Archive for November 2008
Should America really expect “them” just to go away in the wake of defeat? Many in America have desired exactly this and will fight for that day when it happens. However, this disposition fueled by ideology has only forced many people to react and they have now begun to scream. No one is “going away” any time soon.
Violence and absurdity should not be condoned simply because we as Americans have a right to freely assemble and protest. However, when any subset of a population believes that its fundamental recognition as citizens of a nation is being arbitrarily denied them, you will see such reactions inevitably occur.
Such protests do not speak for the entire group that is deeply hurt and offended by their regard by the state in as much as the Black Panthers did not represent the civil rights movement for most people of color. As with the civil rights movement, the entire issue with the homosexual community at the juncture in time is not new. It is a decades old conflict in our society that has just reached a tipping point. The abnegating rhetoric from lobbying and action groups that has been a continual jabbing force backed by millions of dollars from many organizations and people and it is exactly what fans the flames of hostility and irrationality in response.
Here is an example:
“For one, infertile normal couples meet the basic requirement of marriage: a man and a woman. Secondly, when they seek to adopt children or benefit from reproductive science, they are merely mimicking the natural, complementary, mom-and-dad family — not creating intentionally motherless or fatherless homes and subjecting children to a radical reinvention of “family,” with two “dads” or two “moms.” Lastly, such straight, infertile couples desiring children turn to bountiful, procreative heterosexuality — not homosexuality, or apple trees for that matter — to fulfill their dream of a family.”
The message then considers the agenda of those who are attracted to the same gender deviant and makes a comparison to sex-addiction. The argument is that two people of the same gender cannot raise a child to grow and develop just as healthily and yes, heterosexually as a man and a woman. It places the union of two people of the same gender on par with a divorced couple wherein a child does indeed have a motherless and fatherless household.
Yet this assertion does not ask the question why a child cannot be raised just as effectively by two persons of the same gender as one who has two parents of different genders. It is assumed that this is the case. The notion of biological complementarity trumps the notion that two nurturing parents is the optimal situation which anyone can see is the case in the literature on childhood development.
The problem is quite simple. It is not enough that a domestic partnership in California grants the same rights to a partnership regardless of gender as those rights conferred by marriage. The problem is that there is a distinction and a clear devaluation of one kind of relationship in favor of another that is clearly viewed as more pure, natural, etc. The distinction is fueled by the kind of rhetoric that you read above.
A religious organization may choose not to recognize these kinds of relationships. The KKK, after all, has a legal protection to condone racism and devalue the relationships and existence of people of color and Jews in the geographic boundary of the United States. But the problem with groups like the KKK is if their ideological values become legislation. These values would, by definition, infringe on the rights of people simply based on their heritage, upbringing, and genetics.
One would think that we would be enlightened enough in this period in history to see the obvious conclusions that this argument should render in our system of lawmaking. If the enacting of an ideology infringes on anyone’s Constitutional rights, that ideology needs to be revised. To that degree it is no different if I have certain beliefs about the presence of people of color or those of different religious traditions, or what I believe about marriage.
This is Rodney King all over again and in the same state. Now those riots were unjustified and horrible. But the rationale that fueled them was clear even before the verdict was rendered. We never even asked ourselves what would happen if that verdict came back not guilty. Even if we did ask ourselves that question, would we have just expected all the black folk in LA and DC to sing “Kum Bah Yah”, hold hands, and let the white man hose them down again? That was a wake up call to a reality that most of America was not aware of.
Gay people are waking us up to the fact that they have not been included as full citizens in this union. To argue that they indeed are is ignorant of the actual reality that exists. No, violence and public displays of absurity are never justified. But sometimes you need to whack people with a 2×4 in order to wake them up to the realities from which they are comfortably sealed off and blissfully ignorant. It is part of our common heritage in this country for minorities that have been displaced to wake up the majority culture. It is the very furnace of outrage that made this country what it is. It is the outrage that results when a people in the union are continually devalued at the hands of irrationality.
