the disciples’ shoes, or how Jesus might have responded to situations never portrayed in Scripture. The exercise might sound heretical at first, but the goal was not to change the gospel story. It was meant to expand our imaginations so that we might think more deeply about the gospel accounts.

Price introduced me to the intersection of faith and imagination. It was a concept that I would later hear more about in seminary, but I confess that I never truly appreciated its importance. Evangelicals are more concerned with facts, not dreams. We want to know what the Bible says and exactly what it means. And while that desire is not necessarily wrong, it can also limit us. Not everything in the Bible can be reduced to easy truth statements. God and His infinite nature cannot be comprehended by a book of theology. And that is why concrete, scientific systems of belief can, at times, become a hindrance to faith.

There is no better example of the limiting consequences of a malnourished imagination than the example of Bishop John Shelby Spong. Spong is a controversial figure in the Episcopal church, having written lightning-rod books such as The Sins of Scripture and Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong has had many critics, to be sure, but there is one that I will never forget. Former Dean of the Duke Chapel, William Willimon, cited the following example as being emblematic of Spong’s error:

In thinking about Easter, Bishop John Spong asked a public-radio interviewer, “How can my daughter, who is earning her Ph.D. in physics, possibly be asked to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus?” The answer, I suppose, depends on Spong’s daughter…How little imagination does his daughter now have?

Willimon goes on to add, “The text cannot be blamed if modern people…live by epistemologies too limited to enable them to hear the text.” (Exilic Preaching, p. 110)

This account is a prime example of why imagination is not a frivolous, liberal pursuit. It is a godly discipline. Without it we will be tempted to rely solely on what we can see, hear and know with our senses, instead of opening ourselves to the greater reality of God, a reality that the small-visioned status quo is unable to grasp. Without imagination we will live lives that look just like the world, assuming that Christian virtues like purity, generosity, and humility are too hard or too much to ask. We will be unable to imagine that “God can save my marriage” or “God can forgive my past” or “God will vindicate me if I forgive.”

That is why the nurture of imagination is an important Christian practice. But how can you grow your imagination? It begins by reading the Bible and immersing yourself in a community of believers who are living faithfully to Christ. From there, you can do anything from reading a marvelous book of fiction, to listening to music that inspires you, to experiencing a new culture. Anything that expands your horizons and teaches you new dimensions of God’s character in a way that cultivates your ability to dream. However you choose to nurture your imagination, remember the example of Bishop Spong and know that your witness depends on it.

I will close with a quote from one physicist who did believe in the power of imagination: Albert Einstein. The title of this post is taken from his words, and he elaborated on that statement with the following challenge:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 10:5:

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

This verse has sustained me during a LOT of tough times. Whenever I have felt depressed or despairing, this verse has helped me to steel my mind against the lies that undoubtedly start to creep in–lies about myself, my friends, and God. So much of the way I think, feel, and see the world begins at the level of the mind. My perspective all hinges on what kinds of thoughts I dwell on, because those thoughts shape me in subtle yet profound ways. Which is why I have worked hard to fight off any thoughts that conflict with the character of God. By guarding my mind I also guard my heart, and my life.

This week, however, I noticed a completely different way of reading 2 Corinthians 10:5. Rather than interpret “thought” as an idea that originates in my brain and inhabits my personal thought life, it can also refer to a public teaching or societal set of beliefs that is outside myself, such as a secular worldview.

Why does this matter?

Have you ever noticed that the church is generally about 10 steps behind the culture? We like to say that we’re just preserving ourselves amidst secular moral decline, but in all honesty we’re usually just behind it. The reason the church often trails behind society is that many Christians refuse to engage  ideas, methods or trends that are not explicitly Christian. Instead, we read Christian books and Christian magazines, listen to Christian music, and study Christian thinkers. We horde together in a Christian bubble and shelter ourselves from the outside world.

As a result of limiting ourselves to this relatively small circle of experience and thought, Christian culture does not benefit from the same range of ideas in the world. That’s why Christian contributions to the arts and the academy are so often looked down on by the rest of the world. It’s not a secular conspiracy. It’s because Christians aren’t exposing themselves to the wealth of artistic and intellectual resources out there, and our “fruits” betray us. In general, there isn’t the same depth or creativity that one finds in the mainstream.

