I do not always want to do the right thing.
Following rules has always been relatively easy for me, but even with that characteristic in my personality, at times every feeling I have pulls and tugs and fights against doing what I know I should do. My thoughts try to rationalize destructive behavior, my heart isolates itself from sources of Light that may thwart my selfish ambitions, and I argue with God like Moses did -- "No, I don't want to do this. I'm a loser. Even with Your help, I cannot do what You want me to do!"
And then... my amazing Helper, the Spirit of Christ, comes to my aid. He calms down my spiritual tantrums and has me listen as He brings me into the Light that will thwart my selfish desires. Before He comes, though, I wrestle with my emotions, hating myself. Would it not be easier to either totally abandon myself to my desires or totally commit myself to duty (not wholly possible for emotional beings) and just follow the rules without thought, harden my heart? The answer cannot be either of those; it must be in the tension... and only Christ can reconcile it in each moment.
Blaming a recent weeks-long bout of temptations on my pregnant hormones might work, but I'll be honest (and obvious)... I am human; that is the reason I face temptations. I won't go into specifics, but I was in a dark place, and in the past week, God began my current rescue. (It still continues.) He reminded me that I need Him.
The first thing that cracked my hardened heart was a new song by Matt Maher called "Lord, I Need You." Every combination of words in the song is equally as beautiful as the others, but this verse and the chorus brought me to my figurative knees... and since I was driving and could not safely fall to my knees, that means I started weeping. Here are those words:
"Teach my song to rise to you when temptation comes my way / And when I cannot stand I'll fall on you / Jesus you're my hope and stay / Lord, I need you, oh, I need you / Every hour I need you / My one defense, my righteousness / Oh, God, how I need you...." (You can listen to the whole song, which I highly recommend, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuvfMDhTyMA)
After a few days of meditating on the very simple but necessary truth expressed in that song, one of our son's Bible stories cracked my stubborn heart a little bit more. If you have never heard of The Jesus Storybook Bible, I recommend it for children AND adults. The author uses beautiful language to interpret the beauty of the world's need for Christ's rescue in Old Testament and New Testament stories. Every time I read from it, I start weeping... and my 2-year-old looks at me like I am from outer-space...
Well, I read him the story of the sinful woman washing Jesus' feet and anointing him with her expensive perfume (Mark 14, Luke 7). Jesus had been invited by a pharisee, an important leader, to eat in his home with some other important people. In those days, people needed to wash their feet when entering a home because they walk in the same dirt where the animals urinate and poop in the streets. Jesus was in an important person's home, and no one had offered him water to wash his feet. All of a sudden, this woman whose sins are public came into the house, to Jesus, and bent down over his feet. She started weeping, and she used her tears and her hair to wash the crap off His feet. And then she broke a very expensive jar of rare perfume (not a store-bought trinket like ours today) and anointed His feet. She knew He was from God, and she knew He was going to die and be buried and rise again to rescue her from her sins. Of course, while this is happening, all of the important people are griping about how sinful she is and what a waste it is for her to break that priceless jar of perfume to put on someone's feet... Someone's feet... The Son of God's feet!
This is the wording in this particular Bible about the exchange: "'That woman is a sinner!' they grumbled. 'We're the good ones.' (And it's true, they did look good -- from the outside. After all, they were keeping all the rules.) But Jesus could see inside people. And inside, in their hearts, Jesus saw that they did not love God or other people. They were running away from God, and they thought they didn't need a rescuer. They thought they were good enough because they kept the rules. But sin had stopped their hearts from working properly. And their hearts were hard and cold. 'This woman knows she's a sinner,' Jesus told them. 'She knows she'll never be good enough. She knows she needs me to rescue her. That's why she loves me so much.'
What struck me about the wording is that I most often identify with the "important people" who think they are good because they follow rules, totally missing that they have no love in their hearts. I get so angry at myself when some of my emotions lead me astray because I have convinced myself that I am capable of my own salvation... and realizing I am not that powerful makes me angry and hateful. But because I know how destructive my behavior could be, if I made the rules, Jesus brought me to my knees, and kindly reminded me that my emotions and the rules are not where I will find salvation... but that I will only find rest and security by falling over Him and letting Him rescue me, every single day. He loves me that much. And He is the only One with that power.
"Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are your bothering her?She has done a beautiful thing to me." Mark 14:6
(And, like all of my writing these days, I feel rushed to completion, feeling it is incomplete, but hoping a good message of some sort can encourage others. Good day.)
