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Listening - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

All I can say to this is "amen!"

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word  but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking when they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon no longer be listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 97-98)

HT and thanks to Molly Friesen at Peacemakers for this.

Us Guys Just Can't Win

I post the following half way tongue in cheek but wondering if there is something more to be said about what will be said. 

It seems to me to be quite unmanly if I whine and complain about how we men are treated, so I'll just point to a couple of wise women who are noticing that men are getting a bum deal.

The first is Dr. Helen Smith, whose husband is Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.  He may be more well known but she is well worth reading - I've got her in my rss reader and enjoy her posts regularly.  She could be called a "men's advocate" she often writes on the ways the media and society gives short shrift.  She has some intersting comments on this video:

I find the video hilarious and true to life in the way that all caricatures are true to life in an exaggerated fashion.  She comments "I agree with one of the Youtube commenters who states: "If this is meant to scare young men like me out of ever getting married, it's working!""  She also notes: "Another reader sends the same link to the video and adds: "I'm thinking if the genders were reversed in this ad, they'd be burning J.C. Penney's to the ground in every mall in America." No, there never would have been an ad like this one up to begin with."

And here's Kim Moreland from The Point:

Here, University of Dallas student Ashley Crouch speaks out about the results of her chivalry poll. One paragraph stands out:

How do guys define chivalry? Three out of four responded that it had to do with respect, honor, and courtesy towards women. One man spoke openly: “Chivalry is the notion that a man has the duty to respect and serve women.”

But sadly, "too often . . . these same men lamented that their efforts to be chivalrous were met with scorn."

Us poor guys, we just can't catch a break now can we?  It's best for us guys just to keep a sense of humor about stuff like this.  As far as I am concerned, just because our wives and girlfriends want to put us in the doghouse doesn't mean we have to go there.  Yep, we're all a bunch of clods and idiots and often do stupid stuff like the guys in the video.  But it seems to me that an honest recognition that we blew it and a sincere apology ought to be be sufficient.  If the wife or girlfriend wants to send you to the doghouse after that, then she's the one with the problem.  Similarly, if a woman doesn't like your chivalry, let her go and let her be, there's plenty out there who recognize it for what it is - courtesy and respect - nothing more nothing less.

Superficiality as the Foundation for Meaningful Relationships

Everyone knows that deep, meaningful conversations about the things that matter most are the foundation of relationships - right?  Um . . . maybe not.

Back in the day, when we were young and blogging was new, I had a blog buddy I read a good deal called "The Dane."  I haven't kept up with him as much in recent years, to my loss I know, but the other day I came across a comment he left on another blog about relationships and it really got me thinking.  He had some deep thoughts about the trivialities on which relationships were built. 

I'll beg your indulgence for just a moment as I set the scene for the Dane's deep thoughts on some relational superficialities.  Rich Clark at Christ and Pop Culture (an excellent blog) started a Twitter Firestorm which yo can read all about by following the links in this post. It's a very interesting discussion on the merits/demerits of twitter.  A few of the issues that arise in the whole Twitter discussion are the waste-of-time issue, the who-cares issue, and does-anyone-really-need-to-know-that-about-you issue.  These are all worthy topics but this is where the Dane comes in and raises an important point that has application to all relationships:

Relationships are rarely built solely upon the shoulders of conversations that quote-unquote matter. My best and closest friendships are founded on lives lived together—and we would have particularly tepid lives if we hesitated to let the other know: “Dude! I had the best chorizo burrito this morning!” or “I just got back from seeing Before Sunset and it’s everything I could want from a sequel!” or “I have the sniffles.” That stuff right there is the grist of friendships. The heady, quote-unquote worthwhile conversations—the stuff that doesn’t just take up time—may direct relationships but if that’s all there is, you aren’t friends. Just colleagues.

That’s why I don’t mind seeing otherwise superfluous details related in status updates. If I’m reading a good friend and they say, “Just had hot chocolate,” I am in a way taking part in their experience because I can picture them having it and can enjoy the fact that they have just experienced something enjoyable.

I find this thought profound and as I read it I realized this was something I intuitively knew.  Someone once said that a good writer is one who can say what you were thinking better than you could have said it or who can say what you were thinking but just couldn't put into words.