In the face of this dilemma, 2 Corinthians 10:5 is a great reminder that we don’t need to hide from the culture. We shouldn’t feel pressure to preserve ourselves by existing in the spiritual equivalent of a padded room. Rather than hide from non-Christian ideas or trends, we are to engage them and even learn from them. If there is anything about an idea or practice that is hostile to the gospel then we can take those particular thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. We can tweak them and grow them, but we don’t have to fear them. Maybe then instead of trailing the culture, we can finally get ahead of it.

What do you think? Do you agree?

This week I heard a truly fascinating story on NPR about why ALL humans, no matter their skepticism, are inclined to sense or experience the supernatural. The story began with a scientist named Jesse Bering who was a confessing atheist but, upon losing his mom, had a supernatural experience. The evening after her passing, he heard the wind chimes chiming outside her room, as if to indicate that his mother had safely “passed to the other side.”

Upon having this thought, Bering was surprised at himself. Where did this thought come from? As a seasoned skeptic and proud scientist, why did his brain so easily drift into this non-scientific belief? Bering was fascinated by the psychological implications of his experience, so he decided to study it.

Bering is not the first to ask this question. As the NPR story explained, “In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system,” a reality that has grabbed the attention of the scientific community and warranted much research.

You can read more about Bering’s study here, but for the moment I want to focus on his conclusions. After years of research, Bering has slightly altered his formerly atheist stance: “I’ve always said that I don’t believe in God, but I don’t really believe in atheists either.” He explains, “Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives.”

The article goes on to summarize Bering’s findings: The belief that “supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother’s death.” As Bering puts it, “They experience it but they reject it. [They] sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that’s not to say that they don’t experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way.”

The story goes on to interview other scientists who speculate that this belief in God may be some kind of evolutionary development, a type of survival mechanism. But as the narrator herself concludes, these theories are nothing more than pure speculation. Scientists can never really know from where this human inclination originated. They can only draw on evolutionary theory to guess.

Now, I find two things about this story particularly fascinating. The first is that, in spite of his findings, Bering has persisted in espousing an anti-supernatural worldview. As a scientist, he is simply not open to the possibility that every human culture throughout the history of the world has believed in some sort of god because there might actually be one. The irony of his unflinching stance is the unscientific nature of it. He approached a problem with a foregone conclusion. If ever there was an argument to be made for the “religious faith” that individuals have in science, this is it. Bering admits to experiencing the transcendent echoes of a grander reality, and simultaneously denies it.

However this study also has interesting implications for how Christians approach atheists. So often we feel the need to defend God aggressively, as if He can’t defend Himself. Let us not be so proud. In Luke 19:40 Jesus reminds us that even if we are silent, the rocks themselves will cry out. God’s fingerprints can be found all over this world, including the humans who inhabit it. He created our very souls–in His image, no less–which means the most staunch of skeptics cannot help but encounter the divine…a point that human philosophers and theologians have always claimed throughout history, and that scientists are just now discovering.

Given this human tendency, Christians are reminded that when unbelievers deny the existence of God, it’s not always for lack of belief. As Bering so aptly put it, many atheists engage in a willful suppression of their natural inclinations. Bering might be surprised to learn that his wording is almost a direct quote from Romans 1:18.

But let’s get back to the practical implications of Bering’s admission. One of the things we learn is that the battle is not always fought and won in the arena of logic. That is why Jesus so heavily emphasizes an apologetic of love, not rhetoric. It’s not that reason has no place in this debate, but logic isn’t always the real issue. Rather than play a game of tit for tat with people who may argue with science but have also been frustrated or hurt by the church, it’s important to recognize the power of gentleness and grace. It is indeed discouraging to dialogue with individuals who have pre-existing biases no matter what you say and no matter what evidence there is to the contrary, but it is also true that atheists feel the same about us. Let us therefore be known foremost by our unreasonable love, and trust that God is always on the move in invisible but undeniable ways.