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Questions About Modesty and Cultural Relativity in Space and Time
I do not believe this is a pressing issue in the Christian community considering a lot of other issues in our world, but I do believe it is important and worth discussing -- especially since this is the time of year when some of my Christian siblings are reminding everyone to be modest in social media posts, while other followers of Christ are posting pictures of themselves in bikinis on the beach. The tone is not meant to be judgmental, simply interrogative, because modesty IS a relative thing. I want to collect perspectives from other believers, women AND men. And I hope we all think a little deeper. Please read it all. I will probably say some things you do not expect (and some you do). What standard shall we hold to?
In high school I was on the swim team for one year. Many mornings before school I went to the city's Swimplex to practice. On one of these mornings, while I was swimming laps, after I reversed myself with an underwater turn to go back down the lane, I saw something that surprised me in the lane next to me: a lot of fabric had just landed in the pool, swirling, as the large Mennonite woman in the lane beside me gathered her bearings for her morning exercise. For many reasons this is something that I come back to through the years. How impractical to wear a long dress with lots of undergarments as she swims through the water, BUT how beautiful that she was so committed to her standards of faith that she didn't let practicality or ease change her dress? (And, let's be honest, she got a REALLY GOOD workout wearing all that heavy, wet fabric as she swam her laps.) I have so much respect for that woman.
I have grown up in a Christian group that wears the same clothes as society around us. In the southern United States, though, this group has a pretty strict -- but not absolute -- dress code to regulate modesty as fashions change. At church camp and the private Christian college I attended, shorts and skirts could not be more than three inches above the knee, no spaghetti straps, no cleavage, no tight-fitting clothes, etc.
Moving to a big city after college, it became apparent pretty quickly that modesty was not the same to all believers. The shorts and skirts are shorter, and I've seem more back skin than before. And, honestly, my own modesty has adjusted some.
So WHAT do we hold to? What is our motivation with the clothes we wear? I really think the answer lies somewhere in the heart of our motivation.
A friend took my son and I to the pool the other day. She and I were wearing our skirted swimsuits, and I had a T-shirt on over my top the whole time. We feel that it shows respect to our Christian brothers to reveal less of our skin, and it shows respect for ourselves not to display ourselves in a cheap way. (If you have no problem with bikinis, and I just lost you because I am a prude, please keep reading. I am moving along my thoughts, and I have others.) My friend told me about this cool video (which a lot of you have probably seen) where this woman showed the science in a man's brain when he sees a naked or almost naked woman. The brain scans show that areas of his brain controlling empathy and those other good characteristics totally shut down. A typical man, even one of the best, sees an object, not a person, when he walks by a woman in a bikini at the beach. How do you feel about that? Especially if you're married? Especially if your gorgeous teenage daughter is at the pool in two very skinny strips of cloth?
Another thing that is important to remember, especially for me, because I am very concerned with having a nicely exercised body -- and all the pride and vanity that accompanies that -- is our motivation for what we wear. The friend I mentioned above is pregnant, and so am I, so we don't really feel attractive right now. It is really easy to hide under a skirt and T-shirt at the pool when you feel heavy or gross. And it is also really easy to gripe at attractive women with airbrushed bodies for making us feel inferior. (Remember, no one makes me feel inferior but me.) As much as I hate seeing a woman in a bikini (Seriously, I would rather see a 300-pound woman in a bikini than a fit woman in one.), IF I actually thought I looked good in a bikini, and I actually had skin that tanned, I would like to wear a bikini. People would see me, envy me, worship me -- all really righteous reasons to do something, right?! Me, me, me. (rollin' my eyes)
Reading the Bible raises questions too. I am not going to write out the verses here. What about the reasons a woman should cover her head in 1 Corinthians 11? That chapter confuses me like none other, and I know it is because I am uneducated about ancient cultures... but one of the reasons given for a woman to keep her head covered is the angels (verse 10). Whether Paul is talking about fabric or long hair, angels are eternal, so I am confused about whether I am distressing angels because I don't wear hats when I worship... and because I have really short hair -- because the culture I am in doesn't see those as issues. (I would appreciate educated answers about this verse.)
And what about other cultures? Some women in African tribes wear no covering over their breasts, but every inch of their legs is covered because legs are the sexual icons to their men.
I could go on and on, but I will leave you with this:
1 Timothy 2: 9 instructs women not to wear fancy or pretty things to worship, but to adorn ourselves "with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
The answer lies somewhere in our motivation and where the desires of our hearts lie. Do we love God and people before we care about meaningless praise to our own materiality? I do not think this verse is saying we must dress plainly to please God, but that we first consider how our dress affects our love and service to God and others. I believe it really has to be a personal answer. I hope we consider others in our decisions with our love. But I also hope we give each other the benefit of the doubt and pay attention only to what we are doing, as we encourage each other in truth and kindness, instead of griping at others.
