The #1 Threat to Marriage Sanctity

It’s that season again: The hard-core social conservative wing of the Republican party needs to incite its base to action, and there’s no better rallying platform than shared enmity. This political season’s threat of choice is Gay Marriage, a phenomenon which will, we are told, cheapen and demean traditional marriage.

It’s a clever straw man, really. Aside from opposition to abortion, the shared resistance to gay marriage might be the only political plank capable of uniting Mormons, Evangelical Christians, and Roman Catholics. In any other context, these groups demonize one another, declaring eternal hellfire for the other two (or lower levels of heaven in the case of Latter Day Saints). Rallied around a common enemy, however, these three antithetical institutions lock arms as brothers and declare themselves joint heirs of a Christian nation, defending their common morals.

After the rallies, they go back to declaring each other damned. There are limits, you know.

***

FLASHBACK: The morning after gay marriage was legalized in New York State. My parents are at breakfast. He reads the paper. They speak in Spanish. I translate below.

     HIM: Hey, gay marriage got passed yesterday!
     HER: Ah. Is there more milk?
     HIM: There’s a letter saying it cheapens our marriage.
     HER: Really?
     HIM: It’s what the letter says. Does ours feel cheaper this morning?
     HER: It must. It’s right there in the paper.
     HIM: Yeah, they wouldn’t just make that up.
     HER: Of course not, never. So, the milk?
     HIM: Hey, the Bills are getting a new helmet design!

***

I hereby declare: Christian marriage is in danger of being cheapened. In fact, it is in the very process of being cheapened. Not, however, by gay marriage, as those caught up in the politics and machinations of this world would have you think.

The primary and only significant threat to Christian marriage today is Christian divorce.

I had thought to make this blog post about addressing the question of Christian remarriage after divorce, itself a rather controversial issue. But as I researched the topic, I felt myself growing more and more heartsick. Site after site and commentary after commentary, it dawned on me that the only reason there is so much Internet discussion about whether or not Christians can remarry after a divorce is because there is so much Christian divorce. The followers of the very Lord who declared “I hate divorce” (Malachi 2:16) seem to spend an inordinate amount of time arguing what situations make it permissible.

Fact: Marriage is so important to the Almighty, He chose it as the principal metaphor for His own relationship with His people.

Fact: Divorce, with or without remarriage, is rampant through the Body of Christ.

***

On the off chance you think I am overstating the case, let me present this scenario: I walk you up to a group of ten adults. You poll them, and you discover three of those ten have been divorced. Using that information alone, you have no sure way of determining whether I have walked you up to a group of ten born again Christians, or a group of ten non-Christians. Divorce is equally embraced by both groups.

This information comes from a 2008 study by The Barna Group, an evangelical research company based in Ventura, CA. Specifically, they found divorce rates to be:

     All born again Christians:          32%
     All non-born again Christians    33%
     Atheists or Agnostics:                30%

Since the margin of error for the study was +/- 3%, any rating within 6 points of an atheist is pretty much indistinguishable from that atheist. So let’s take heart that we aren’t statistically worse than atheists. No, not worse. We’re exactly the same.

Yay for us.

***

Those who argue the jots and tittles of how, when, and why a Christian can be allowed to divorce are missing the point. The real threat to the sanctity of Christian marriage is the Christian couple.

Those who maneuver and dissect scriptures to reveal exactly how a Christian might be able to remarry after a divorce are also missing the point. The real threat to the sanctity of Christian marriage is the Christian couple.

Those who throw themselves into screaming political battles over the legalization of gay marriage are missing the point. The real threat to the sanctity of Christian marriage is the Christian couple.

***

I spend a good amount of time in my Social Network of choice, Second Life. In my years there, I have met dozens of Christians who are divorced and remarried, and when I get to know them well enough, I take the risk of asking how they reconcile their divorce with the sanctity of Christian marriage. To date, their response has been uniform: Their spouses cheated on them, and therefore they were free to divorce based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:32: “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”

I’m going to comment on that. I’ll step past the obvious irony that those quoting the verse to me were using a passage where Jesus was speaking out against excessive divorce and setting it the task of justifying why they did get divorced. Instead, I’ll focus on a subtler assumption that seems to dwell behind their words. That assumption is this: That divorcing due to unfaithfulness is practically required by Jesus in that passage, and if not required, at least shown to be the better path to take.

If that assumption is really there, then I’m compelled to respond to it this way: Stop using a single scripture to justify your flight from marriage, and embrace the whole of Scripture, which has a far different message.

Were you wronged by an adulterous spouse? So was Yahweh, who took Israel as His betrothed, and was cheated on again and again.