As most of you know by now, I moved to the Chicago area last month to pursue a PhD in Educational Studies with a focus on Women’s Ministry. The field of Educational Studies is wonderfully relevant for ministers–it examines the many factors that shape how we think and live, not just in the classroom but in churches, politics, media, etc. Throughout our entire lives we are in the process of learning and growing, and what I want to study in my particular degree is what that means for women. How are women being shaped by the influences around them? How do women learn, and is it different from men? And what does that mean for how the church disciples them?

As I study this topic over the next 3 to 4 years, I hope to share with you some of what I learn. It’s important to me that I keep my philosophical studies grounded in real life, so I’m aiming to use my blog as a means to that end. With that in mind, this post serves as the first installment of this new phase in my writing!

So here goes…

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

- Proverbs 16:25

Today I was reading a secular book that examines the dominant worldviews of our culture, and how we are shaped by them in some unexpectedly negative ways. In particular, the book examined what it means to live in a capitalist society and how that affects the way we see the world. What struck me about this topic is that some philosophers have made a surprising connection between our capitalist economy and the state of marriage today.

(If you just zoned out at the sight of the word “capitalism,” stick with me! Whether you’re an econ buff or not–I most definitely am NOT–your daily life and the way you see the world is profoundly affected by what I’m about to stay, so hang with me a bit longer!)

Most conservative Christians offer total endorsements of capitalism and the virtues of having a free market that encourages excellence through competition. While I am not trying to have an argument here about the pros and cons of capitalism, this wholesale embrace of the capitalist way of life has had some unintended consequences. Specifically, it has infiltrated our worldviews and shaped the way we approach life in a more general sense. Consider these excerpts from two different philosophers on the relationship between capitalism and marriage/intimacy:

“Under the exchange economy, we view a loving relationship as ‘a mutually favorable exchange,’ with love as something existing outside our core, a commodity we trade with others for a fair return. Love under capitalism is governed by the ethic of fairness, ‘the particular ethical contribution of capitalist society.’ Where love is concerned, ”I give you as much as you give me’ is the prevalent ethical norm in capitalist society.’” (Excerpts from Erich Fromm in Brookfield, p. 178)

“We treat relationships as profit-making activities to which we can apply a cost-benefit analysis of emotional dividends that accrue to us. In this way of thinking, a relationship is successful if its participants enjoy a good rate of return on their emotional investment in the form of ego aggrandizement, sexual favors, or receipt of unconditional positive regard.” (Stephen Brookfield, The Power of Critical Theory, 2004, p. 257)

As a result of this mindset, our marriages and our capacity for intimacy suffer:

“The most personal relationships are subject to this drive for exchange…This is true even when talking of those who claim to be in love. In Fromm’s view people ‘fall in love when they feel they have found the best object available on the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange value.’ When love is conceived of as an exchange, then true intimacy–’union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity’–is impossible.” (Brookfield, p. 162-163)

Sound too harsh? Sound too cold and analytical to be a realistic description of human beings? While most people probably don’t make a formal cost-benefit analysis chart of a relationship before deciding to marry or divorce, the basic mindset is all there. I see it quite clearly in my own life! For instance, I sometimes find myself tabulating how much my husband has done for me and then measuring it against what I’ve done for him. If I perceive a discrepancy, I suddenly feel disappointed and dissatisfied with the relationship, entitled to more than I’ve been given. And of course this language is all of the place in divorce proceedings: “He just wasn’t making me happy anymore,” or “It was too hard. It wasn’t worth what I was putting into it.”

I see this mindset in other areas of my life as well, such as friendships. Have you ever contemplated spending time with someone based upon whether it’s worth the effort? Perhaps you decided whether to pursue a friendship based on how much they entertain you or make you laugh? That is a carry-over from living in a thoroughly capitalist society, and while that type of thinking may be appropriate on Wall Street, it is unfitting for the Body of Christ, and certainly our marriages.

