Getting Offensive

So I posted a job description recently over on Wayfaring Pilgrim: "Wanted: ORFWB (Outgoing. Reformed. Female. With a Brain)." And that last little phrase has been drawing some fire.

Typically, complaints run something like this: "Hey, what's with this 'with a brain' part? Do you think most women are stupid? Don't you know how offensive that sounds?"

Which is, of course, not at all what we mean to convey. I've known many people (of both genders) who are smart, nice, good, and very competant at what they do, etc. But I've also worked with a handful of people in my life (again, of both genders) who are exceptional - in terms of their intellect, their ability to communicate, and in this case their understanding of the gospel and their love for the lost. What I'm trying to get at here is that we don't want just anyone for this position - we want a woman who is really sharp, intellectually (and theologically). So how are we supposed to convey that?

It's been interesting how many women have no problem with this language at all. Yet of those who did, most understand our intent, but still find the verbiage offensive. And that got me thinking about the nature of 'offense'.

Offense is a powerful force in our society - it's like approval in reverse. Many times, we use it as a weapon, to coerce people into changing their behavior, to justify rejecting them when they don't. As such, we often go to great lengths to avoid offending people.

We need to be careful in what we say here. Paul talks about being all things to all people in order that he might win some for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor 9:22). He seeks to avoid offending people - not simply because 'offense' is something bad to be avoided at all cost, but rather because the gospel itself is fundamentally offensive, a stone which causes people to stumble (Rom 9:33, etc). And that's important to recognize. There are times when offensiveness is vitally important.

Christianity is a bloody, offensive thing. And that offensiveness is there by divine design, because it requires us to get over ourselves in order to embrace it.

The very nature of 'offense' is that I look down on others (and smile upon myself) because I simply can't believe how right I am and how wrong they are. I am putting my confidence in my rightness, and rejecting others because of their wrongness. The gospel, however, stands this on its head: "You are in the wrong, my friend, so much so that there is no hope for you, at least not in you. Your only hope lies in another (Christ)." And that is very offensive to those of us who are constantly looking for reasons to take pride in ourselves.

One of the things I am finding in church planting is that unbelievers are extremely offensive in many ways - they regularly denigrate God, faith, virtue, and truth. Believers are often just as bad - the regularly take pride in their morality, their spirituality. And both sides often find real Christian faith quite offensive - "Who do you think you are, saying your way is the only way to be saved?", "Who do you think you are, hanging out with those sorts of people?"

Yet if I am to minister to people like these, I must excel at not taking offense. I must have thick skin. I must be able to turn the other cheek. I must love my enemies. I must choose to overlook the offense. I must be willing to bear all sorts of mistreatment - false accusations, misinterpretations, slander, jeering - all for the sake of God's message, that they might hear Christ, and stumble over him perhaps, but never over me.

In light of all this, perhaps it's best to just leave in the "With a Brain" part in our ad. We mean no ill by it (it's a complement, not an insult), and even if we took it out, there would be other things people could be offended by (the fact that we are complementarian, the fact that we are PCA, the fact that we want to hire a woman at all). Ultimately, those who desire to find offense will inevitably be able to find some reason for it if they simply look long enough and hard enough (after all, I really AM a sinner).

At the end of the day, it seems the real question is whether someone can overlook offense for the sake of the kingdom.

Humble Pie

I was humbled yesterday. We visited a church on Sunday, and it was one of the worst sermons I've heard in a long time - we talked about it on the way home in the car, I complained about it to Ryan, I lamented the miserable quality of preaching in the world today, etc. Woe woe woe. If only it had been me preaching...

Then yesterday afternoon, I sat with a young woman who had also been in that same church on Sunday. And the first thing she asked (gushingly), was: "What did you think of that sermon on Sunday? Wasn't that great???" I simply responded (lamely), "Well tell me what you liked about it..."

And she did. And it was good. She heard the gospel, perhaps in spite of the preacher. God met her on Sunday, in spite of the inadequacies of the medium, or even the messenger. And that was both encouraging and convicting to me.

Convicting, because far too often I put my confidence in my own ability - if I preach well enough, God will use it. And that's simply not the case. God uses who he darn well feels like using. In his timeframe, not ours.

But this was encouraging too, because it means that even here in Missoula where there's not a whole lot of good preaching, I am reminded that God is still alive and well and working - HE is the real shepherd of his sheep, and I have a feeling there are a lot more of them around than we sometimes think. Yeah, they're scattered across the countryside, out in all sorts of dangerous places where they really shouldn't be, and a lot of them have sheep crap smeared all over them... but they're alive, and they're not alone. God is caring for them. And he won't let them go.

At the end of the day, our effectiveness in ministry never rests on us (no matter how gifted, prepared, or excellent we happen to be) - it always depends on God. And that's a good thing, even if it is humbling.