Were you furious at that spouse, unable to contain your hurt and your fury over the betrayal? So was Yahweh, Whose bride Israel became like a harlot when seeking other beds, other gods.

Did you cast away that spouse, severing the covenant forever by means of a justifiable divorce? Now you're on your own, for Yahweh did not. Instead, He found a way – built a way at great expense to Himself – to make that covenant eternal.

***

You say your wife has violated the sanctity of the marriage covenant by having an affair? Then instead of using that as your justification for fleeing, man up and show her by your example the path to righteousness again. Says Paul: “How do you know, husband, that you might not save your wife?” (1 Cor. 7:16)

You say your husband has lost his faith and that you shouldn't be unequally yoked? Then instead of using that as your rationale for escape, become a woman whose worth really is beyond rubies and be the presence of Christ in that relationship. Says Peter: “If any husbands do not believe the Word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.” (1 Pet. 3:1-2)

Christian married couples, your decisions to rationalize flight from your marriage commitment might be technically permissible. There may be exceptions in Scripture that allow you to break ranks and run away. But when you do that, you cheapen the sanctity of marriage. You, Christian divorcer, are the real threat to traditional Christian marriage.

Those who are married need to find every blessing and every prayer available to avoid divorce. Those who have already divorced, be it for a month, a week, or decades, need to find every bit of strength the Holy Spirit gives them to bring those marriages back to covenant status and righteousness, rather than hiding behind the Get Out Of Jail Free cards they claim from Scriptural loopholes.

And those Evangelicals waving signs against gay marriage and expending unbelievable amounts of time and energy in worldly politics need to ask themselves why they are so worked up about how marriage looks in the non-Christian world … given how sad it looks in their own congregations. They need to put down the signs, go back to their flocks, and begin reconciliation from within.

Once the plank is out of the eye of the Body of Christ, there will be plenty of time to pick specks out of other eyeballs.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

Run Schools like Business? Okay. You’re Fired.

I’ve never done this before, but I think I’ll make my first blog post that doesn’t explicitly mention Christianity.

Full disclosure: I’m a public school teacher.  Now, let’s proceed.

* * *

I’ve just read another article on how education systems would operate better if they were run like corporations.  “Run school like a business!” has become a knee-jerk rallying cry for reform, and while I know that everything – schools, government, businesses, and American home life – could use plenty of reform, I tire of those who have no idea what they’re saying when they demand schools run like “businesses.”

Listen up, society: I will not run my classroom like a business.  I will not treat your children like products on an assembly line, because I refuse to reject and scrap the ones who are below my standards.  Nor will I treat your children like customers, because I won’t turn away and refuse to do business with the ones I sense are unprofitable to my enterprise.

So feel free to thank me for not running my classroom like a business.  If I did, you might not like the consequences, depending on which business model I chose to emulate:

• If I ran my classroom like a manufacturing business, I could demand that the more hazardous of your students be delivered to me with detailed Material Safety Data Sheets.
• If I ran my classroom like an assembly plant, my procurement department would have a list of qualified preferred-vendor parents who would send us only the top quality raw materials for the construction of our products.  Your child might not make that list.
• If I ran my classroom like a luxury car dealership, I could watch you pull up in your 1998 clunker and determine from your clothes, style of speech, and demeanor that I shouldn’t waste too much time making you one of my preferred customers.
• If I ran my classroom like an automotive manufacturer, I might issue recalls to have you take your student back to a lower grade for retrofitting.
• If I ran my classroom like General Electric or Exxon, I’d pay absolutely no federal taxes at the end of my very profitable year of teaching.  In fact, I’d get federal subsidies on top of my untaxed profits.
• If I ran my classroom like Microsoft, I would stop supporting your student’s knowledge upgrades once I’d found a younger, more promising student to release to the world.
• If I ran my classroom like a Donald Trump business, I could fail to improve your children, then file for bankruptcy protection against any claims you might have on me, and then start all over again with a clean slate and no penalties.  In fact, as a Trump business, I could do that twice a decade.
• If I ran my school like a recession-proof, lean, efficient business, I would focus on core competencies and cut all frills.  By “frills,” you think I mean music and art.  But I don’t.  I mean football, basketball, cheerleading, and all other non-core sports nonsense.
• If I ran my school like a multinational corporation, I would stop working with American children and instead outsource to Asia, where the children are raised to be more compliant, making fewer demands on my limited resources.
• If I ran my classroom like a customer service call line business, instead of contacting your home with my praise or concerns about your child, I would have you contact my call center in India.  They’d read you pre-prepared trouble shooting scripts on how to ensure your student is operating effectively.
• If I ran my school like an insurance company, I would not accept your students with preexisting conditions.  If you tried to force me to, I'd run to the Supreme Court to see if they'd have my back against you, and whine a lot if they didn't.
• If I ran my classroom as a bank runs its loan business, I would ensure that those students who come to me with a lot of ability receive a lot of my investment.  To those with lower ability ratings to their credit, I would give far less.  Perhaps I would even turn them away.

