The “Stay-at-Home” Mentality: From a Guy’s Perspective

I just finished Roger Olsen’s Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology. Great Book!

 I haven’t talked about “stay-at-home” world in a little while so I thought I’d post on that. You can catch-up on our “great experiment” (as we like to call it) here and here.

After I came home from a pastoral position to stay with our two girls, a lot of things changed for me. Probably my favorite story about that happened a few months into the experiment. One afternoon, I picked up the phone and it was a telemarketer on the other end – a very nice, gentle, sweet, female voice asking for a moment of my time. I let her do her opening sales pitch and politely declined. This is when I noticed something different. I started sweating. She continued to ask if I would reconsider, but the thought of telling her no made my heart race. Then I realized she was the first person I had talked to other than my children the entire day. My voice started shaking and my breathing got short. I finally got off the phone and actually said out loud to myself “What is going on here! I used to speak to several hundred people at a time with no problem!” Of course, my wife laughed at me hysterically when I told her that evening – such a supportive spouse… Usually this story is completely lost on working dads…but not the stay at home moms.

That’s when I began to make mental notes as a guy about the common obstacles that women face when they stay at home full time. In fact, the stories I had heard about “stay at homers” invariably became true for me as well. I became overly emotional about the smallest things – things I formerly would have dismissed as unimportant as the working dad. I began to understand that those “insignificant” things that stay at homers talk about are the only things to talk about. I also dealt with isolation – though I partially needed that isolation to finish school work. Along with that isolation, you actually do laugh at your own jokes and give yourself running commentary on how it would be funnier if you had said this instead of that. That type of isolation makes me think of that joke about “if a tree falls in the woods…” only for the stay at homer, the joke goes: “if a parent stays at home, if know one talks to them, are they still really at home.”

Stay at home parents also deal with guilt – in essence, they are their own moral police, for better or for worse and guilt can be a strong motivator. You feel guilty for taking any kind of break. Even as a self-starter, “type A” kind of guy, I deal with this every day. Just the other day I felt a wave of guilt wash over me for cleaning up my three-year-old’s mess rather than making her clean it up. But then I realized just how crazy that logic is. Though I “deprived” my three-year-old the opportunity to reinforce clean-up time, I was feeling guilty about doing something grown-ups rarely do either – clean up their own mess! So I was feeling guilty about doing something no one wants to do anyway. Do you see how twisted that is? Geez… 

Plus, stay at home parents feel the crushing weight of responsibility for their child’s cognitive, emotional, and, for some, spiritual development. It drives you to never waste a second of “learning  opportunities” during the day. But in the process, you drive your children insane! They rebel, and you enforce more learning opportunities. It’s the cycle from hell! Yet, in the pit of your stomach you know that there really are only a few things you can actually control in life. But that doesn’t stop you from making sure your kid eats every last bite of that PB & J – like that contributes to their moral character or something.

Then there’s the boredom thing. Of course, stay at homers feel guilty about the fact that they’re bored, too. Once again, school work has kept me plenty busy, but I still have my moments. The problem is this: there’s plenty of things to do…but none of them are the least bit entertaining. Plus, many of those activities are maintenance oriented. There’s only so many times you can say to yourself: “man, I just washed these jeans/mopped this floor/straightened those cushions/emptied those dishes” before it starts to seem like a pointless endeavor. This is compounded by the fact that many times, working parents are oblivious to these types of household chores. So, you may boycott them on principle for a few days, but unfortunately nobody notices….so, you sigh and empty the dishwasher again.

Now, I know this sounds a little strange to you coming from a guy. But honestly, guys who stay at home feel the exact way that women do. That’s because many of those feelings are environmentally conditioned. Often, the same is true of women who work full-time – they acquire the mentality normally associated with a “working dad.” So it’s a different type of stress. One (the worker) type makes you skip lunch to work on some spreadsheet due by 5:00 that day, while the other (stay at home) type makes you want to eat lunch twice. Either way, the reality of the other person’s life is difficult to imagine until you’ve actually done what they do on a daily basis. Both have their distinct challenges. I’m thankful I’ve had the opportunity to do both.