You're So Vain

Well whaddya know - Vanity is on the rise among college students. On the one hand, this isn't particularly surprising - I've been noticing for a while now that many late teens and early twenty somethings seem to have a remarkable sense of entitlement. So there's part of me that's inclined to say, "look, that's just the way these young kids are..." (and then wonders, "Was I like that?")

But the story seems to suggest that what we're seeing now is not simply a continuation of past trends - the numbers actually seem to be increasing...

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

This gives a hint at what the researchers view as the cause:

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the "self-esteem movement" that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.

And that's a little surprising to hear coming from someone in the professional sciences (of course, my parents have been saying that for years). As do the calls for remedies:

Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies. "Permissiveness seems to be a component," he said. "A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for."

Wow. I'm shocked. And this leads to some interesting questions.

For instance, what does this say about a younger generation often characterized as "postmodern" - postmoderns supposedly love and value authenticity more than anything else, and yet vanity is decidely inauthentic; it's seeing oneself as better than we really are.

It's also worth pondering how they measure this stuff. The test measures narcissim by asking "for responses to such statements as 'If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,' 'I think I am a special person' and 'I can live my life any way I want to.'

Ask yourself how you'd respond. Are these really simple yes/no questions? On the one hand, I want to say, "No, I'm not a particularly special person. If I really want to be honest, I actually suck in a lot of ways - my motives are often very impure, even when I'm doing very good things. (And what about those times when I'm actually doing bad things?)" At the same time, that answer doesn't really cover it.

You see I AM a very special person - not because of me, per se, but because God loves me. Scripture says that if we are "in Christ", if we are "part of the family" so to speak, Christ actually does something special for us - he intercedes with God on our behalf, he takes the blame for what is wrong with me, he covers me with what is right with him. So there is a very real sense where God looks at me in the here and now and sees me as glorius, perfected, holy.

16th century reformers had a term for this - they said we are simultaneously saints and sinners, and if we do not somehow account for BOTH of those realities, we will fail to do justice to the human situation. If we don't acknowledge human sin, we'll fall into narcisism - we'll think we're better than we really are. But if we don't acknowledge the saintliness that is presently ours in Christ, we'll never really be able to live with one another, because we won't be able to stand the imperfections in others (and they won't be able to stand the inperfections in us).

Bonhoeffer talks about this in his Life Together - as Christians, we must always look at one another through the lens of Christ, not through our own eyes. Fail to do this, and community is over, dead, kaput even before it gets started. This is the only possible way we can really be honest and authentic about just how messed up we really are.

It's not vanity, because we see ourselves as we really are, but it's not despairing either, because we deal with one another on the basis of what we will someday fully become in Christ. Ultimately, I'm not sure how a scientific survey is ever going to capture that full spectrum of understanding.

Applause Please

I'd actually like to applaud this guy - not because he made a stupid mistake, but because he did something, he acted, he tried to do the right thing and intervene to help someone. How many of us would do the same? As someone who has listened through the walls of my Philly rowhouse as my neighbors fought like cats and dogs (ever wake to the sound of a lamp crashing into the wall next to your head?) I've found myself wondering 'Should I call the cops? Should I do something?' And most of time, I don't. I sit there and worry about making a mistake, and so I don't do anything at all. This guy didn't, and I think he should feel good about that (even if he does feel a little embarrassed for being wrong). I sure hope some of the cops patted him on the back privately...

Fifth-Columnist in the Soul

Marilyn dropped this on my desk a few minutes ago; it's a great quote from C.S. Lewis about misgivings and faith:

Just as the Christian has his moments when the clamour of this visible and audible world is so persistent and the whisper of the spiritual world so faint that faith and reason can hardly stick to their guns, so, as I well remember, the atheist too has his moments of shuddering misgivings, of an all but irresistible suspician that the old tales may after all be true, that something or someone from outside may at any moment break into his neat, explicable, mechanical universe.

Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality: disbelieve in Him and you must face hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all.

No conviction, relistion or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all this fifth-columnist in the soul. Only the practice of Faith resulting in the habit of Faith will gradually do that.

- from Religion: Reality or Substitute?' in Christian Reflections

Faith as a practice, a habit, a place to dwell. I like that...

Coping With Grief

I have a dear friend, a seminary professor, who died recently, leaving behind a wife and kids who are struggling with grief.

I have a dear brother whose wife left him for another man just last week. He too is struggling with grief right now.

The death of a husband, the death of a marriage. There are a lot of similarities between the two.

And yet when I read things like this - Libbie's reflections on life after Al - I am hopeful, because there is life after death - God is a God of resurrections. He raises the dead. Dead people. Dead marriages. And those two things - hope in the face of death, and the reality of resurrection - are very, very foreign to this world in which we live.

Libbie is a great example of what that hope looks like in there here and now, and so I find myself wondering (and hoping) whether God might not somehow miraculously save my brother's marriage, or at least grant him the grace to walk through that death the way Libbie has walked through Al's.

I am not sure whether he has any such hope right now, so I am hoping for him, looking forward to seeing what God will do.