Those who demand schools run like businesses may know even less about business than they do about schooling.  But many of them don’t care.  What many of them are really saying is, “I want a school that runs without tax dollars, where teachers can be fired without cause, where salaries hover barely above minimum wage, and where only what I think is important is allowed to be taught!”

But what do you do, dear customer, the day those schools look at your student and say, “He does not meet our standards, and we don’t want him here”?  What do you do the day they say, “This just isn’t a good fit for us”?

I’ll tell you what you do.  You come to me.  And I will welcome your student with open arms and find a way to work with rejected raw materials.  I will reach into my pocket and finance the pens and notebooks and folders and texts you and your community can’t afford.  I’ll stay up late at night to think up better ways to get an education into his head.  I’ll differentiate.  I’ll customize.  I’ll find a way not to reject him as scrap.

Because I do not run my classroom like a business.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

How Not to Take the Bible Literally

This post is not for new Christians or young believers.  So if you’re relatively new to the faith, I encourage you to click away right now.  Your time will be better spent reading the First Letter of John rather than reading my musings.  Grab your Bible.  Step away from the computer.  Move along, nothing to see here.

Cosmic Parx waits.

There we go.

This month’s topic is more meat than milk, which isn’t something palatable to those who are experiencing the glory, thrill, shock, and beauty of the Scriptures for the first time.  I would like to use this blog post to explain why you, my fellow Christian believer, do not really take the Bible literally.  Despite all our “God said it / I believe it / That settles it” bumper stickers, it’s critical we understand that we’re not to be literalists in the pure, unqualified sense of that word.  To explain why that’s so, I’ll use the words of Scripture itself.

FOUR REASONS I AM NOT A PURE LITERALIST

Reason 1: I know some Scriptures are metaphors and similes.

Let’s start with the easy stuff.  Among those parts of the Bible I know not to take literally are the parables of Jesus.  I know this not only because of all the similes Jesus employs (“The kingdom of heaven is LIKE …”), but also because of the in-depth interpretations He sometimes gave His disciples (e.g., in Luke 8:11-15 where He decodes the metaphors in the Parable of the Sower).

Some of you might remember the old Life of Brian movie, a slapstick British farce about Jesus’ neighbor Brian who is continuously mistaken for the Messiah throughout his life.  At one point, Brian flees Roman soldiers by blending in among dozens of Judean street preachers.  He launches into a parable and is immediately confronted by a pair of hyper-literalist Jews:

BRIAN: There was this man, and he had two servants.

   ARTHUR: What were they called?

BRIAN: What?

   ARTHUR: What were their names?

BRIAN: I don't know. And he gave them some talents.

   EDDIE: You don't know?!

BRIAN: Well, it doesn't matter!

   ARTHUR: He doesn't know what they were called!

BRIAN: Oh, they were called 'Simon' and 'Adrian'. Now--

   ARTHUR: Oh! You said you didn't know!

BRIAN: It really doesn't matter. The point is there were these two servants--

   ARTHUR: He's making it up as he goes along!

Parables dwell beyond literalism.  Many other parts of Scripture directly inform us that they are symbolic, including the Revelation, the visions of Daniel, and the dreams of Jacob’s son Joseph.  This information led an acquaintance of mine to declare, “I take the Bible’s literal parts literally and its symbolic parts symbolically!”  And that is a fine saying.  If only it were that simple.

Reason 2: I know some Scriptures are hyperbole.

Those who approach the Scriptures with the spirit of enmity are fond of pointing out that the Bible has Jesus telling us to hate our mothers and fathers and to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes should they cause us to sin.  We defensively protest that those verses don’t mean what they literally say, and the attackers wryly assert, “I’m just telling you what the Bible says.”  And they are right.  They employ the error of  excessive literalism to joust with truth.

How to respond, since we’re the ones who say the Bible is “true”?  Let’s just consider one example, the cutting off of one’s hand when one sins.  Here’s a losing back-and-forth:

XTIAN: But there are other places in the Bible that say not to mutilate yourself!

   JOUSTER: Oh, the Bible has contradictions?