The Revolution, equal regard for all religions in states, the freeing of slaves, equal regard for women, equity for persons color, etc. have all begun in quiet protest, but have all lead to loud voices shouting in order to be heard and recognized. When enough people gather together in one voice and demand equality, things change. Unfortunately those voices often get ignored and tuned out by the larger society until they get loud enough by making noise. I would urge peaceful protest at every opportunity in order to crowd out elements of violence. But those elements of violence will always subsist in a free society.
This noise will not stop until change happens. This is more than an ideological agenda by a minority trying to destroy the country. This is a movement of people who desire to be viewed as normal citizens with normal rights, responsibilities, and privileges. In America movements of people do not die, they result in change. It is time for people to recognize the sleeping giant in the room that the very presence of Proposition 8 woke up. It has been 30 years since Harvey Milk was assassinated. That’s a long time to wait for change and the time is now.
Last month I wrote about something I call “psychotic capitalism” here. What I meant by this is:
“A society so gluttoned on its own greed and sense of self-importance, that the ones who are left out of the inner circles of the prosperous are not just ignored, but brutalized.”
Black Friday carries with it an ironic double meaning. It first is a symbol of when consumer merchandisers jump in business and make up for losses during the season by jettisoning expensive inventory and selling more goods. But it also has, or should have, another meaning more commonly associated with “black” days: death.
Yesterday on Long Island, NY a worker at Wal-Mart was trampled to death as a crowd was released into the store like an overheated radiator cap exploding into the air. A pregnant women was also taken to the hospital because of the chaos. Neediness and greed reinforce each other and the capitalist requirement for sustained and unmitigated growth is a beast that feeds on the consumers by creating desires for things we really do not need. The casualty is love of neighbor.
The most ironic season of the year is Christmas where we are to symbolize the gifts of God by giving to each other. Rather, we enter the season feeding on desires that were drafted on the tables of marketing designers who lay claim to consumer emotion and the movement of culture. Black Friday is a symbol of the capitalist ritual of end of year gluttony on consumer goods. It is also a symbol of the pride-rot that feeds on the souls of humanity to stand out from the crowd with external flourish and self-aggrandizement.
Black Friday is a symbol for why humanity needs God. Left to our own whims, we will compete for advantage over our neighbor no matter the consequence. It is part of our evolutionary heritage. It is an element of humanity that rebels against cooperation and civility. In Christianity and in other religions it is called sin. It is the common enemy of the rationalist for it forces reasonable behavior out of civility in favor of unmitigated desire forged at the confluence of greed and supposed neediness.
This season, rather than worship the god of capital, let us at least focus on what we can do for each other, even if you could care less about God. Rather than strike the match of ironic selfishness that ignites greed in a season of giving, let us find solace in what we already have in order to help those who struggle and are trampled under the feet of consumer desire.
After comparing Kathleen Parker to Benedict Arnold, James Dobson continues his complete ignorance to both rudimentary civics and to the outcomes of what he thinks is a viable alternative to his criticisms. Here, he reads Parker as suggesting “those of the Christian faith must not think or act like Christians when engaging the public square”. Not only is this an absurdly false conclusion to Parker’s piece, he continues with the thought to say this.
“That is similar to something then-Sen. Obama said a couple of years ago, arguing in a speech before a gathering of liberal Christians that “democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”
“It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason,” he added. “I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”
That is, as my theologian friend Al Mohler called it, “secularism with a smile” — offered in the form of an invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs. Kathleen Parker has gone even one step further, though. She’s rescinding the invitation altogether.”
One thing is right here, it absolutely is secularism. It is secularism in terms of a political disposition, and not an ideology to be exacted with force. In no way is this some conspiracy to undermine the constitutional right to have a freedom of conscience with regard to faith. Nor is this some pejorative comment directed at the elimination of free speech. Rather, such a pronouncement is in clear keeping with the very principles of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The point that Parker makes is that we cannot continue to associate conservatism with a specific religious agenda. The problem is not the freedom to believe, assemble, protest, etc. The problem is when specific religious ideologies becomes the very sources of governance. As she writes in a paragraph Dobson must have not read or simply refused to acknowledge.