Why I Mute Television Commercials…

Here’s a strange quirk of mine: I mute all TV commercials. There are several reasons for this. The first person I saw do it was my grandfather. Then I noticed my father did it as well from time to time. As I got older I started to mute TV commercials as well.

There are some practical reasons for this. First off, TV commercials are very loud to me. I can be listening to dialogue in a show and be blasted by a car salesman commercial within seconds. The audiophile in me can’t stand it. But that’s a personal reason – coming for a guy who finds the hum of fluorescent lighting irritating or too much 3-5 kHz or 300 Hz in a song maddening. Secondly, at 3.5 minutes a break, I can talk to my wife about something or read a page or two of a book. Also, if I mute the commercials I am more likely to get up and clean up the dishes during the commercial breaks. So, improved communication, information gathering, and household chores – all with click of a button!

More importantly, for me, there is an emotional and spiritual reason. As a pastor, I firmly believe that our Christianity can be culturally influenced by a lot of things, including commercials. With each commercial, we get “preached to” at a very loud volume about what we should value as a nation. This translates to what we should spend money upon – something an advertiser tells us to value. Commercials stoke the fire of materialism in a person’s life.  The church is not immune to this at all. I was at a large conference about 5 months ago where one of the popular topics was the evils of consumerism. Of course, I had a ten piece praise band, lights, videos, a comedian, a magician, free books and DVDs, and 400 kiosks surrounding the building to help me understand just how bad consumerism had become in America. Commercials are the foundation of that. Advertisers believe your convictions and values can be swayed in a mere thirty seconds time. Why do they believe that? Because we’ve proved them true in the past.

Christians should certainly believe in the power of Satan to tempt and destroy our lives. However, Satan (unlike God) has limited resources with which to do this. Though I am not saying our culture is authored by Satan, I do think he makes good use of what we’ve given him. Why spiritually attack a believer when you can lull him to sleep? To me, that’s Satan main objective – not to visit someone with direct demonic attack (though that happens) but to create a level of dysfunction in the Christian’s life by distracting him from “the one thing necessary.” Though commercials can certainly be entertaining, they are also “preaching” to you. The question is: are buying what they’re selling?

Anniversary Trip

I’ve been out of pocket for a few days on our anniversary trip. Beth and I went to Orlando, FL and it was a great weekend away. We did all kinds of stuff – went to an arts and crafts festival at Lake Eola, saw the U2 3-D movie at the Universal Studios cinemaplex, and saw the Cirque du Soleil show “La Nouba” at Downtown Disney…all in one day! We also ate some really good Italian food at a little restaurant on Orange Ave. called Wilfredo’s. It was some of the best food I’ve ever had – not like anything I’ve eaten before. Rather than stay at a normal hotel, we love to find a bed and breakfast in the area – more laid back and quiet  – a little more our style of vacation. We stayed at the Courtyard at Lake Lucerne. It was a really nice place.

I’m looking forward to teaching a six-week series in my Sunday school class called “the hard sayings of Jesus” (F.F. Bruce style). It should be fun. Hopefully, I won’t bore everyone to death…

Views of the Cross, Part II

I just finished reading George Barna’s Revolutionary Parenting. It sure made me thankful for my parents’ willingness to provide us with a Christian home. They did all the things in that book without having to read a book.  

This post is a follow up to the first one. Jonathan asked for a more definitive explanation as to why the penal-substitutionary model of atonement is not my favorite. He asked me to address the many scriptures that seem to support it. So here you are – but let me say that this is not a comprehensive critique of that view. That’s what books are for. You might want to skip this one if you’re not into tedious, painful, laborious blogs…

Also, I didn’t inculde the governmental model of atonement in my previous post.  To me, it still retains God as punisher of Jesus, conveying a duplicitious nature similar to the penal-substitution theory, but then says the punishment was merely instructive or exemplary. That’s fine, but in that scenario God still punishes Jesus and I’m not okay with that. 