XTIAN: No!  But you use Scripture to interpret Scripture.

   JOUSTER: Really?  Where is that don’t mutilate rule?

XTIAN: Ah!  It’s right in Leviticus 19:28 and Deuteronomy 14:1.

   JOUSTER: Oh!  So those are Old Testament verses that overrule the New Testament one?

XTIAN: They don’t overrule, they help us interpret!

   JOUSTER: I see.  The Old Testament overrules the literal words of the New.

XTIAN: I didn’t say that, you did.

   JOUSTER: So you pick which verse is literal and which verse is figurative?

XTIAN: It’s common sense which verse is literal!

   JOUSTER: Then your common sense carries more authority than the literal words of Jesus?

Yes, ouch.  Never presume that you know the Scriptures better than those who enjoy arguing them with believers.  I guarantee you, the jousters will find the above exchange just as funny as the Life of Brian exchange.

Literalists among us must be willing to cede some interpretational ground to the use of hyperbole – exaggeration that hammers a point home without being literal.  There is a reason Paul recommends that Timothy study to show himself approved.  That’s said about the very Scriptures Timothy has known well since he was on his mother’s knee.  There’s more to understanding than literal absorption and rote memorization.

Reason 3: I know Paul sometimes prefers symbolic interpretations to literal histories

Hyper-literalism takes more of a beating from Paul in other parts of his letters.  There are areas where Paul encourages symbolic interpretations of Old Testament stories originally presented as literal and historical.  In Galatians 4:24, he treats the stories of the sons of Abraham as an out-and-out allegory.  In Ephesians 5:31-32, he takes no interest in the literal implications of the first man and first woman clinging to one another in monogamous relationship, and decodes the tale as “a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church ….”  In 1 Corinthians 10, he even allows us a peek at his interpretation style.  Commenting on the complete history of the Jews, he says that all events occurred “as a typikos, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come” (v. 11).  Typikos or typoi – types, figures, symbols, and not, as the RSV mistranslates, "a warning.”  Paul vaults righteously from the literal histories to a symbolic application to Christian spiritual principles.  He says the stories are symbols.

Does this mean Paul didn’t think the texts were literal?  Certainly not.  But it means something even more thought-provoking: that Paul considered the literal far less important.  When it came to the Truth, the symbolic meaning significantly outweighed the disposable literal.  And that should give every mature student of the Bible a reason to pause.

Reason 4: I know some portions of Scripture directly say they are not inspired by God.

Paul does something that hyper-literalists wish he hadn’t.  (And I’m not just saying that.  I’ve heard hyper-literalists say, “I’ve sometimes prayed, Lord, why did you let Paul put that in the infallible Holy Bible?”)  In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul distinguishes between his own commands and those of the Lord, directly saying “The Lord says this and not I …” and then a little later, “I say this, not the Lord …”  He further says that if anyone wishes to argue about the Paul-only commands, that he knows of no other custom.  In other words, he states that customs and culture must be taken into account when weighing some of the things he says.

Furthermore, there are parts of Scripture that we know, and I mean know, come from non-inspired sources.  With great fanfare, the Epistle of Jude quotes from the “Assumption of Moses” and the “Book of Enoch,” two apocryphal texts found unworthy of placement in the Bible’s canon.  Does that make those pieces of apocrypha, rejected as the work of men, into the words of God, since they are now Scripture?  To believe so, we must imagine God looking at man’s creations and saying, “Hey, not bad, wish I’d said that, think I’ll use it.”

What are we to make of that, we who believe that all Scripture is inspired of God and useful for righteousness, as 2 Timothy 3 proclaims?  If we use the scripture-interprets-scripture principle, we have to conclude, “All Scripture is breathed by God … except the parts that aren’t …”  But is that even an option?  Are we thrown into an infinite loop, saying, "I believe these words are God's since they are in the Bible, and the words say that they are not God's, which I have to believe because all words in here are God's."

I hope you weren’t expecting a conclusion to this point.  I still have my pastor working on it.  But I suspect the answer may be found in the debunking of hyper-literalist practices.

WHAT IS MY POINT?

I have one and only one point here today.  Milk is nice for the unweaned babies, but the full discernment of those maturing in the Christian life calls for meat.

The Gospel and its resultant salvation are simple.  Growth in maturity and progress along the path of righteousness are not simple.  If you find yourself coming again and again back to the basics of faith and the foundation you’ve already laid – not as part of your witnessing to the unsaved, but as the nature of your own walk in Christ  –  then I invite you to move beyond the hyper-literalist simplicity of easy answers.