“It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.”
What are the alternatives to what Dobson and so many heart-broken so-called “social conservatives” suggest ought to be the foundation of the government? Could it be the same kind of government for which kids are told to pray over a life-size cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush in the film Jesus Camp? What would be satisfactory to this kind of speech other than a bona fide theocracy? What is tearing conservatism asunder is the clear incongruity between having a government execute “Big Brother” ethics legislation that controls human behaviors that do not in fact infringe upon others’ rights, and the desire to have government stay out of people’s business by reducing so-called “socialist” domestic programs for taxpayers to keep what they earn. That, in a word, is A-B-S-U-R-D.
The reality is that it must be considered indubitable that the founders desired a political system that indeed did instantiate “secularism with a smile”. Perhaps the major point of coming to the New World was to escape religious oppression in order for individual liberties founded with free minds to establish a new order of society. It is Dobson and his ilk that continue to misunderstand and mis-represent the First Amendment itself. For them liberty cannot exist, for only theocracy will give them the peace they so desire.
It is conservatives like Kathleen Parker who have peeked behind the wizard’s curtain and found pulling all the strings only dogmatic assertions rooted in false mythological narratives of so-called America that do not represent what conservatism ought to be. It is OK for conservatives OK to be critical. If we uncritically swim int e warm pools of our own mythological ideologies, then we are but legion jumping off of the cliff of irrelevance and mindlessness. Perhaps that’s exactly what Dobson wants. I pray the same God in whom he claims to have such keen insight that his oppressive outcome of social thought police never gains the foothold he so desperately desires. His own path of absurd pretense is perhaps evidence enough that the house he built will only sink into a bunker of paranoid delusion, rather than rise to be that house on the hill where liberty and justice can indeed be for all.
Stanley Fish discusses another book on the notion of academic freedom for higher education faculty.
“Holding faculty accountable to professional norms exemplifies academic freedom because it highlights the narrow scope of that freedom, which does not include the right of faculty “to research and publish in any manner they personally see fit.”
Indeed, to emphasize the “personal” is to mistake the nature of academic freedom, which belongs, Finkin and Post declare, to the enterprise, not to the individual. If academic freedom were “reconceptualized as an individual right,” it would make no sense — why should workers in this enterprise have enlarged rights denied to others? — and support for it “would vanish” because that support, insofar as it exists, is for the project and its promise (the production of new knowledge) and not for those who labor within it. Academics do not have a general liberty, only “the liberty to practice the scholarly profession” and that liberty is hedged about by professional norms and responsibilities.”
What should be a non-controversial discussion as Fish sees it, is that academic freedom is not a first amendment right. It does not give anyone allowance to say anything they wish. Of course, this has always been the structure of academic freedom as the AAUP redbook has said since the 1940’s.
The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure bases the notion of academic freedom on the common good which “depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition” (AAUP, 1940). To support this end, academic freedom is described in three points. In research, faculty “are entitled to full freedom in research and the publication of the results” (AAUP, 1940). For teaching, the qualifications are that the content of the class is related to the subject. Moreover, “limitations
of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment” (AAUP, 1940).
However, this does seem to be a necessary reminder among faculty that seem to miss this crucial distinction. As Clark Kerr wrote so long ago now in the Uses of the University, the association between faculty and their professional guild tends to be stronger than the tie faculty have with their university establishment. There are thus two levels of accountability that are implied in the term academic freedom: the strictures of the faculty contract at the university level, and strictures of the professional guild association which all aim to improve and grow the discipline itself.
Even so, “Individual campuses must give meaning and definition to these concepts within the context of disciplinary standards and institutional mission” (ACE, 2005). If one is freely associated with, for example, an evangelical college that appends to its contract a statement of faith, and/or if one is a student required to adhere to such strictures, those local responsibilities correspond to the notion of academic freedom itself.