I think the Dane was saying that "conversations that 'matter'" are an important part of relationships but they aren't the be all and end all of them.  I don't think you can ever get to those until you've gotten good and comfortable with the more superficial and trivial conversations.  I mean really, it would be "deep" if my wife and I got into a conversation about the merits of supralapsarianism vs. infralapsarianism, but that won't "deepen" our relationship near as much as knowing that she likes tulips and I hate fish and me telling some silly story that makes her laugh.  Similarly, when it comes to my guy friends, I always enjoy a deep theological conversation, and in the church there is lots of business that needs to be discussed, but those are the conversations of associates.  Relationships are built on deep conversations about SEC football and endless "oh yeah, that's nothing, I can top that" stories.

There's another angle to this that I'll only mention briefly and that is that if we take ourselves and life very seriously we'll tend to always be trying to start one of those serious "conversations that matter."  I think we might find that, paradoxically, those who take themselves and their lives less seriously can often go deeper on these matters.  Chesterton said:

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.

Maybe that works for relationships too - relationships fly when they are comfortable with the lighter side of life. 

And in conclusion, while writing this post I have finished an Atkins bar, drank a diet pepsi-max, been to the restroom exactly once and had brief conversations with two ladies from the church who are here to straighten some things up.

Duke Kwon on the Humanizing and Spiritualizing of Summer

Please read this whole post, then go have yourself a romp to the glory of God:

 One of the hardest things to learn is the art of settling into our own skin. We’ve never been good at it. Wasn’t it the prospect of a life without limits and needs—“You shall be like God,” cooed the serpent—that so charmed Adam and Eve? The promise turned out to be a fraud, but the appetite for what it offered rages on. Most of the year we willingly, if tragically, subject ourselves to a mode of life that is superhuman—indeed, grotesquely inhuman—where the need for “rest” is resisted as an emblem of weakness, where leisure is nudged towards life’s margins, where creativity and imagination, two great “birthmarks” of God’s image-bearers, are rubbed out.

 But grace begins to re-humanize us. The God who created us also provides a Better Adam—“You shall be a Man,” pledged the Father with the Son before time began—and refurbishes us in the likeness of the truly human one. This process entails learning to embrace being deeply dependent, body and soul, upon the restorative grace of Jesus. It means understanding that we are creatures designed for leisure, creativity, and rest. Wonderfully self-insufficient. Gloriously human.

 The summer seems to reconnect us with this reality—this identity—like nothing else. We become strangely free to be what we normally resist. To be sure, the ultimate key to this re-humanizing project is God’s Son, not summer. But it does give us a temporary taste of what could be. Must it come to an end with the shortening of the days? What would life be like if we extended this holy seasonal impulse into the winter and beyond? Who knows? We might find ourselves becoming profoundly more human, tennis racket in hand.

Ten Things I Think I Think About Marriage and Marriage Counseling

I so enjoyed writing last week's "ten things I think" post I thought I would do another. I won't be able to do these every week, a la Peter King, but when I've got something I feel strongly about maybe I'll do one.  Today I'd like to offer "Ten Things I Think I Think About Marriage and Marriage Counseling."

1. I think I think that most of us are missing the boat on marriage, but then again, I have to say that - otherwise why would you want to read my thoughts on marriage if I didn't try to set myself apart as the all-wise, all-knowing, all-superior guru on matters of the heart.  If you want to call me "Dr. Love," feel free.

2. But I think I think I really do mean what I said in point #1, I think.  I don't know exactly when it started, but I am guessing it was around the 60's and 70's that the church woke up to the divorce epidemic and since then we have had enough books, tapes (did they have any marriage 8-tracks way back when?), cd's, DVD's, seminars, retreats and whatnot to cover Greenland in material and consume years from the life of millions of people.  But I'm not sure how much of a dent all this is making. 

To be fair, in many cases all of the marriage stuff does help.  But I think that usually has more to do with something in the individual than the marriage stuff per se.

3. I think I think we focus too much on marriage and work too hard on our marriages to really be of any help.  I suppose I'll need to explain that last point because after all, don't we all know that "marraige is hard work."  Well, yeah, kind of.