All of that to say, I am not intending to launch an all-out attack on capitalism, but this is a very stern caution for sure. There are a number of Christians who have, in so many words, described capitalism as “God’s best:” If God were to design an economy, this is what He would lay out! When we begin using that kind of language we have strayed into VERY dangerous territory. Any time we equate a secular institution or construction with the Gospel, our doctrine will start to slip and our lifestyles will soon follow. We will no longer be oriented by Gospel-centered principles but will instead be compromised by competing allegiances.

What is the take-away lesson here?

It’s about guarding yourself against worldviews that compete for the Gospel’s primacy in your life. Our marriages aren’t falling apart simply because of the hyper-sexuality we see on t.v. or the moral pluralism that has infiltrated our culture. Those factors are devastating to marriage, to be sure. But we must also consider that Christians have whole-heartedly embraced a system that examines everything according to how it profits us, a mindset that can quickly sabotage a marriage. Such a wholesale endorsement of any belief-system other than the Gospel is bound to give us far more than we ever bargained for.

In the last couple of weeks I have encountered two different Christian arguments against interracial marriage that have left me feeling extremely unsettled. One was a random website that I happened upon by accident, but the other was a story on national radio about a black man who wasn’t allowed to date a white woman because her father, a pastor, said the Bible forbade it. It may have been a coincidence that these two encounters happened within such a short period of time, but as a Christian with a voice I cannot stand by and say nothing. This isn’t simply about racism but the character of God and the nature of His Gospel. That said, in the event that you ever come across one of these bunk arguments yourself, here is a brief look at what the Bible REALLY says about this issue.

Objection #1: God Wants to Keep the Race Pure

One of the arguments against interracial marriage is based upon verses such as Deut. 7:1-4 or Genesis 28:1–”So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman.” Throughout the history of the church, Canaanites have been commonly associated with people of African descent, thus fueling the interpretations leveled against interracial marriage. I’ll explain more about this in my next point, but for this point’s purposes it is true that throughout the Old Testament, God’s people are not only warned against marrying Canaanites, but they are cautioned against marrying anyone outside the group.

Why? Is God trying to keep the race pure?

That is what some errant interpreters would have you think, but that is not the reason. The reason God warns against marrying Canaanites, or anyone people group that does not follow God, is that it always leads to idolatry. Inter-religious marriages always led to the diluting of the faith. Marriage meant religious compromise, and this happened all the time in the Old Testament. Whenever an Israelite king married outside the faith, his reign was inevitably marked by idol worship. Where your heart is, so your lifestyle will follow, and that was the spirit behind these commands. God wasn’t worried about racial purity but spiritual purity. Nowhere is this stated more clearly than 1 Kings 11:1-2:

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites.  They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.”

Unfortunately, Solomon did not heed this command, as we learn in the verses that follow:

Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. (v. 2-6)

What does this mean today? It means that while many today are still concerned with outward appearance, “the LORD looks at the heart,” (1 Sam. 16:7) and so should we. God’s heart has always been for the nations, not just one particular race (Isa. 51:4), and His desire is that all nations know Him and love Him. So when it comes to marriage, the color of a person’s skin makes no difference at all–it is whether they love the Lord that counts.

Objection #2: The Curse of Ham

This brings us back to what I mentioned above concerning the Canaanites. One of the chief misinterpretations driving slavery and racism throughout the history of the church has been the story of Noah’s son, Ham. In Genesis 9, Noah and his family had survived the flood and all seemed to be well and good. Unfortunately, there was a strange incident involving Noah and Ham in which Noah got drunk on wine and passed out naked in his tent. Later that day, Ham wandered into the tent, saw his father’s nakedness, and went to tell his brothers. In response, the brothers found a garment to cover Noah, and then walked in backwards so as not to see him. Once Noah came to and realized what had happened, he cursed Ham and his son, Canaan, for his dishonorable actions.

There has been a lot of debate about why Noah’s response was so severe. It is not altogether clear what is meant by the phrase “saw his father’s nakedness,” and some have speculated that it may refer to a type of unspecified sexual offense. But whatever happened that day, Ham and his descendants would forever be adversaries of God’s people, and this curse has been used to justify a great deal of evil against the supposed descendants of Ham.