Not only does academic freedom in its most liberal form exist in order for faculty not to indoctrinate students in so much tertiary and irrelevant material to the objectives of the course, it serves to protect the stability and intellectual rigor of disciplines. It also serves the local college culture’s mission and goals by allowing such local instances interpret their own application of academic freedom in keeping with the college’s mission. Thus, any arguments regarding faculty indoctrination of students on issues and/or dispositions to issues regardless of the area in question ought to first, address the mission and goals of the institution and second, address the mission and goals of the specific disciplinary guild association represented by the faculty member.
As any reader of this blog noticed (the multitudinous droves of you), I jumped in the political rhetoric during the election, and I have since slowed down with that part of my brain. This was always intended to be a place for theological, social, and educational thinking. Then came Sarah Palin and the totally whacked-out campaign of John McCain.
Throughout this election season I came to my political senses and it is pretty clear where my political commitments reside. Even though I supported Obama, I am not really a Democrat because I find handouts to people who are not willing to sweat it out repulsive and unfair. I am certainly not a religionist Republican dressing my windows with so-called “conservatism” while looking for federal mandates to constrict all means of human behavior to conform to an arbitrary set of Christian fundamentalist principles. The only reason I tend to side with the Democrats today is because I am at this moment more in favor of loosening the grip on personal liberties and unilateral executive control over federal powers which the last 8 years have sought to tear asunder, than cutting off all fiscal injections from the feds that aid social programs right off.
Both parties are to blame for the absurd buyouts of big-ass corporate structures that have totally screwed the world economy. They are also to blame for the conditions that lead us into this hole. All they have done is give the average Joe (not that plumber guy, please) and Jane taxpayer their own shovel called taxes and foreclosures to fill in that hole. Thanks Uncle Sam. There is too much power in Washington controlled by the few. It’s not what the founders had in mind when they literally bled to build this country out of the seeds planted from a revolution. In fact, it’s what they sought to avoid come hell or high water.
But this is not the place I intended to get too political. Therefore, if I am writing about politics and political theory alone, I am starting to post on The Liber(al)tarian Network. It is a site dedicated to the emergence, if you will, of a group of folks with strong libertarian leanings who also have a more liberal sense of justice attached to those ideas. It’s basically all about free markets, free consciences, and building a society where people are not screwing each other over mercilessly. If it’s politics and religion specifically, you will find it here. If it’s politics without religion, you will find it there. Read the best description “liberaltarianism” written by CATO Institute vice president for research Brink Lindsey here. (Lindsey’s book The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture is fantastic by the way and I encourage you to give it a look).
I invite everyone to unshackle themselves from Republican values (which are not fiscally conservative) and Democratic values (which are not very socially liberal) to find a better “purple” medium. I think it is this idea where we can create a society that is socially liberal in which personal liberties are not arbitrarily enforced by government, fiscally conservative in which the money you earn is the money that you keep, and does not allow the powerful to screw the weak on a regular basis.
My most recent post is called “Are Free Markets Really Possible?“. Warning: liberals and conservatives, as the media has constructed those terms with the blue and red state phenomenon, will find a few things agreeable but will also find things mutually repulsive. I guess that’s kind of like my own writing on just about everything under the sun. But pragmatists tend to piss everyone off anyway for the same reason: If it doesn’t work, stop doing it! Do something else and make it work instead.
Many people are currently looking for calls in the ministry. They are looking to hear God’s voice in the midst of the world’s multivariate dimensions of noise that often make discerning and responding to a call to the ministry difficult. This is why the process is never something in which anyone should engage by their self. Unfortunately, I felt quite alone.
There are others as well who are coming to the end of their penultimate term in seminary and perhaps more confused about their vocation than when they started. Some of these people have the benefit of having very robust relational support structures including their home congregations, presbyteries, dioceses, etc. For many, their confusion will be limited and end with clarity. For others, the confusion will only increase raising questions about what they have done during the last three years of their life since it is now clear that ministry is not what they want to do any longer.
