Being of One Mind as Ten Thousand Minds

Last week I wrote 3000 words on what being pro-life from womb to tomb means to me and, more importantly, my story from being a one-issue voter to being a voter who tries to consider the full gamut of issues of life. That evening Nate and I watched a film called One Night in Miami and one line stuck out to me: “You will never be loved by the folks you’re trying to win over.”

You can understand that quote in many different ways, but what stuck to my gut was, “I’ve got to stop spinning my wheels trying to win over folks to seeing things from another perspective.” 

By nature we surround ourselves by confirmation bias and build echo-chambers through the social media we ingest, the news sources we believe, the churches we attend, the cities we live in, etc.. We cannot avoid drifting toward information, theology, and relationships that confirm our biases. This is human nature and to deny we do it, in any form, betrays a lack of self-awareness that will continue to cripple our country, churches, and our own character. We have to actively fight against our best and worst impulses, and intentionally choose to listen to others who disagree with us. 

Yesterday I had a consultation with someone about our land. We do not have much land, but what we have, we want to care for and cultivate. In her initial query to me about the land I said I preferred a wild look, somewhat rambling gardens, nothing too pristine or perfect. But when we spoke she said because our home is all right angles and straight lines, yet our view is very wild—the river, the woods, the wildlife—we need to figure out a way to harmonize the two. Her words were, “We need to create harmony by increasing dissonance.” And then she described her ideas for our land, all of which I loved and can’t wait to begin the long work toward it all.

Creating harmony by increasing dissonance is a common idea in any art form, whether music, painting, writing, and gardening. And it makes everything better, more compelling, full, robust, and complex. It is the pairing of the beautiful alongside the uncomfortable, the sweet alongside the sour. Think of your favorite wine or favorite candle scent, there are notes of woods and flowers and fruits and locations, all very different but somehow working together to create harmony.

Recently, I’ve been trying to understand what Paul meant in Philippians when he spoke of his joy being full when they were of “one mind.” What does it mean to be of one mind in Christ when we are tens of thousands minds and hearts and bodies and spirits, all with different experiences, stories, cultures, and understandings of Scripture? Of course there is absolute truth, but who on earth is the final arbiter of that truth and who made them the final arbiter of it? 

I return to the creeds often in the past few years, not just because we recite them every week in church, but because it reminds me of what has lasted through the centuries. I have to believe that if something has remained that long there must be some truth to it. But then heresies have lasted just as long too.

I’m not trying to communicate that all truth is relative because I don’t believe it is. I do believe that all truth is complicated though, and unless we acknowledge its dissonance (or lack of harmony), we will struggle to find where the harmony is within it. We have to admit our biases. We have to confess our prejudices and stories and histories and genealogies and theologies and every little thing that makes us us, is also subject to inspection. Not once. Not twice. But again and again and again, from faith to faith, glory to glory, until we’re face to face with Christ.

This is uncomfortable work because it means submitting to uncomfortable realities, realities that press on our freedoms and personal preferences. It means cultivating charitableness as we learn about the other side instead of only ingesting news and information from our side. It means practicing curiosity as a discipline and not as anathema. It means saying, right out loud, I am imperfect and not yet finished and I have miles to go before I understand as well as I need to. It means valuing facts as just as important as feelings because feelings are facts too. Sadness matters, grief matters, joy matters—and it’s all there for a reason. Emotions are a signpost to something God wants to show us or heal in us or reconcile with him or simply use to display his glory.

I decided against posting those 3000 words on my story of being pro-life from womb to tomb because I think, in my heart, I just wanted to win over some people who’ve written me off. But that’s not the work I’m called to do. Not ultimately. 

My work, and yours, is to be of one mind in Christ. To recognize the dissonance that exists in a world not yet healed by its King, but to live with one another in peaceable harmony—playing different notes, holding different beliefs about how he is healing our world or different expressions of his healing work in our world, but all playing the same hymn: “In Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song.”