What does any of this have to do with interracial marriage? There are some who cite the curse on Ham as evidence that God opposes interracial marriage. Where does this conclusion come from? As far as I’m concerned, thin air. I’ve honestly struggled to understand where on earth this interpretation comes from because it is beyond clear that the curse was related to Ham’s transgression against Noah, and had nothing to do with his race or who he married. What’s more, Noah also cursed Canaan, but  it was Ham’s son, Cush, who settled in Africa, not Canaan. And finally, neither Noah, nor his sons, were even white! They all lived in the Middle East and probably looked more like Iraqis than Americans. There is not a shred of evidence in this story that God opposed interracial marriage. It may somehow be rooted in the racist belief that white people should not marry the descendants of Ham because of the curse, but the logic would have to be so convoluted as to reveal a clear agenda at work.

In summary, there is absolutely no grounding whatsoever in the Bible to oppose interracial marriage. Those who twist the Bible to interpret it that way are simply perverting Scripture to fit their pre-existing racist beliefs. As far as God is concerned, there are only two types of people–those who love God, and those who don’t. Skin color is irrelevant, and to place such an emphasis on race is to overshadow God’s plan of salvation for the world.

Indeed, it is very difficult to hear people take Scripture and abuse it for such evil agendas, but before we look down on these people in judgment, it’s important to remember that that is why Jesus had to die. We live in a world so hopelessly broken that even Christ’s message of love, peace, and redemption can be skewed to promote hate. When we hear the Bible hijacked in the name of evil, we must certainly speak up, but let us also be reminded that that is the exact reason we all need a Savior.

I never thought I would see the day when modesty, of all things, was the target of religious persecution. Well that day has come. In case you haven’t been following this story, France is in the process of passing a law that would forbid Muslim women from wearing a burqa, which covers the face. The ban was just approved by the lower house of parliament by a HUGE majority (335 to 1). According to an article on CNN, the penalty for violating this law could be a fine of 150 euros, although forcing a women to wear a veil could be punishable by a year in prison or 15,000 euros (the equivalent of about $19,000).

Why such a harsh punishment? According to the French government, the wearing of Muslim veils is “a new form of enslavement that the republic cannot accept on its soil,” adding, “this practice, even if it is voluntary, cannot be tolerated in any public place.”

And the government is clearly a reflection of the people. According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the French people support the ban by a margin of more than four to one, with around 82% in favor and only 17% opposed.

Let me be clear. I do NOT support the forcing of women to cover their faces, hair, wrists, etc. as a form of oppression or coerced modesty. I fully and totally oppose such a practice. But having said that, I do not support this ban. In fact I whole-heartedly oppose it, and let me tell you why. This law is nothing other than the symptom of a Western culture for whom the concept of modesty has become completely incomprehensible.

Several years ago I spent some time in Indonesia helping to rebuild after the tsunami, and during that time I got to know a number of teenage girls there. Indonesia is a Muslim country and the area in which I was working was particularly conservative, so the women wore veils over their hair at all times. In such extreme heat, I asked the girls if they ever wished they could remove the veil. It would certainly be much cooler without it! In response to my question they looked at me with shocked faces and said, “Oh no! To wear the veil is much more beautiful!”

To these women, the idea of saving their most prized features for their husband was a beautiful act. It was something they chose to do. And for many Muslim women today, that is also the case. Before meeting these young ladies, I used to see women wearing burqas and feel sad for them, thinking how oppressed they must be. And for some Muslim women, that is the case. But not all. Some delight to wear it. Though we cannot visibly discern the difference between those doing it for legalistic reasons and those doing it out of a sincere desire to be modest, the difference is certainly there. And the French just steamrolled right over it.

In fighting religious oppression, France has become the oppressor. Yet as I mentioned above, France reflects a larger cultural tide in which modesty is a totally foreign concept. It is now considered a form of empowerment to show as much of your body as possible, which means that anyone who chooses not to expose themselves must be oppressed, either overtly or because of some weird religious hang-ups. Our culture no longer treasures modesty as a kind of beauty unto itself.