As you may have figured out by now, I am not interested in “defeating” penal -substitution atonement (PSA) on scriptural grounds. People wrangle about biblical Greek to no end. I don’t believe that’s where the deciding factors lie. They are in historical context. The problem lies in our understanding of biblical justice. Biblical ideas of justice have nothing to do with punishment – they celebrate redemption, reconciliation, liberation, and deliverance. That’s the problem. The PSA theory assumes that sacrifice must include punishment and that God gains satisfaction from it.

Once again, views of the cross, if fully accurate, should begin with the heart of God. The gospels explicitly state why Jesus came: ”for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). The motivation was not punishment, but love. Jesus tells us why he embraced the cross: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).

The PSA model, though it’s a fully developed model atonement, presents a narrow picture of justice based on a medieval, legalistic interpretation. The OT is pretty clear that the idea of executing justice is not to punish, but to establish healing and reconciliation. The  justice of God is closely tied to righteousness. It means to make things right or to “do right” by someone. The prophets constantly reference God’s justice as something that denotes his righteous acts of compassion. Justice is an expression of mercy, not a contradiction to it. God’s justice is seen when he liberates the oppressed and downtrodden. Check out these verses:

Isaiah 1:17 – “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

Isaiah 30:18 – “Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him.”

Jeremiah 21:12 – “Give justice each morning to the people you judge! Help those who have been robbed; rescue them from their oppressors. Otherwise, my anger will burn like an unquenchable fire because of all your sins.”

The NT carries this theme as well in regards to Jesus’s ministry and his death on the cross. There is no dichotomy between a “God of justice” in the OT and a “God of mercy” in the NT. There is no duplicity in God’s character. God has always been a compassionate God, a God of love. Jesus said if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father. Plenty of NT scriptures reflect this same idea of justice as redemption and rescue.

Matt. 12:18-21 – “…And He will declare justice to the Gentiles…A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench, Till He sends forth justice to victory…” Also, see Luke 4:18-19 and notice that Jesus purposefully left out “And the day of vengeance of our God” when quoting this passage from Isaiah 61.

So, contrary to the PSA theory, punishment is not what the justice of God required. God’s justice delivered/rescued humanity from its ultimate enemy: death. That’s what 1 Corinthians 15 is all about. Our limited Western perspective believes justice is only served when people are put in jail, or required to pay recompense, or put on death row. For the West, justice = punishment. However, God’s view of justice, by commending his love to us in Jesus, released us from bondage. That’s where PSA fails – it requires a transfer of penalty to someone, based on a Western understanding of legal justice, not the redemptive understanding of justice found in the OT. Requiring that transfer is not a biblical teaching but a rationalistic import from 16th century theology. NT passage can only be understood within this OT understanding of justice. Otherwise, the more important universal scope of the cross is ”lost in translation.”

As such, PSA adherents always confuse the  juridical with the sacrificial. I pulled this quote from this blog because I just couldn’t say it any better: “Sacrifice, in the Bible, is never punitive; rather, it is a divine gift which, as human offering, becomes an expression of praise and gratitude. It is also a demonstration that reconciliation is a costly matter. But justice too, in the Bible, is not essentially punitive or retributive; it is restorative. If we continue to think of the atonement in forensic terms, it is essential to see it not as a legal transaction but as the transformation of a relationship.”

So what do you do with verses like these that seem to support the PSA theory?