The writer of Hebrews urges us to move beyond first principles and to press on toward perfection (6:1).  That means there are steps beyond salvation.  And while it’s glorious to share discourse in our common salvation, Jude makes it clear (1:3) that there will be times we need to contend for the truth of our faith.  That’s part of growing in our perfection.

Let us grow.  God said it?  Yes, and he says so much more than we imagine.  I believe it?  Yes, and the continuous growth of my faith and knowledge is part of my Christian mission.  That settles it?  Perhaps.  Or, perhaps now we only see dimly, as if through a glass.

Whatever hyper-literalism is, I know it is not Scriptural.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx, who is YoYo Rez

PSALM FOR THE INTELLECTUAL

My friend Mike beat me to the punch and posted this on Facebook before I had a chance to post it here :)  Which is sweet, but here it is anyway.  A short one to make up for the last overly long one.

I wrote it as a counter to the disturbing trend of anti-intellectualism one finds among some Evangelical groups in the United States.  May the Lord bless their brains.

***

PSALM OF ONE BORN WITH A WONDERFUL MIND
composed for Marq Twine in 2010 by Yolanda

***

I am born with the mind You gave me,
Intellect,
Insight,
Discernment;
I am born with a love of questions,
Love of the answers revealed.

I am born with the mind You gave me,
A mind others may not understand
Or may distrust
Or may disdain
Or may even mock, to my face or to my back.

***

I hear the things they say, oh Lord:

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,”
People feel free to tell me.
          (But would they tell the athlete to beware his muscle?)

“Don’t overthink things!”
People feel free to say.
          (But would they caution the artist not to over-imagine?)

“You’re off-putting, talking over our heads,”
People quickly warn.
          (But would they tell the singer she is too dauntingly melodic?)

“Nobody likes a smarty pants,”
People condescend.
          (But would they lament the actor who is perfectly in role?)

***

This I pray, with the mind You gave me,
This I say with the mind bestowed:

As the dancer worships you in body,
As the caregiver praises you with heart,
As the soldier serves you with his strength,
Here, oh Lord, am I, the intellectual –
And I, here upon this Earth, I love.
I love!
You, them, and myself.
I love!
With all my mind.
   With all my mind.
      With all this mind You gave me.

- Selah

The Mother of All Knowledge

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON SIN AND BRAINS

     I’m your kid sister.

     Well, okay, there’s a slight chance you’re younger than me, so that would make me your older sister.  Either way, we’re family, you and I.

     We have the same mom.

     Well … the same grandmom.

     Okay … the same [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmom.

     Whatever the numbers, I’m your kid sister.
     I'm reborn.  But the idea of “rebirth” doesn’t make a great deal of sense to us until first we consider what we need to be reborn from.

     And what we need to be reborn from has everything to do with our [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmother.

     Allow me to explain in the form of a story.

PART 1 of 4

     Once upon a time, there was only one Her.

     She was called Ishshah, and she was the woman who was born of no woman.  Her name simply means “the female,” because she was one of a kind, fashioned out of the side of another unique human ... the He, the only He, the DirtMan.
     DirtMan had the breath of The God in him, and no other animal on the face of the Earth had that.  This made DirtMan special, but it also made him alone among the living beings.  That’s why The God made Ishshah … because DirtMan had no companion worthy to stand by his side.

     Ishshah was worthy.  She was made from The God’s breath and from DirtMan’s flesh.  She was perfect.
     And she stayed worthy.  For a time.

* * *

     I interrupt this story for a message about knowledge.

     Me, Cosmic Parx, I love knowledge.  I crave it.  I seek it out, I hunt it down, I practically lust after it.  Put a Chocolate Cake in front of me, sitting next to a stack of Really Cool Knowledge, and I’d go for the knowledge first.

     And then I’d eat the cake, too, because, hey, who am I kidding?

     But first, I want the knowledge.

     Just like grandmom.

PART 2 of 4

     So Ishshah and her DirtMan lived in the most beautiful of areas on the face of the Earth.  There was one rule for living there – no eating from the Tree at the center of that massive, beautiful garden area.  It was a tree with specific knowledge in it, the knowledge of good and of evil and of the difference between the two.  Every animal lived in the garden land with Ishshah and Dirtman, and even the most ferocious was tamer than Lassie, because DirtMan had been put in charge of them all by The God.
     And the animals knew their place.
     Except for one.
     His name was Nachash.  You pronounced that CH in the middle like a rough H, like you’re clearing your throat, you know?  DirtMan probably gave Nachash that name because it imitated the hissing sound Nachash made when he spoke.  Yes, I said spoke.  A talking animal.  Why not?  DirtMan and Ishshah were talking animals, too, so don’t get so worked up about it.  Stay in the story, would you?
     One day Nachash decided to chat up the human female.  Test out her brains.  Check up on her wits.  I don’t know if he had tested her before.  I don’t know if he had tried to trip up DirtMan prior to this.  All I know about is this one day, the day Nachash held out a little something that the woman couldn’t resist.
     He offered her a taste of knowledge, a peek into the hidden things.