One of my new favorite books is "The Inner Game of Tennis," by Timothy Gallwey.  I've wrote about this before and I think that some of Gallwey's insights apply here.  Gallwey has found that many of his students fail to improve at tennis because they try too hard.  They work too hard on making sure their footwork and stroke are just perfect.  Gallwey finds that these things actually become distractions that distract them from what needs to be done to get the ball over the net.  So he finds that he needs to distract these people from their distractions.  One technique he has used is to tell them to concentrate on the ball - to watch it's trajectory, it's spin, it's speed and things like that.  This gets them thinking about the ball, not their technique and often this helps them lighten up on themselves and they are paradoxically better able to get the ball over the net.

You probably are thinking by now that I'm off my rocker as this has nothing to do with marriage.  Also, with me being a pastor and all, I'm suppose to bring religion into this and here I am using the techniques of a who-knows-what-religion-he's-from-tennis-coach as a basis for Christian instruction on marriage.

Calvin's Hidden Philosophy

Here's a good quote from John Calvin to start your week.  Thanks to Cynthia Nielsen for finding and posting this:

The Lord willingly and freely reveals himself in his Christ.  For in Christ, he offers all happiness in place of our misery, all wealth in place of our neediness; in him he opens to us the heavenly treasures that our whole faith may contemplate his beloved Son, our whole expectation depend upon him, and our whole hope cleave to and rest in him.  This, indeed, is that secret and hidden philosophy which cannot be wrested from syllogisms.  But they whose eyes God has opened surely learnt it by heart, that in his light they may see light (Institutes, 3.20.1, trans. Ford Lewis Battles).

Humpty Dumpty and Born-Again Virgins

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

Roberto Rivero at The Point, points to a curious case of Humpty-Dumpty-ness amongst the "born-again."

According to an MSNBC story, "Born-again virgins claim to re-write the past." In it, we learn about

Victoria Watts, a 23-year-old single mother of two small children who lives in Canton, Ohio, [who] lost her virginity at 16 with her high school boyfriend.

She was the granddaughter of a Pentecostalist pastor and the daughter of an assistant pastor, and she believed sex outside marriage was wrong. “I felt really bad from a religious standpoint,” she recalls of the experience. “My thoughts were really clouded because I was so emotionally bonded with my boyfriend. That overshadowed my religious world.”

Eventually, she regretted, well actually, she didn't regret anything. Instead, she granted herself the sexual equivalent of a mulligan and

now declares herself a virgin once again. “The most important thing was to realize what my values were and what I want in the future and the bigger goals in my life," she says. "That’s why I can call myself a renewed virgin.”

No you can't. A person who has had sex, especially one with two children, can no more call herself a "virgin" than Alex Rodriguez can declare 2008 to be his rookie season.

Rivera goes on to explain more on this phenomenon.  Interestingly, this is an example of a good idea gone bad. When I was a in high-school and college it was common to hear youth leaders speak of "secondary virginity" or something like that.  The purpose was to assure kids who had given up their virginity that Christ forgave and cleansed and that His forgiveness and cleansing were complete.

Again, a good idea as far as it goes, but now that I read Rivera, I see that the terminology leaves a lot to be desired.  Christ redeems our history, but He does not rewrite our history.  I can say I am not now what I once was, but I can't change the fact that I once was what I once was.  There's no spiritual flux capacitor that enables us to do that.

The thing is, this idea of "re-virginization" is unnecessary.  Forgiveness is still complete whether the offense is sexual immorality or religious pride.  There still seems to be, within Christendom, a particular shame attached to sexual sin which is not attached to other sins.  To some degree we Christians still live in Hawthorne's world where sexual sin is more shameful than other sins.  It's one sin where we act as if forgiveness and redemption can't fully erase the stain - the scarlet letter may be gone but the stitches remain in the fabric of our lives as a constant reminder that we are somehow worse than other sinners.   

Victoria Watts instinct is right, she wants to embrace fully the redemption and renewal she has in Christ.  But we can receive this redemption and renewal without redefining the words that describe our experiences.

Technorati tags: religion, theology, relationships, sex, virgin, virginity, Christian, Christianity

Philippians 4:8 and Evaluating Art

Philippians 4:8 says this:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. (NETBible).

This is a verse which can and should guide us in the evaluation of art - literature, film, visual - and all of life for that matter.