Romans 3:25 – “For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Galatians 3:13 – “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

1 John 2:2 – “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”

1 John 4:10 – “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

In all these verses, we must “unassume” certain things about them. Though they all say Jesus was sacrificed for or in place of humanity, none of them say the sacrifice was unto God. They also reaffirm that God, in concert with Jesus, initiated love to us through the cross. In keeping with the OT understanding of justice as redemption, they state that Christ redeemed us from the curse of sin and death through the cross. None of them say that God punished Jesus to do it. The writings of Paul do not stand on their own apart from the rest of scripture. The NT epistles should not inform our understanding of the OT and the gospels; the OT and the gospels inform all the epistles. Covenant theologians are supposed to know this. Paul, a good Jew, fully understood the OT context of justice and probably didn’t feel he needed to revisit the biblical definition of justice that was obvious to his first century listeners. Unfortunately, we’ve lost that along the way. I’m sure if he were alive today, he would make that clear for us.

If you haven’t fallen asleep by this point, hopefully this has helped a little. If not, you’re welcome to ignore it or ask any questions it may raise.

Lessons about God from my Lesbian Neighbor

My neighbor is a lesbian adjunct professor in political science at a large university about thirty minutes away. Not that any of that has anything to do with this story. But it makes the story a little more interesting. We share a property line and occasionally talk about random things in the neighborhood. She also asks me about school and we commiserate over the doctoral process. She’s certainly a nice lady.

About a month ago, my neighbor did something somewhat out of character for her. Along our property line, she planted about a dozen shrubs and trees. Certainly I wouldn’t have minded this – but she planted them right on the property line, some actually over on our side. Those trees will grow onto my side of the property, branches and all. I began to wonder why she felt it was necessary to do such a thing. We both have about an acre of land, so we’re not exactly staring into each other’s windows or anything. But still, it bothered me…so between diaper changes, I’ve thought a lot about it.

As Americans, we suffer from something called the “myth of scarcity.” It’s the unnerving belief that there’s really not enough of things to go around so we must horde up everything we can. I think this is what intrinsically drove my neighbor to do what she did. It’s also what makes me consider her act as an attempt to “steal” a few inches of my property. It’s part of our fallen state of humanity, an expression of our fears and insecurities. The myth of scarcity drives our dog-eat-dog work mentality, our leadership models, and our fights over money. It’s the foundation upon which we’ve built the idea of “winners” and “losers.” There can be only one, you know. Second place is no place. If you’re not a Cain, then your gonna be an Abel.

One of the strangest, yet most profound, times I see the “myth of scarcity” rear it’s ugly head is in divorcee counseling sessions or with people after a serious breakup. A (rightfully) wounded divorcee or breakup victim (both men and women) has often explained to me why God should bless them. Almost always, the underlying inference is: God should bless me (at the expense of blessing my spouse/ex-boyfriend). The deeper issue here is the myth of scarcity. I immediately put my finger on it by saying something like this: “Do you feel like God can’t bless both you and your ex?” They usually look at me funny like, “Why would God want to bless them?”

My point is this: There’s plenty of God to go around. Someone’s gain, promotion, blessing, new car, new baby, leadership position in church, and so on is not your loss. More importantly, someone else’s loss is never your gain. Another’s defeat is never your victory. Never. Ever. People are not objects to step over on your way to God’s blessing. God can bless everyone at the same time and he’s evidently happy to do it. Your ex-whatever doesn’t have to be miserable in order for you to be happy. God is quite capable of producing a good life for both of you apart from one another. He doesn’t love one person at the expense of another…and neither should we. He loves all the same, apart from the mistakes we’ve made and the tragedy we’ve caused.

I catch myself wrestling with the fact that there’s not enough of something to go around. But, if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that we already have more than we could ever need. Prosperity is different for different people. People over here think it’s money. But in some places, a guy with a bowl full of rice is considered the richest man in the village. Somewhere else, a large family is the mark of greatness. A dollar over here buys a pack of gum…but somewhere else, it buys a month of groceries. See, it’s all about perspective. I think, as Christians, we need a little.