* * *

     Another interruption, if you’ll oblige me.

     It is a long-held tradition of men that the Nachash, the serpent, was Satan himself.  This is not a Biblical assertion.  Instead, it’s an interpretation based on many, many years of really cool artwork and loads of words from outside the Bible.  Yes, it’s true that the Book of Revelation, written thousands of years after Genesis, has a single line in it that shows the devil in a dragon form and calls him “the old serpent.”  But that’s far from convincing exegesis, considering that: 

1. the Nachash of our story is soon to be cursed to slither on the ground and eat dirt forever, but Satan has no such punishment; we later see Satan freely walking about the Court of the Heavenly Host in the Book of Job, legs intact;
   
2. many things and people are called “serpents” throughout the Hebrew scriptures, including Leviathan, violent men, wine, King Ahaz, invading armies of the north, and (most often) actual serpents.  The New Testament has its share of serpent comparisons, too – a bad gift for a child when he asks for a fish, the wisdom of disciples when they stay harmless as doves, the Pharisees at their worst, and (interestingly) Christ himself in the third chapter of John;
   
3. ergo, picking a single reference to a serpent out of hundreds in Scripture to match up the devil to the creature in Eden is, at best, an act of “eisegesis,” imposing one’s preexisting ideas onto a text … bad hermeneutics, very bad.

     As I mentioned, I really love knowledge.

PART 3 of 4

     The story of our [great-great + 150-or-so greats] grandmom does not end well.  Ishshah had options.  She could have eaten anything else.  Only one tree was forbidden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Even the one beside it, the Tree of Life, had not been explicitly forbidden.  She could have checked in with DirtMan to get his advice.  She could have checked in with The God, who walked daily in their midst.

     But in that instant, she didn’t want Life.
     In that moment, she didn’t turn to man.
     In that hour, she ignored the God option.
     She chose to forget Who made her, for whom she was made, and all good things she already had.  She bought into the deceit of a lower animal, one over whom she and DirtMan had been given dominion.  She ignored the rule, and she chose her path.

     She really lusted after knowledge.

     DirtMan must have, too, because she had no trouble getting him to join in.

     And when The God walked back among them, they came to know more than they had expected.  They all knew punishment.  To the Nachash came the fruits of deceit: eternal enmity with mankind, the eating of dust, the loss of all reason.  To Ishshah came the fruits of untimely lust for knowledge: the sorrow of bearing sons, emptiness and longing after the man she’d been one with, and subjugation to the rule of a husband she had once been equal to.  And DirtMan, to him came the fruits of abandoning his dominion over all creatures, his entrapment to the wiles of those who should have answered to him: toil, thorns, thistles, sweat, and a return to the dirt from which he’d been made.

     The privileged life they’d lived – that all creation had lived – was gone.  Living on this world became … a different sort of living, not the life The God had offered.  And that living would be hard, with scant hope, and few moments of joy.

     That was our grandmother’s legacy.

     She was supposed to be the mother of the most privileged race in the universe.

     Now, those born from her would simply be The Lost.  DirtMan changed her name.  He called her Hawwa, “Mother of the Living.”

     Before their fall, it would have been a title of honor.

     Now, it was a bittersweet reminder of the fullness of living they’d lost.

* * *

     A final interruption:

     The word Hawwa (or Chavvah in more modernly pronounced Hebrew) mutated over time into the name “Eve.”  Words change, you see.  For example, the recent English slurred-words ginna gohtada used to be pronounced, “going to go to the” – as in “I’m ginna gohtada store now.”  The word Hawwa did that, too, becoming ‘Eua in the ancient Greek, then becoming Eva in the Latin, then becoming Eve in your English Bible.

     Her name is mentioned only 4 times in all of Scripture.

     Despite that, she appears in more artwork than any other woman in history, except for the Virgin Mary.

PART 4 of 4

     Now we enter the story.
     I am your kid sister.

     Or maybe your older sister, I dunno.

     But I do know this: You and I, we are of the flesh of Hawwa, the Ishshah.  That was our first birth.