What does that mean for us here in the States? Well it means that as much as I disagree with France’s ban, the cultural shift also presents us with an opportunity. Modesty is truly becoming a means to set ourselves apart. The Bible reminds us that we are not the first culture to have this opportunity–Paul urged women to cover their heads in Corinth as a means for setting themselves apart from the culture then. Today we have a similar occasion, and it is one we should seize with zeal.

So often we think of modesty in terms of rules and “what can I get away with,” but the law in France reminds us that modesty is about a clash in worldviews. We are strangers in a foreign land that has completely different priorities from us. The world does not understand sexual purity or saving yourself for marriage, nor does it understand treating your body as a temple or reflecting God’s holiness with your life. Modesty may invite persecution, but hopefully it will also invite conversation. The question is, do you dress in a way that differentiates you from the world? That is a question I am very much challenged by.

Today I listened to my mom recount yet another story of a woman in her 40′s who decided she was tired of being a wife and mom, so she abandoned her kids to start living the single life again. Now she drives a trendy SUV and socializes with 20-somethings. Her kids are age 8 and 10.

Several months ago I wrote a post entitled Why Women Leave in which I contemplated the growing trend of women leaving their marriages. Since writing it, I’ve heard many more stories and I’ve continued to ponder this strange pattern. One the one hand, there are plenty of single women who are dying to get married, but on the other hand there are many women who are dying to get out of their marriages. What gives?

As I mentioned in the original post, there are a lot of reasons for this trend, many of which deal with unrealistic expectations of marriage. However, I’ve also begun to suspect some of this behavior is rooted in our culture’s conception of womanhood. In particular, I’ve pinpointed two particular areas of confusion and misdirection when it comes to understanding what it means to be a woman:

1. Independence from Men

2. A Preoccupation with Beauty

Both of these issues have repercussions that can negatively impact our marriages. In this post I’m going to examine the first point. I’ll examine the second in the next.

Independence from Men

To be perfectly honest, there’s a part of me that is definitely a feminist. If feminism means treating women as possessing equal value and granting them equal rights and opportunities in our society, then I am a feminist. Women should be able to vote. Women should be paid the same amount as their colleagues. To that end, I fully support feminism.

However, feminism has a tendency to go awry in so much as it values women more highly than men. To be fair, feminism has offered a much needed voice at times in history when women were treated more like property than people. But there is a temptation to swing too far in the opposite direction. Just the other day I read about a study funded by gay and lesbian activists in which the children of lesbian parents were compared with the children of heterosexual parents. Shockingly, the study concluded that children do better with two moms than children with a mom and a dad! The subtitle of the study might as well have been “Why We Don’t Need Men Anymore.”

More and more, strong womanhood has been equated with independence from men. To confess that men bring something to our culture that women do not is to somehow imply that women are weak or incomplete. So who needs them! We don’t need no stinkin men!

We see this “I am woman hear me roar” ideology espoused in shows like “Sex and the City.” Marriage is viewed as a kind of compromise or a limiting box. It is only truly valued by the Charlottes of the world who don’t have much personal ambition in life. But strong, adventurous women don’t need marriage, and they certainly don’t need men. They’ve got their girlfriends and their careers, and that’s all they need.

Or, you might watch a sitcom in which the beautiful, sassy smart wife is married to the chubby dufus of a husband. Her life is reduced to laundry and putting up with her husband’s latest hair-brained schemes. Her life is little more than a faded shadow of her previously glamourous, single self.

These are just two examples of the very clear message our culture is selling: Men will hold you back. They stand in the way of you and self-actualization. You can’t realize your potential with the dead weight of a husband slowing you down. Men are great accessories, but if they get in the way of your dreams or the glamourous life you KNOW you were destined to have, then kick ‘em to the curb.

This is the message that women are constantly being fed. And as a result, it’s affecting our marriages. The call of freedom can be intoxicating when marriage is a struggle, and the culture is whispering an oh-so familiar lie into women’s hearts: “Did God really say that? Does God really want you to give up your calling, your freedom, or your happiness to stay married?” And like Eve, many women conclude, “Of course not! My God wouldn’t say that!”