Views of the Cross

I just finished reading Phillips and Okholm’s The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals and Postliberals in Conversation. It was helpful and confusing at the same time. Unfortunately, my book club just finished King Me by Steve Farrar. If you want to scar your children for life, pick that one up…

The cross, although central to Christianity, is one the most difficult events in Christianity to understand. Now, that may sound strange to you because, you’re thinking, “Jesus paid the penalty for my sins – end of story.” Not so fast there, champ. There are several different views of the atonement. The one you just described didn’t even show up fully developed until four hundred years ago. So what did people believe about the cross before then? Thanks for asking – I’ll tell you. 

Most evangelicals (I am one, though very much a postconservative one) strictly adhere to the penal-substitution theory developed by Anselm in the 12th century and Calvin in the 16th. In essence, God is angry since we dishonored him (Anselm) and broke his law (Calvin). Both require recompense and God is seriously ticked off. Just as God drops his gavel in a cosmic courtroom, Jesus steps in to save the day: “I’ll take their sin and be their substitute, fully absorbing the punishing wrath of God.” We inherited this view from the Fundamentalists who believe this view of the atonement was one of the five “fundamentals” of Christianity, hence their name. I really don’t like that one. I prefer the other two views much better.

Probably the oldest interpretation of the cross was developed by Irenaeus (2nd cent.). He believed in the ransom or Christus Victor (Christ as Victor) model. It’s a good one to use. Humanity had given dominion to Satan through the fall. Jesus became the ransom for the world when he died on the cross, allowing humanity to return to God by accepting the ransom payment of Jesus. Jesus isn’t sacrificed to God for appeasement, rather he gives his life to rescue humanity. I like this one – it conveys God’s willingness to go to any length to redeem his people. God is working within the human predicament to bring about not punishment (as in the first view) but redemption.

The final view is the moral theory of atonement. After the substitutionary model became popular, people began to revolt against it. One of the most famous was Peter Abelard. He said that the cross was a way to convey the love of God in action. The cross expresses the love of God, not to force repentance but to persuade humanity to return to him. After all, it’s the “goodness of God that leads to repentance.” In Christ, we see the love of the Father manifested to all. What’s more, the cross shows the depth of love that compels him to rescue us from our destruction. I sure like this one as well. For me, it’s probably the most fun to preach.  

 The Bible has verses to support all three models. In Colossians, Paul uses moral theory in chapter one and ransom theory in chapter 2. However, I think the most common motif in all those verses is God’s choice to convey his love through the sacrifice of Jesus. So how does that work? Well, like I said it’s not that simple, but here are some clarifying factors.

To me, the cross is not so much about punishment and who takes that punishment as much as it is about a cure. This is a little more of an Eastern Orthodox approach, but I think the cross was more about overcoming/curing death than it was about sin. Now that may strike you as strange because Western Christians are taught to be highly sin conscious. And that’s part of the problem – we never get past clinging to the “old rugged cross” to receive the power of the resurrection. Though sin is significant, evangelicals act like it was a HUGE deal for God to overcome sin. That’s missing the point (of which we are experts). Sure, sin was an obstacle but what God really wanted was for us to not die in our sin. Newsflash: the cross was not the end of the story, though Protestants often see it that way. The resurrection was. So, the cross exists so that the resurrection could happen. The resurrection is the pinacle of the Christian message, not just some thirty second afterthought in a Mel Gibson movie.

Here’s the other reason I like the the final two rather than the “legal” model of the atonement. I believe God is good. That there is no evil in him. So, I think the substitution model pits bad, wrathful Father against good, merciful Jesus. It creates a duplicitous nature in God and promotes christomonism, another propensity in Protestant circles. It’s not surprising that the child’s phrase, “I love Jesus, but I hate God” arose around the time of the Reformed approach to the atonement. So rather than have a duplicitous nature in God, I choose to see the world in the in the temporal state of transition and irresolution. God’s intents and purposes are good even though sin continues to ravage the lives of people.