Worse Than Iraq

This article on CNN caught my attention this morning - these two statements in particular jumped out at me:

We're fighting a war that is inflicting even greater casualties than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, incredibly, costing even more money. We're losing the War on Drugs, and we've been in retreat for three decades.
...
How can anyone rationalize the fact that the United States, with only 4 percent of the world's population, consumes two-thirds of the world's illegal drugs?

Worth reading the whole thing...

The Truth About Married Sex

Justin Taylor has a great little post called The Truth About Married Sex that is well worth reading - he begins with Lauren Winner's latest comments, and concludes with some fine reflections by David Powlison. I couldn't say it any better than he's already done, so I won't try. Go read it.

Moving On

For those of you who might be interested, I just wanted to mention that friend and professor Al Groves passed away last night after a long struggle with cancer.

For those of you who are struggling with sickness, or who can't imagine how you'd manage in such a struggle - or even for those who wonder what makes Christians different - I'd highly encourage you to click on over to Al's blog, where his wife Libbie has done a fine job of sharing both the struggles and the joys that they have experienced through this process.

You can also read my own past reflections on Al, and his cancer. In a nutshell, I think Al and Libbie exemplify what it looks like to suffer as Christians - not pointlessly, not painlessly, but suffering eschatologically, suffering with a purpose and a direction.

As for me, it was sitting in Al's Old Testament History and Theology class where I first really grasped the significance of the indicative and the imperative.

And as for Al, those two are now finally one and the same. Welcome home, brother...

Thoughts on Hotel Rwanda

I just finished watching Hotel Rwanda, and I found myself pretty much overwhelmed by the experience. This was a very, very difficult movie to watch, especially since we're not talking about a distant holocaust some sixty years past - we're talking about a million people slaughtered 13 years ago, while the world stood by. And I wonder how many of us really care, even now, even after seeing the movie.

When the credits scrolled, I found myself weeping (and believe me, I'm not a cry-er), asking God for justice and mercy. Some people say tragedies like this demonstrate that God does not exist (after all, how could he let this happen?). My mind moves in the opposite direction - to me, it demonstrates that all of humanity is twisted and bent - ultimately, at the end of the day, most of us act in our own self interest. We hate and we kill (if we can get away with it) because we cannot forgive.

Forgiveness is an ultimate act of faith, because in it we say that we trust God to be just, to make things right in the end. It takes faith to forgive your enemies. Tragedies like this demonstrate that we are lost without God, for if there is no God, then there is no hope for ultimate justice - it's all up to us, and frankly, our track record sucks.

Not just the Republicans, not just the Democrats, not just the wealthy, noth just the poor, not just the Americans, not just the Hutus and the Tutsis and the Sunnis and the Shiites - all of us. At one point or another, all of us do evil, or overlook the evil done to others. There is no one righteous, not even one.

All of this raises several questions. I would welcome thoughtful answers from either side of the aisle.

I suspect most of us look at the situation in Rwanda (and now Darfur) and think, "We should have done something." Civil war is a heinous thing. But what if pulling out of Iraq means civil war? What if it ends up being another Rwanda? I'm not talking about oil, or Saddam, or why we went in the first place. I'm just asking, "What is the correlation between the two? How is it that we should have intervened in Rwanda, but that we should not stay in Iraq to try and prevent civil war?" I know we talk about American lives lost. But how many Iraqi lives have been saved by us being there? And how many more will be lost if we just pull out?

Are we all for pulling out on principle (and if so, what principle would have us pull OUT of Iraq yet go IN to Darfur?)? Or do we want to get out simply because George Bush got us in?

Similarly, I know global warming is front page news right now. While it is certainly a huge potential problem, it is still just that - potential. We don't know for sure if its caused by us, we're not sure if we can actually do anything about it even if it is, we certainly don't see much indication that anyone is willing to radically re-orient their lives to the extremes that would probably be required, and the whole bill doesn't come due for 50-100 years (at the earliest). And yet we have much bigger problems right here and now.

How do we justify the way we prioritize our crises? Why have we decided that global warming is the most important issue, more important than things like ethnic cleansing, the sex trades?

I doubt there are easy answers here, but I find myself wondering why I don't hear many folks asking these questions. Why do we avoid the specific, the local, the immediate, and wring our hands instead over the past (Hitler - boy, we would have handled THAT differently), and the future (New York starlets lamenting the fact that their condo might be underwater in a hundred years), and the potential problems (gosh darn it, one of these days an ateroid is going to get us - what are we going to do about THAT?). Why are we so slow to really tackle the hard questions in the hear and now? So quick to point the finger at those who try and say they got it all wrong?

I'm rambling, and at the end of the day, I think I must return to where I started, asking God for justice, for mercy, and also for faith, to walk day by day through this very scary world, even though we cannot see how it can all possibly work out.

Come quickly Lord Jesus!

Even in Missoula

Interesting experience in Bernice's today...