Women Initiate

"To be feminine is to nurture, not merely respond." I read this quote in a book and was warmed by its presence. In a complementarian culture it can be tempting to tout the party line, "Men initiate, women respond," as though the complexities of human nature and God-ordained orders can be summed up in pithy four word statements.

What about all the women we see in scripture who initiated and the men who responded? "Yes, but order!" the dogmatic pounds his fist and says with the full authority of Paul and the early church behind him. But what about Eve, the mother of all living, the nurturer of life (Gen 3:20)? Adam may have planted the seed, but it was Eve who did all the work. Isn't this the nature of nurturing? And isn't that also an initiating, sustaining work?

The real work of a woman is to be long-suffering. To see what is—but also what can be, and then to nurture it every step along the way (Prov 31). This is an initiating work if there is one because all around us the message is to stop when the going gets tough, make time for me, to treat ourselves, to omit or abort what is inconvenient. The real work of the feminine woman is to work and to keep and to tend and to pioneer forward in the face of risk and uncertainty and what is frightening (I Pet 3:6).

The real work of the feminine woman is to initiate kingdom work on earthly soil, to sleep by the seeds deep under the dirt, and to burst with anticipation and then at last joy when her work is born (Rom 8:22).

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9

United in One Thing at Least

My friend Trillia Newbell's new book United has hit the shelves this week. Trillia is a wise and kind woman whose words regarding race and unity are much needed in the church—especially from a woman. After reading her book, I watched The Loving Storyon Netflix, which I've highly recommended several times this week. I am also partway through Letters to A Birmingham Jail, edited by Brian Loritts, with contributions by Piper, Chandler, and more. This week I have been so struck by the importance of ongoing conversations regarding the Civil Rights movement and how they affect current movements in our culture and world. As I read and watch these stories, and learn to how parse this ongoing history (because that's what it is and will be for a long, long time), I am having to consider freshly what our response to things like gender roles, same sex attraction, homosexual unions, abortion, and even Church and non-profit polity needs to be. These words will be recorded someday in biographies and documentaries. Whether we like it or not, our words matter and they do hold weight.

One thing I was deeply struck by while watching The Loving Story was the original content, first person narratives, film of actual an actual couple being persecuted for their marriage to one another, young and eager lawyers making history in 1968 regarding interracial marriage. In 2014, more than ever before in history, we are content factories.

Some day, and not very far in the future, our children and their children WILL use our words for better or worse. That makes me want to be very sober-minded and slow to speak, slow to give opinions, especially ones that have not been tried or put through the fire.

There are a number of polarizing situations at play in the world, just today I can think of three huge ones concerning religious liberties, homosexual unions, and abortion—oh, friends, let's be careful, very, very careful of how we respond. Not in fear of what will someday be used against us, but in wisdom for the sake of future generations.

These are not simply ideals and ideas—they are people, real people.

Thanksgiving-02

Christian Caricatures

The thing about caricatures is you always know who it is just by looking at it, and yet, you know you can't trust the likeness.

Right?

A caricaturist zeros in on several points on a person's face. Maybe it's a slightly larger nose, or a bit of a crooked smile, or maybe something as pedestrian as deeply blue eyes or a natural blush. The caricaturist's aim is to exaggerate and minimize what sets the face apart. His aim is not to make ugly, but often times a caricature looks ugly. If you've ever had one done you know the righteous indignation that accompanies first sight,

"I don't really look like that!" you say, and of course you don't.

But you kind of do. Not really. But sort of. Enough that you're recognizable, not enough that anyone who knows your face well would say it's an exact likeness.

Within culture at large, and Church culture especially, caricaturists abound. In some ways, they're the comedians of the inner circle; the Jon Acuff and Jen Hatmakers. They zone in on the ridiculous and ludicrous parts of the Christian life and family and help us all laugh at ourselves. They satire, and they're good at it, and we laugh at them because they're helping us laugh at ourselves.