Let me give you a final example of the temporal nature of life. If I rounded the corner of my home and found my two year old sticking a fork in a power outlet, what do you think I would do? I would yell, “Stop!” I would run to rescue her from suffering. I’m not angry at her – she’s a child. But I am angry at the situation and will do anything I can to resolve it. And when she looks at my face as I run to save her, she might interpret that concern as anger. In the same way, God’s wrath (a temporal state of reaction against the human predicament) is motivated by his love (his eternal character) to eradicate the world of sin. Okay, so it’s not a perfect illustration, but it points to the temporal state of God’s wrath versus his permanent loving nature. Even then, I doubt we will be able to fully comprehend all that happened at the cross. But, in the meantime, I choose a combined view of options two and three.

Bible Meme

I got tagged by Robert to fill out this extraodinary set of questions, to which I answer the following…

1. What translation of the Bible do you like best?

New Living Translation. Yes, I think dynamic equivalency rocks.

2. Old or New Testament?

New Testament, but OT sure is growing on me.

3. Favorite Book of the Bible?

Luke

4. Favorite Chapter?

Romans 12. Now, there’s a chapter to live life by.

5. Favorite Verse? (feel free to explain yourself if you have to)

Matthew 6:33: “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” It’s the first one I memorized as a kid.

6. Bible character you think you’re most like?

Timothy. A young guy who loves Jesus that Paul thinks is in over his head.

7. One thing from the Bible that confuses you?

Why God didn’t get a little more detailed so there’d be less to argue over.

8. Moses or Paul?

I would have said Paul for the majority of my life, but I’m starting to lean toward Moses. That dude put up with a lot of junk and, unlike Paul, he really didn’t have a lot of research material to draw from on how to follow God. He just flew by the seat of his pants. “Oh, you got a question? Let me go run up the mountain and see what God says. Be back in a jiffy.” That’s awesome.

9. A teaching from the Bible that you struggle with or don’t get?

I have always struggled with some of the historical incidents in the OT. I know there’s more to the story in most cases. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to trust God that he knows what he’s doing.

10. Coolest name in the Bible?

Eleazar, son of Dodo. I giggle everytime I read it. Now, that’s just funny. But don’t laugh too much – that guy can get crazy with a sword!

What’s the Point of Reading the Bible?

I grew up hearing a pastor exhort me to “get in the Word!” practically every Sunday. It didn’t matter which denomination or church I attended. The message was the same: good Christians read their Bible everyday. It makes you a better Christian. My oldest daughter came home from pre-school today singing, “Read your Bible, pray everyday/and you’ll grow, grow, grow/Don’t read your Bible, forget to pray/and you’ll shrink, shrink, shrink.” That exact mentality was the one I grew up with. But if I was to be honest with myself, for most of my Christian upbringing, I was nor overly-enthused about reading my Bible. I saw scriptures that answered some of my questions. But I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking for. All I knew was that I better read my chapter a day so I could “grow” whether I understood it or not.

Things have changed now. I still retain a high view of scripture – it is certainly inspired – but now I approach it differently. I don’t engage in bibliolatry. Bibliolatry is placing a text at the center of worship rather than the “person” behind the text. In the Christian’s case, many people worship the Bible but rarely understand it’s Author. I now approach scripture from the opposite end of the spectrum. I read it as an expression of my relationship with God, not as a way to gain that relationship. I read it because I love him, not because I want to learn how to love him better. “Christ in you” (not the Bible) is the “hope of glory.” Am I saying you shouldn’t read your Bible? No, silly person. But I am saying that you should do it for the right reasons.

I like to use this illustration. Suppose I am halfway around the world for a year. Beth writes me a letter/email everyday. I check my email everyday and there’s her love letter to me. Now, after a little while, I’m gonna know pretty much what she’s going to say to me. Do you think that would stop me from reading her love letters? Hardly. I’d read every one simply because I love her. No one is forcing me read them – my love for her causes me to leap at the chance to read her words everyday.