Sadly, many good prospects to the ministry will feel crushed under pressures to conform to specific dogma, specific political systems, and to speak in a certain way - none of which are authentically based in that person’s sense of self-actualization at the time. Some may capitulate to the desire to conform in order to be what they think they ought to be in spite of their realization that there is a fundamental mismatch between who they think they actually are, and who they think they are expected to be. Others will steadfastly reject the urge to conform and be the best person they feel they are at that moment in time. They will comfort in their own skin resisting the urge to strap on the clothing of someone else whether they are real or completely imagined.
For the latter, it is a hard decision because they will feel like a failure, a loser, someone who is lost all over again. It is a harsh irony that in finding one’s self, one can actually lose one’s own self all over again. They will ask, if not this life, what then? I know this, because I was exactly this person. Nine years ago this January, I was writing my Personal Information Form (PIF) - the form that candidates in the Presbyterian Church (USA) send out to churches and other ministry positions. It is a personal narrative along with other information so that pastoral search committees can vet out prospectives for ministry positions.
Rather than exist as a benchmark that for many is the beginning of moving into positions of professional ministry, my very first attempt at drafting a PIF was the beginning of the end. It was the very moment I realized that I did not want to be a minister anymore. It came at the end of a process that drained my energy, left me feeling rather stranded by my own presbytery, and a non-entity at my home congregation. I was invited to read scripture at my home congregation - once. This was for a “college homecoming” Sunday. I never preached for them, I was never asked.
Feeling alone is about the most difficult position for any prospective minister to be, especially when the process of discernment is to be a function of the community. It is not as if I did not try to communicate my sense of confusion and angst. I know, because I saved the letters I sent to various persons in the Presbytery. I finally met with Dr. Tom Gillespie, then President of Princeton Seminary, for guidance. I had mentors outside of the presbytery as well that I sought out. But from my own home, I received nothing in return and that was what hurt the most. The only thing worse than outright rejection is going through the motions in the midst of apathy. This all came to a head in a fit of anger, irony, and sarcasm when I stopped writing my personal information form. I have never opened it again until tonight. Here are the last two paragraphs verbatim:
1) My Work
My time as a youth leader has trained me to live within a younger generation and I feel that I have a good barometer for who they are and how to relate to them. My passion for ministering to this generation coupled with my ease at relating to them and my relatively close age to theirs enable me to minister to college students with the knowledge of who they are and what they are all about. Well that was B.S.!!!!
I have no hopes about the future.
You will never know me committee.
2) Viewpoints
I am a fire-breathing fundamentalist and I hit people with bibles. You will be in hell if you do not obey me. I am a lone stranger in the world and I will burn you with holiness. Come and join my cult. I will heal you only as far as I can spit on the evil inside of you. Everyone is in a sex-cult driven to rape me and my holiness. The government controls our minds. I see people staring at me in the shadows. I want to kill them. I like lasagna. I eat red meat. Everyone is filled with maggots. Join with me in liberty and truth. I will impeach your immorality. Vile green limb that you are.
Soon thereafter my wife and I stopped going to church finding the only peace God can provide on Sunday morning - hikes with our dogs in the woods just north and west of Princeton. We did not go back to church for six years. We are in a good place now, but this demonstrates the spiritual damage that people can exert on you, even when they do not intend to. Be open, be honest, be clear with each other. Without these, relationships cannot stand.
Can you write a statement of faith in 136 characters or less?
A wonderful example of viral media happened this weekend. This is an example of how one little idea takes root and becomes something more or less of an established practice for people. It is also an example of why micro-blogging is a rather powerful medium to spread ideas over a lot of space in just a short amount of time.
What do I mean by viral? Media theorist and critic Douglas Rushkoff developed the idea in his book Media Virus! over a decade ago as a way to explain how small marketing ideas propagate through populations over time through technology. These simple and small ideas replicate, transform and take root in communities and often translate into real dollars for media companies as PR strategies. For example, the book The Shack began as a modest little independent publication before rapidly spreading to communities and families before becoming a best-seller. Ironically the idea of viral media spread, well, virally.