Alan Noble has an interesting post up over at Christ and Pop Culture wherein he suggests that some of our well-known Christian film critics lift one element of that verse out and make it the litmus test for films, while ignoring others.  He says that these folks tend to be very conscious to evaluate film on the basis of purity, but in regards to truth, respect, just-ness, loveliness and commendability - well, not so much.

I'll just come right out and say that I think he is spot on, but I want to point out one particular point he makes that challenges my own thinking.  I think he makes the point well, but I don't know if I'm 100% sold yet and would love it if we could get some discussion going on this.

I have come to evaluate movies in terms of their redemptive value - good movies have redemptive themes and I look for those themes.  He also mentions the common Christian view that good should triumph over evil - if a movie portrays this then it is better. 

But Alan doesn't think this is required for film to be considered good or for it to conform to Biblical principles. 

But this raises the questions, in what way is the theme of redemption the only judge of aesthetic excellence and should we try to convince filmmakers that these kinds of films ought to be made because they are profitable?

To answer the first question we should look to the Old Testament. Even a cursory reading of Psalms, Job, Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes makes evident a common truth in the Old Testament: the world is unjust. The unrighteous rule, gain wealth, and go unpunished, while the righteous are abused and go unavenged. The Bible gives us no hope for true justice in this life. To demand that all films show good triumphing over evil, or justice over injustice is to go beyond the Bible and lie about the fundamental nature of the world. When Baehr argues that a movie is only good if it properly contains these themes, he either shows an ignorance of the Old Testament, or he is advocating art as pure escapism. While watching a hero win out against incredible odds is uplifting, to claim that any other plot structure is unbiblical and unworthy of praise is nonsense. It is precisely a world where the unjust currently go unpunished that Christ came to save: a fallen world.

Marriage is not Glamorous

I found a new blog that is going into my rss reader called City of God.  Here's a good quote from Lauren Winner about the disjunction between weddings and marriage.  This is apropos for me since I have just picked up two couples for pre-marital counseling, and I agree with what she says here:

In an article for The Cresset, Lauren Winner writes of the confused logic of the modern wedding. The problem with modern weddings is not the fact that they are celebrations. The problem is with how they are celebrated. Weddings are glamorous fantasies. But what marriage is glamorous? There is a serious disjuncture between weddings and the marriages they make. Winner writes that her marriage is complicated and hard, realities which weddings conveniently ignore.

Technorati Tags: relationships, marriage, weddings
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The Law of Unintended Consequences

There's a great discussion of the law of unintended consequences going on in several places and it's a discussion that has resonance with the church and the Christian faith.  Before commenting let me give you the players in the discussion.  I may not have all the relationships in proper order here as far as who is responding to who, but if you check these posts out you'll get the gist (the posts aren't too long so you can read them and it will be worthwhile).

The Freakonomics guys did a column for the New York Times Magazines on Unintended Consequences where they looked at three examples of unintended consequences - how the Americans with Disabilities Act has harmed Americans with Disabilities by leading to a sharp drop in employment for them, how Jewish seventh year sabbatical laws got corrupted and came to harm the poor they were created to protect and how the Endangered Species Act has led to the destruction of habitats of endangered species.

This causes Andrew at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science to wonder exactly what kind of "law" the "law of unintended consequences" is?  He points to another post where he argues that often the "unintended" consequences were in fact "intended."  I suppose that would be like the woman who never intended to blow the week's budget on new clothes, but somehow found herself in a department store or some pastors who intend to quit buying books they don't read but somehow often find themselves in bookstores and don't know how they got there.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution comes through with a definition of the law of unintended consequences that the Freakonomics guys like:

The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system.   The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives.  Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system.  When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.

I like that, but speaking only for myself, I was hoping for more definition on the difference between a simple and a complex system.  The comments on Alex Tabarrok's post are almost too many to read, but there is one comment by Stephen Downes that I think helps on my question:

A 'simple system' is a system where linear cause-and-effect relations hold. A 'complex system' is one in which the same cause may have multiple effects.

This clarification is important because the 'contrast' in the quote cited above in fact includes a number of simple systems. 'high-feedback' and 'incentive-driven' systems are types of simple systems - they suppose that a certain cause - feedback, or incentives - will produce the desired result.

I am also wondering if Mr. Downes might say that in a complex system a single effect may have multiple causes?  It seems to me that this is the case.

Which leads me to speculate on how this applies to the religious realm.