In my home halfway around the world, do you think I would frame one of Beth’s letters and proudly display it to all visitors? No, that’s crazy-talk. But I guarantee you that a bibliolatrist would frame the letter and talk of its perfection. What would I frame? A picture of my wife. The person, not the letter. In the same way, there are a lot of people who would frame the Bible and not the Savior. God certainly didn’t do that. We are his “workmanship,” his picture of himself reflected in our goodness to others. We are his picture. The Bible is not an end unto itself – it points us to the Father. In your life, do you frame the book or frame the Savior?

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is our anniversary. We made it to eight years. Whew! This year has been interesting to say the least. Some people might say our family has been “on hold” this year. I don’t see it that way – it implies that what has happend in the last year is worth looking past to something else. It hasn’t been. It’s been great. After all, life is what you make of it. I would rather use the word “fluid” to describe our present state.

So, what grand moral tale have you derived from this past year? Well, in our state of flux, I have come to understand how loyal a friend your spouse can be. When you don’t have quite the “roots” you have had in the past, you tend to cling to your immediate family as your center of grounding. We have had to do that big-time. Beth has been an exceptional wife, not because she cooked dinner every night or because she washed and folded everybody’s clothes. She’s great because she has been so versatile as a teammate in our “fluid” state of life. I don’t think I have the level of resourcefulness that she does – she has shown such depth as a working mom. She has constantly displayed “love in action.”

 So there you are. Eight years. I wonder what next year will be like? 

“Crucified with Christ”: the Most Self-Centered Verse in the Bible

I accidently introduced radical bodily dualism to my three-year-old the other day. Claire Grace and I were getting something to eat in the kitchen. She said, “Dad, my tummy is making noises and feels funny.” I said, “Yeah, that’s your body telling you that you’re hungry.” She said, “Yeah…” and climbed up in her chair to eat a snack. Though she thought nothing more of it, I continued to think about what I had just said. She has no concept of the separation between soul and body or (for some) body, soul, and spirit. But I introduced it to her in that moment.

See, in the Western world, we have an unusual way of thinking about ourselves. Other nations throughout history have seen the human person as a whole – one part affects another and God saves all of us, not just part of us. With the Greek philosophers, the intellect was elevated above the body and emotions. With Augustine’s psychological analysis of the Trinity, we equated body, soul, and spirit with the corresponding with the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Once persecution stopped for the early Christian church, they began assigning ideas of martyrdom to sickness and tragedy. Phrases like “this is my cross to bear” which used to refer to death began to refer to disease. Today, phrases like “suffering for Jesus” reflect this thought. Due to Gnostic influence, Christians also began to equate the body as the source of evil. So now, as Christians, we see ourselves as tripartite or dualistic beings - where the flesh is the enemy and the spirit needs to be set free. Another example is when we talk a bout how many “souls” were saved in a revival meeting. So, what about their bodies? Did they stay in the pew while the souls floated down the aisle to fill out a commitment card? I basically helped Claire Grace mentally separate herself over a snack yesterday. Way to go, dad.

We read this approach to the body into scripture all the time. Of course, miss the point of scripture in the process. Take Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” We take this verse in evangelical circles to mean that in order for Christ to live in us, the flesh must die – the flesh must be crucified. Yet, if you take time to actually read the verse, there are seven references to self in the passage – a passage we normally equate with the eradication of self.  So what’s going on here?

I try to take a more “hebrew” approach to scripture and see salvation as a holistic event. God came to save all of you, not just save your soul and supress your body. As such, this scripture says as much about self-care as it does about Jesus living through you. Jesus meant to revolutionize all of  us, not just parts of us. He came to redeem the whole human. I think one of the attractions of Eastern religions is that they often take the body seriously, unlike the church.

Christians have gotten the wrong idea. And honestly we don’t live this way on a practical level. If someone pricks you with a pin you don’t say, “Ouch! You hurt my body!” You say, “Ouch! You hurt me!” If might be good idea to drop the mental gymnastics about the make up of a person and believe that God wants to permeate all parts of us. Our bodies are not the enemy. A negative focus on supression of the body keeps us from the positive aspects of godly living – focusing on our relationship with God. That’s the important part. If we do that, the body will follow.