If you look over on the left of my blog here, you see a list of small posts under the heading “Follow Me”. Those are my most recent Twitter posts. It is an extremely interesting tool, but only when you are participating in the medium with other people. This is called “following”. It is far more than just expressions of mundane activities like watching movies and drinking coffee - even if it is that too. This is an example of how the mundane might transform into the rather profound.
Here is how this particular viral idea started:
Adam Walker Cleaveland was working on a statement of faith this weekend and was looking for ideas among his fellow Twitterers. In response Neal Locke wrote this:
“mstrlocke: @adamwc @shawncoons - anyone recording these? Would make a great compliation… maybe we should hash tag them: #TOF”
And a small idea began to propagate to various blogs in addition to the so-called “Twitterverse”. Pomomusings, Mark Time, RevDarth, Swinging from the Vine, and Presbymergent have all represented the idea with blog posts to spread the word. These are only among the blogs that I follow regularly. I am sure that others have posted as well. There is also a Facebook group that already has 137 members and counting created by Ryan Kemp Pappan. Here’s what to do:
- If you’re not on twitter yet, click here to see what it’s all about and why you should be.
- If you’re on twitter (or just joined), log in and tweet your personal statement of faith…in 140 characters or less.
- Add the hashtag #TOF somewhere in your tweet. That will actually make it 136 characters, but it also makes it easy for us to find and compile all of these statements.
- Encourage your friends to take the “Twitter of Faith” challenge, too - imagine how cool it would be if this meme spreads, proclaiming the gospel across the Internet (well, at least across Twitter).
This was my contribution:
dtatusko Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, reconciling the world to himself, revealing life’s ultimate intelligibility #TOF about 9 hours ago from web
So…what do you believe?
According to John Shuck. Thanks John!
According to the origination of the award, there is giving to accompany the receiving. I am focusing on a few individual blogs I am drawn into in a regular basis.
Tribal Church - Carol Howard Meritt always has something pragmatic to say about the current state of the mainline church. She has a fantastic brain to pick for pastors who are in the endless thoughts of WTF am I doing here (my inflection on the question)?
Bryan’s Thoughts - For someone who takes wisdom seriously enough to admit that he’s just trying to figure it all out like humans are supposed to do.
Scotteriology - If you cannot find humor in this thing we call Christianity, then his site is not for you. The same applies if you have no barometer for sarcasm.
The Beloved Spear - For not being afraid of controversy at the expense of honesty and conviction. We seem to see eye to eye on a lot, but even in agreement, there is challenge which I appreciate.
Todd Seavey - For thinking through political and social issues with balance from a libertarian perspective. I just started following his blog and it’s a good thing. There’s enough here to drive both Republicans and Democrats nuts and that’s about where we should all be politically in my judgment.
- Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
- Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
- Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
- Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we’ll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
- Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.
In March I connected the 30 Day Sex Challenge with Orwell’s image of the repression of desire in 1984. There are other more fundamental theological issues at stake as well. My question now is: If that is not the way to go, where do we go since failed marriages are a massive burden on our entire society and our churches? If the church is about relationships with each other and God, then it seems reasonable to hold marriages to the fire as the idealized vision of what a covenanted relationship should be. But they are not. Marriage is not doing well, and Christians are not helping marriage get any better.
Money, kids, and sex are the three main causes of divorce typically in that order. True intimacy is about how honest a couple is and how willing each partner is to change with their partner over time. Evolution needs to happen for the couple (as adaptation to change). Too often, the evolution happens when one partner adapts to new circumstances and biology as a matter of course, but the other refuses to adapt. Change then needs to occur as a matter of choice, and not as a matter of mutual necessity. That creates the burden of “work”.