When Caricature goes badly is when a sly artist studies a theology or movement solely to find the weak or shallow parts. Then they pound out a blog post heard round the world for a split second and then life goes on as normal. A moment of fame while everyone points and laughs at the funny man in the picture, asks how could he be so silly and stupid and ugly, and how could he not know he's so silly and stupid and ugly.

Ha ha.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here's the other thing about caricatures: we know the elongated nose or tiny eyes or stout neck are true about us; in fact, nobody sees our face in the mirror, under such a microscope as we do.

But when the caricature is passed around as truth for long enough, everyone starts to believe that's our real face. That's who we really are. But it's not.

That's not the person who wakes up in the morning, drinks their coffee while they read the bible, who packs lunch for her kids or drops the shampoo in the shower, who can't find their keys where they left them, who buys coffee for the person behind them in line, who killed it at the meeting with his coworkers, who meets weekly with a guy who just needs prayer and a friend, who forgot to put gas in the car, who falls into bed every night exhausted and confident that they are doing exactly what God designed them to do and be and look like.

Who cares about a caricature when there are real people to be seen?

If you are tempted to zero in on a particular face of a movement and draw for the world a caricature they won't forget, what you need to remember is at the end of the day we throw those caricatures in the garbage. Nobody really wants to look at them, and especially not the subject of the drawing. Why? Because it's not true. It's partially true, which makes it not true.

If you want people to listen to what you have to say, really listen, not just rally around you, or press like on your Facebook post, you have to sit with them and be true with them, and be truthful about them.

I asked an artist one time, a man who paints likenesses that almost breathe with life, how he made the paintings.

"Do you take a photo and paint from that?" I asked him.

"Oh, no," he said, "I make the subject sit in front of me, hours and hours and hours. How could I paint them life-like if I did not see them living?"

Why I am Pro-Choice

I was small, small enough that my parents were still zipping my coat and tying my shoes. The signs were bigger than me and we stood out on the sidewalk in the cold in front of a hospital in southeastern Pennsylvania. I remember my father lifting me up to put money in the parking meter. Sometimes we ate hotdogs afterward with our fellow marchers and house church members. I remember complaining sometimes about our weekly march. I didn't know what abortion was, but I knew what babies were because we always had babies in our house. We loved babies, ours and others.

We loved them so much, I thought, we were willing to stand on the street corners and sidewalks around the hospital holding grotesque and provacative signs in front of shocked patients.

Holding signs in silent protest of abortion isn't cool. It stopped being cool around the same time fundamentalism took a steep decline and social justice, ironically, took a steep climb.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

This week I read a tweet from RC Sproul Jr., "I believe in a baby's right to choose."

Maybe our signs said some variation of that, but mostly our tactics were intimidation, either through guilt or manipulation. Get dirty if you have to, the lives of the most innocent are at stake. Our intentions were good.

But the simplicity of Sproul's tweet sticks to me this week in particular.

He has taken the pro-choicer's entire argument and given it to them in decadent fullness.

Of course we believe in the right to choose, we believe it in all the way back to the beginning, the conception, the fusing together of cells and formation of the brain, the movement of the heart, the limbs, and the lungs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

No one is arguing for the abortion of three and four year olds, but three and four year olds have similar decision making abilities as infants. Of course there is a small gap of maturity, but a child who cannot zip her coat or tie her shoes, whose father has to lift her to put his money in a meter to park a car she can't drive—how limited is her ability to choose?

We cannot know how any child's life will turn out, but shouldn't we give them the basic right to choose? Or, less even, the ability to learn to make choices?

Every choice—for better or worse—my parents made for me as a young child resulted in growth and maturity, raising me into a responsible adult who makes wise choices of her own now.

One choice I make is to not hold signs in front of hospitals. I think there is a better way. But if I have children someday I hope they find an even better way. I hope my children will look back to my generation and my parent's generation and see the Holocaust of abortion will have lasted 40 years longer than it could have.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that my generation, the one who has lost 55 Million of our brothers and sisters, will be a holistically pro-choice generation.

We will be the generation who chooses life.