     This is the month of Christmas, commemorating a very different first birth ... the one that opened the door to our second birth, that amazing moment when the flesh of DirtMan again is filled with the breath of The God.  An internal resurrection.  An infilling by the Spirit Himself (who is, and not incidentally, the Spirit of all knowledge).

     If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should ask yourself this question: Why was Christ born, if He'd only wind up dying?

     We need to consider that carefully.

     We need to ponder it prayerfully.

     I just told you a story about the day we died.  But the Gospels tell a fuller story.  They give you the biographical details of Christ's life, yes, but they reveal a secret as well.  They tell you the secret of that other Tree in the garden we lost, the Tree of Life, the one we didn’t eat from.

     That’s a bit of information … a bit of Knowledge … that you need to get before this season ends.

     And let’s face it: You really love knowledge, don’t you?

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx

A Woman's Role in the Church

A discussion of what the “role” of women is in Christian churches often immediately degenerates into a discussion of what women can’t do in churches.  Discussions affirming what we can do are immediately left behind for much more (apparently) interesting and (certainly) contentious issues.

To give myself a fresh perspective, I thought I’d take a look at the question in the affirmative – what role can a woman play in the church?

Not, “What are women banned from doing?”

Not, “What is a woman’s role in marriage?”

I want simply to provide a survey of what Jesus, Paul, and others in the New Testament accepted as proper and praiseworthy behaviors for a woman aiding the spread of the Gospel – a positive approach in a world of compelling negativity.

***

20 ROLES FOR WOMEN

Brought to you by Scripture

1) THE DAUGHTER

First and foremost, women can be among the followers of Jesus, as evidenced during his life and documented throughout the New Testament.  We might take that for granted.  But God grant that no daughter of Eve ever forget the eternal honor we have been gifted.  Being His child is Role One, and in comparison, no other role comes close.

2) THE WITNESS

Women can witness about Christ and his role as Messiah, sometimes bringing whole towns to belief in Him through their words (John 4:39).

3) THE PRAY-ER

Women can join together with men in prayer (Acts 1:14), and they may host such prayer gatherings in their own homes (Acts 12:12)

4) THE PURSE

Woman can be financial supports to ministry, as evidenced in Luke 8:3, where women are lauded for providing the monetary backing that Jesus’ ministry required.

5) THE MODEL

Older women can train younger ones in areas of womenly expertise (Titus 2:3-5)

6) THE DEACON

Women can be part of the diakonia, benefactors/deacons serving churches (Rom 16:1).

7) THE RISK-TAKER

Women can be co-workers who risk their lives for church leadership (Rom. 16:3).

8) THE PRISONER

Women can bear the honor of being imprisoned for the faith (Rom. 16:7).

9) THE TEAMMATE

Women can pair up in teams to work hard for the Gospel (Rom. 16:12).

10) THE SURROGATE

Women can be dear friends and surrogate mothers to church leaders (Rom 16:12-13).

11) THE GUARD

Women can be guards, along with men, against false teachers and false pastors [I like this one, as it’s currently one of my ministries in the Lord] (Rom. 16:17-19)

12) THE CORRECTOR

Women can be part of male-female “doctrinal correction & teaching teams” (for want of a better term) (Acts 18:24).

13) THE MERCHANT

Women can host traveling preachers in their own households (which they can afford because apparently they can also be well-off merchants) (Acts 16:13-15)

14) THE CONTENDER

Women can stand beside church leadership contending for the cause of the Gospel (Phil 4:2-3 … note, as well, that we see another two-woman evangelism team here).

15) THE CHURCH PROPHET

Women may pray and prophesy aloud (1 Cor. 11:5) under the influence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17-18).

16) THE HOME PROPHET

Women may prophesy even in the presence of church leadership, should they stop by for a missionary journey or two (Acts 21:9)

17) THE OWNER

They can own the building where the church meets (Colossians 4:15).

18) THE SUMMONER

They can send out delegations from their home churches to summon apostles to bring discipline from afar (1 Cor. 1:11).

19) THE AMBASSADOR

They can head up missionary journeys to established churches and deliver original manuscripts of the Scriptures to people there (okay, so this won’t happen a lot, but it’s pretty cool that Phoebe was used in that way to get the Book of Romans to the church … Rom 16:1-2).

20) THE ELECT

Women can be the “elect ladies” over children of God, and receive epistles directly from apostles -- addressed to the woman, meant for them to share (2 John)

SUMMARY

I compiled that list in my morning Bible time, and it is certainly not a complete collection of the roles a woman of God can play in the church.