[added later: After I shared this initially, someone shared a link to another post in the comments section. This other post covers a lot of really important issues in a much more efficient way than I did, if you want to take the time to read it. http://www.qideas.org/blog/modesty-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.aspx ]
In high school I was on the swim team for one year. Many mornings before school I went to the city's Swimplex to practice. On one of these mornings, while I was swimming laps, after I reversed myself with an underwater turn to go back down the lane, I saw something that surprised me in the lane next to me: a lot of fabric had just landed in the pool, swirling, as the large Mennonite woman in the lane beside me gathered her bearings for her morning exercise. For many reasons this is something that I come back to through the years. How impractical to wear a long dress with lots of undergarments as she swims through the water, BUT how beautiful that she was so committed to her standards of faith that she didn't let practicality or ease change her dress? (And, let's be honest, she got a REALLY GOOD workout wearing all that heavy, wet fabric as she swam her laps.) I have so much respect for that woman.
I have grown up in a Christian group that wears the same clothes as society around us. In the southern United States, though, this group has a pretty strict -- but not absolute -- dress code to regulate modesty as fashions change. At church camp and the private Christian college I attended, shorts and skirts could not be more than three inches above the knee, no spaghetti straps, no cleavage, no tight-fitting clothes, etc.
Moving to a big city after college, it became apparent pretty quickly that modesty was not the same to all believers. The shorts and skirts are shorter, and I've seem more back skin than before. And, honestly, my own modesty has adjusted some.
So WHAT do we hold to? What is our motivation with the clothes we wear? I really think the answer lies somewhere in the heart of our motivation.
A friend took my son and I to the pool the other day. She and I were wearing our skirted swimsuits, and I had a T-shirt on over my top the whole time. We feel that it shows respect to our Christian brothers to reveal less of our skin, and it shows respect for ourselves not to display ourselves in a cheap way. (If you have no problem with bikinis, and I just lost you because I am a prude, please keep reading. I am moving along my thoughts, and I have others.) My friend told me about this cool video (which a lot of you have probably seen) where this woman showed the science in a man's brain when he sees a naked or almost naked woman. The brain scans show that areas of his brain controlling empathy and those other good characteristics totally shut down. A typical man, even one of the best, sees an object, not a person, when he walks by a woman in a bikini at the beach. How do you feel about that? Especially if you're married? Especially if your gorgeous teenage daughter is at the pool in two very skinny strips of cloth?
Another thing that is important to remember, especially for me, because I am very concerned with having a nicely exercised body -- and all the pride and vanity that accompanies that -- is our motivation for what we wear. The friend I mentioned above is pregnant, and so am I, so we don't really feel attractive right now. It is really easy to hide under a skirt and T-shirt at the pool when you feel heavy or gross. And it is also really easy to gripe at attractive women with airbrushed bodies for making us feel inferior. (Remember, no one makes me feel inferior but me.) As much as I hate seeing a woman in a bikini (Seriously, I would rather see a 300-pound woman in a bikini than a fit woman in one.), IF I actually thought I looked good in a bikini, and I actually had skin that tanned, I would like to wear a bikini. People would see me, envy me, worship me -- all really righteous reasons to do something, right?! Me, me, me. (rollin' my eyes)
Reading the Bible raises questions too. I am not going to write out the verses here. What about the reasons a woman should cover her head in 1 Corinthians 11? That chapter confuses me like none other, and I know it is because I am uneducated about ancient cultures... but one of the reasons given for a woman to keep her head covered is the angels (verse 10). Whether Paul is talking about fabric or long hair, angels are eternal, so I am confused about whether I am distressing angels because I don't wear hats when I worship... and because I have really short hair -- because the culture I am in doesn't see those as issues. (I would appreciate educated answers about this verse.)
And what about other cultures? Some women in African tribes wear no covering over their breasts, but every inch of their legs is covered because legs are the sexual icons to their men.
I could go on and on, but I will leave you with this:
1 Timothy 2: 9 instructs women not to wear fancy or pretty things to worship, but to adorn ourselves "with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
The answer lies somewhere in our motivation and where the desires of our hearts lie. Do we love God and people before we care about meaningless praise to our own materiality? I do not think this verse is saying we must dress plainly to please God, but that we first consider how our dress affects our love and service to God and others. I believe it really has to be a personal answer. I hope we consider others in our decisions with our love. But I also hope we give each other the benefit of the doubt and pay attention only to what we are doing, as we encourage each other in truth and kindness, instead of griping at others.
[added later: After I shared this initially, someone shared a link to another post in the comments section. This other post covers a lot of really important issues in a much more efficient way than I did, if you want to take the time to read it. http://www.qideas.org/blog/modesty-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.aspx ]
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