In response to this cultural trend, let us not be like the catty middle school girls who tear others down to build ourselves up. We need not denigrate men in order to affirm the value of woman. To do so betrays weakness, not strength. The position of true strength is not threatened by the strength of others.

As Christian women, we have two dogs in this fight. The first and most obvious is our marriages. If we do not affirm the value of men and esteem them as important contributors to our society, families, and lives, we can expect our marriages to suffer as a result. The devaluing of men is the perfect foothold for bitterness and discontent to set in when marriage is challenging.

But more importantly, the character of God is at stake. Scripture tells us that both women and men are made in His image. When we devalue men we belittle the image of God in them. When we question their value and purpose on earth, we question the God who created them.

With all of this in mind, be on guard against the messages you are consuming. How are they shaping the way you see men? How do they affect your relationship with your husband? Are they filling your heart with bitterness and ingratitude towards the men in your life? Are they making it difficult for you to worship God because of the ways He reveals Himself to us through the male gender? These are questions we need to be asking, because our marriages are clearly at stake.

On the news this week I heard about a young woman who urged women to show off their cleavage on April 27th. She began this movement in protest against a Muslim leader who blamed natural disasters on female immodesty. The satirical aim of this gesture was to “test” his theory and see if the mass exposure of cleavage would have consequences. Ironically, there actually was an earthquake that day in Taiwan. A 6.9 in fact. Go figure.

Below I am posting Mary Kassian’s response to this whole scenario. Mary’s blog is one that I really enjoy reading, and I can always count on her to offer a helpful and balanced perspective. So without further ado, I present to you “Boobquake:”

An Islamic cleric recently blamed earthquakes on immodest female clothing. He told the media, “Many women who dress inappropriately … cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes …”

Outraged by this statement, Jennifer McCreight, a 22-year-old student at Purdue University in Indiana, invited women to collectively bare their breast cleavage today–April 27. She claimed that this would scientifically test the cleric’s theory. McCreight, who calls herself “a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist,” mockingly encouraged women to “embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts” by dressing immodestly. “With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.”

With the help of Facebook and Twitter, word of the event, dubbed “Boobquake,” travelled like wildfire across the internet, and within 24 hours had recruited tens of thousands of supporters and garnished international media attention. But as the morning of the event dawned, and women around the world began to bare their cleavage, a strong earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale struck southeast of Taiwan.

The earth averages more than a million earthquakes each year. Only about 135 reach the magnitude of the one in Taiwan this morning. The phenomenon of the earthquake coinciding with the Boobquake event could be interpreted either way. The Islamic cleric will no doubt use it as proof that that the seductive behavior of females leads to natural disasters, and that Allah has endorsed the cleric as his spokesman. The cleric will insist that the Islamic law enforcing the Hijab be strictly enforced– that females be forced to cover all parts of their body except hands and face, or be subject to punishment of up to seventy lashes or sixty days imprisonment—or even worse.

On the other end of the spectrum, a scantily clad McCreight predictably brushed off the earthquake as statistically insignificant. Following the disaster she wrote, “If we get many of a similar magnitude in the next 24 hours, then we might start worshipping the power of immodesty.” In any case, since McCreight is an atheist, she denies that God has anything to do with earthquakes, and since she is a feminist, she maintains that women have the right to do whatever they want–even if it does cause a disaster. Women have the right to make the rules. They can dress immodestly and be as seductive and promiscuous as they want – it’s their own business. She said,“If men ogle, that’s the fault of the men, not me for dressing how I like. If I want to a show a little cleavage or joke about my boobs, that’s my prerogative.”

The whole discussion leaves me shaking my head. On the one hand, you have an Islamic male suggesting that immodest women are to blame for natural disasters and for causing men to sin. On the other, you have a feminist female suggesting that there are no natural consequences of women dressing immodestly and seductively—men are the ones with the problem. The former supports the oppression of women, while the latter supports woman’s unbridled right to be immodest, or even immoral if she so pleases.