As God's adopted daughter, I can do many, many things – host churches in my home, prophesy in services, pray aloud in an orderly manner, deliver Scripture, pair up with men or other women to work for the Gospel, correct brothers doctrinally,  defend against false teachers, support ministries financially from my own funds, serve in the diakonia, summon church leaders to deliver discipline, be imprisoned for my faith.

          With Scripture empowering me to do all that, I have little to say to those who want to go on and on about what women can’t do in a church.  I’ll simply smile at those obsessed with such a topic.

          And then I’ll be sure not to invite them to preach at the church that meets in my house.

Marana tha,

Cosmic

Dear Lord: Thanks for Nothing

We are a world of whiners.

Please note: I didn’t say we just recently became a world of whiners.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ve inhabited Whiney World ever since Cain turned all mortally mopey after his second-rate offering was rejected by the Lord.

But I pay special heed to this age’s Poor-Pity-Me factor because (a) I live in this age, and (b) I’m in the U.S., where mega-church Health & Wealthism is seeping its way into the Body of Christ.  Health & Wealthism leads to a sense of entitlement, which in turn leads to an odd, whiney relationship with other human beings, as well as with our Father in Heaven.  Christians begin to reflect a culture of victimhood that smacks of the flesh and the world.

In the U.S., November is the month we set aside to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It commemorates, ironically, the first major harvest meal shared among the Plymouth Puritans and the heathen Wampanoag Indians.  Why do I say “ironically”?  Because these days, Thanksgiving marks the start of High Whining Season among some American Christians – complaints about stores that dare to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas; frothing accusations that schools are giving “winter break” instead of “time off for Jesus’ birthday”;  claims of “persecution” when secular government refuses to use taxpayer money to set up Christmas trees, those eternal symbols of Christ’s birth, as clearly mentioned absolutely nowhere in the Bible.

“What if,” I ask myself this year, “I really give thanks in a Biblical way?  What if I thank God for things that would stun the whiners and arch the eyebrows of Health & Wealthers?  What if I overcome my own selfishness, my own self-centeredness, even my own self-esteem, to thank the Lord for all things, good and bad?”

***

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

   For refusing to act when I begged You to heal me,

   Since now I see the gift my handicap really is.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

   For allowing me to stay in poverty after I graduated college,

   Since that time made me grow, not in a job, but in You.

I thank you, Lord, for nothing …

    For not responding to my lists of wants,

    Instead, refining my understanding of my needs.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

    For allowing times of suffering to continue,

    And thus teaching me perseverance I had never known.

I thank You, Lord, for nothing …

    For allowing hardships I caused to remain in my life,

    so that I might learn to thank You in all situations.

I thank You, Lord.  For everything.

***

Some may ask, How is a prayer like that in any way Biblical?

I answer:

• because it gives thanks to God in all things, in all circumstances, which is God’s will for me (Thess. 5:18)
• because it is an act of rejoicing in the midst of my suffering, not despite my suffering, which is what Paul commands (Rom. 5:3)
• because I rejoice that I suffer like Christ and even participate, in some way, in His suffering on the cross (Col. 1:24)
• because I give thanks when reaping the punishment for my own behaviors, glorifying God even from the belly of the fish I deserved to be swallowed by (Jonah 2:10)
• because riches aren’t good for me; daily bread is all I need (Prov. 30:8)
• because I give thanks even if I am unjustly thrown into chains and beaten and starved and harmed by enemies (Acts 16:25) … real persecution, not the pathetic protests of those who writhe oppressed under the weight of the words “Happy Holidays.”

Even in the midst of real, life-threatening persecution, thanks and praise are the only valid responses from a heart born in, grown by, and sustained through the Lord.

All right, all right, I admit that thanking God for good things isn’t a bad idea either.  Thank You for my new car, thank You for my good friends, thank You that I’m in a righteous church that clings to Your Word, thank You that I have been saved by Your Son.  Each and every one of those is a laudable act of gratitude.

But I leave you with this thought.

No one in Scripture is ever warned of the dangers of giving thanks to God during suffering and trials.

The only warning about giving thanks that I’ve found in Scripture targets those with lots of health and plenty of wealth.  Thanksgiving for good things.

 “Thank you, God,” a man once said, “that I don’t blackmail other people.  That I don’t break rules.  That I don’t sleep around.  That I’ve got money to tithe and enough food to turn down during times of fasting.  Thanks that I don’t have it as materially or as spiritually bad as that other guy, right over there, the poor, sorry loser.  Maybe he should learn to name it and claim it, you know, Lord?”

See Luke 18 for a better telling of that tale.

And remember to praise and thank Him, especially in the storms.

Marana tha,

Cosmic