I would like to think of it in a different way similar to the pattern of spiritual development that Diogenes Allen outlines in Spiritual Theology. There, the goal of spirituality is to commune with God directly. But to do that, one must work through various indirect means to God such as nature, each other, and Scripture. Part of the discipline is to cultivate an habitual presence of God in one’s life. I would like to see more couples also experience the habitual presence of each other.
I have never been one to say that marriage is work. Some people often get rather testy when I mention that marriage should not be work, but a mutual adaptation to new vistas of life. Life might create work for both of you, but your relationship should not be part of that work. Settling with the idea that your relationship is something that needs perpetual work is simply not satisfying to me, and I am not sure there is a good reason why that should persist for anyone. The goal in all relationships is for them not to be work, but a “habitual presence”. If you are not used to this, it might take discipline and training to get there, but it is clearly a worthy goal.
At the risk of “TMI” my wife and I are often simply too sleepy during the week that I cannot see much success with a “sex challenge”. We have jobs and two little toddlers who absorb our energy along with church work among other things. But what makes our relationship strong is that we find many ways to be intimate beyond the bed and that’s why we are doing so well. My sense is that it is this kind of intellectual and emotional intimacy of which many couples are deeply deprived.
Got a better idea.
30 Days of Abstinence
Couples will engage each other in prayer and guidance where the couple increases emotional and spiritual intimacy with each other. The following guidelines should be observed:
- Each must be open about:
- each other’s desires from each other,
- each other’s desires they wish to give to each other,
- each other’s desires for their children,
- each other’s picture of what the household will look like in a few years.
- and how God was either present or absent in each other’s life for a given period of time and why.
- Do it all while being abstinent from any sexual intimacy beyond hugging.
- Hug each other at least five times a day.
- Never go to bed angry at each other or the kids.
- Keep individual journals that reflect on these questions.
- Each week summarize your personal journals and share it with your spouse.
- Let your spouse read what you wrote, and then reflect it back to you.
- At the end of the 30 days express a desire that you would like to receive from your spouse and a desire that you would like to give to your spouse. Go on a date - just the two of you. And act on those desires for each other.
My intuition is that a lot of people make incorrect assumptions about their partner, and the “work” happens with a discernment process that lacks direction. If both partners understand each other’s assumptions about the world, life, money, children, careers and yes, sexual desires; and if each are willing to adapt to each other, and adapt to the world as a couple, and do so on a continual basis in order for the presence of the spouse to be habitually present even if not physically present, many marital problems will be resolved. These are questions that need to be addressed while a couple is engaged to be married as well.
Why don’t we do this at our churches and see what we can do to strengthen the families in our congregations?
Ben Witherington discusses a lecture by John Piper worth a read here. Money quote:
“And all too often, the apparent intellectual coherency of a theological system is taken as absolute and compelling proof that this view of God, salvation,the world must be true and all others be heresy, to one degree or another. But it is perfectly possible to argue logically and coherency in a hermeneutical or theological circle with all parts connected, and unfortunately be dead wrong– because one drew the circle much too small and left out all the inconvenient contrary evidence. This sort of fault is inevitable with theological systems constructed by finite human beings.”
This is precisely why Kierkegaard becomes more attractive after moving through so many permutations of Reformed doctrine. For Kierkegaard the absolute sovereignty and otherness of God is expressed as a paradox that human reason and mental capacities cannot contain. As soon as you think you have a system that has it correct, the dialectic of God’s sovereign otherness automatically trumps anything that you can possibly conceive or truly understand.
Another metaphor is Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It’s is logically impossible to justify a system of thinking by means of that system itself. And so, one must appeal to an external ground in order to validate the very assumptions that ground a given system. All systems of thinking are by their nature, therefore, incomplete. We can only hope to attain to the best knowledge of something, but we will never attain to complete knowledge of something. If there is this absolute dialectical paradox between God and humankind, it only increases the realization that there is a massive void that exists between the capabilities of human rationality in a theological system and what is ultimately unknowable through those capabilities, namely the being of God.
Before God then, all theological systems in themselves are ultimately judged absurd.