It never ceases to amaze me that the assault on the biblical pattern for womanhood comes from multiple angles, and must be fought on many fronts. We must combat the idea that it’s man’s prerogative to define womanhood—that women are somehow inferior, and can be demeaned, degraded, assaulted, or abused. We must also combat the idea that it’s woman’s prerogative to define womanhood—that men are somehow inferior—that men are the oppressors and women are above reproach. Furthermore, we must combat the idea of an egalitarian gender-neutral or gender-fluid type of existence. None of these conform to the biblical pattern.

Boobquake is the foolishness of an arrogant man compounded by the foolishness of an arrogant woman.. and the foolishness of all who follow their lead. According to the Bible, it’s God’s prerogative—not man’s and not woman’s – to define who we are and how we ought to live.

© Mary A. Kassian, Girls Gone Wise. Visit Mary’s Website at: GirlsGoneWise.com

Today I read an interesting articled published in First Things magazine by David B. Hart entitled “Believe It Or Not.” Hart is a Christian apologist who specifically grapples with the beliefs of New Atheism, and he does so in his book Atheist Delusions. This most recent article is written as a response to a recently published book titled 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists.

In case you aren’t familiar with the “New Atheism” that has risen in popularity in our culture, the term refers to a brand of Atheism that is extremely critical of and sometimes hostile towards religion, and in turn touts science as the antidote. The reason I’m bringing it up on my blog is that it’s an issue about which we as women should not only be concerned, but also well-informed.

What is particularly troubling about the New Atheism is that it has risen to popularity on the coattails of out-dated ideas, a point that Hart makes in his article. And while the lack of originality would seem to be a plus, it actually reveals a startling complacency amidst the church. New Atheism is raising concerns and objections that Christians addressed centuries ago, but so few of us are familiar with these arguments that we are ill-equipped to respond. As a result, we have witnessed the birth of a new generation of Atheists who believe they are genuinely challenging the Christian faith in new and original ways, especially because many Christians can only offer a babbling response.

This predicament aims a particularly searing critique at Christian women. It is not uncommon for Christian women to chuckle about how much their husbands enjoy discussing theology, all the while shrugging off their own lack of interest. “I just don’t understand that stuff” is the common excuse. Ladies, if you are someone who brushes off these important questions because it does not interest you, let me gently challenge you to repent of this mindset. While we are not all called to achieve advanced degrees in this area, the rise of the New Atheism has been made possible by our theological apathy.

Not all Atheists are men. Nor do they all live in ivory towers. They are your neighbor, your co-worker, maybe someone in your family. There are women who squarely reject God on philosophical grounds who will never enter your church to hear your pastor’s defense. That’s why they need to hear it from you.

Of course not all of us are philosophically minded, but that’s no excuse for not having thought through some of the questions that Atheists are asking. Consider the following:

• Some Atheists object to the existence of God because He failed to answer their prayers when they needed Him most. How would you respond to that seeming betrayal?
• Others object to the existence of God because they don’t understand how a good God could allow evil to exist in the world. How would you respond to this problem in a manner that avoids being cliché or pat?
• Some Atheists are so repulsed by corruption within the church that they write off God altogether. How might you respond to this objection, taking seriously the very real mistakes of the church?

What is striking to me about some (though not all) of the Atheist objections to God is that they are sometimes founded upon an emotional reflex. Something bad happened to them in relation to the church or Christians, so they reject God altogether. And while that is by no means a sound philosophical argument against the existence of God, many Christians have a faith born out of the same basic reasoning; an equal but opposite reaction. It is a Christianity based upon sentimentalism, but not an understanding of WHY God is real and worth trusting your life with.

So while I do not mean to imply that reason trumps faith, nor is it a more powerful evangelistic tool than unconditional love, reason should certainly be a factor. As 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 reminds us, there will never come a time when the wisdom of God is anything but foolishness to a blind world, but we are still called to love God with both our hearts and our minds. So spend some time reading about these difficult issues. Few of them have tidy answers but the important thing is that you engage the questions, because as we are learning, your skeptical neighbors and friends certainly are.