Tag Archives: marriage

Let’s look at this cohabitation thing again — You’re married, right?

Building community, Marriage and Family, , , , , , , , ,

I heard a common story from a new friend last night. As far as she knew about church people, “living together” was so frowned upon that she and her boyfriend suspected they would be ostracized if they got involved in Circle of Hope.

I said to her, “You guys are married, though, right?” She said, “Yes.” (This is not a transcript of our conversation, but that was the gist).  What stood in the way of the official ceremony was money. They did not have wealthy or supportive parents; they did not have the money for a big party, money for the ring, the dress, etc.; plus, she wanted to feel more established financially before they made a commitment. This story is so common it seems to represent a new rite of passage into adulthood.

Care about people where they are

The “principle Christians” sometimes criticize Circle of Hope, as a whole, for our acceptance of people who are “cohabiting,” like my friend is. The implication is that we should consider these people taboo until they get themselves corrected. Instead, we apparently just let people have sex, willy nilly, and encourage people to sin. (Really, that’s gotten back through the gossip chain).

But, in truth, we’ve come up with an alternative. We care about people the way we meet them. So we usually get to know people who are cohabiting and ask them if they are married. Most of the time, if they aren’t just sharing an address, they say “Yes.”

I think people need to make a public covenant and have the benefit of a church-sanctioned marriage for any number of reasons. I’m not sure they need the government involved in their marriage at all – if they see that as an advantage, fine. But if they have taken one another home, and we all know they are a “they,” I don’t feel out of line by acknowledging their marriage.

Cohabitation facts

Like I noted in a former post, cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States. It climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. It looks like most young adults today will, at some point, live with a sexual partner outside of marriage. The stats say that a majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. Often their parents encourage these “trial runs.” It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married.  It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Sex is easier now. The capacity to marry for love (as well as be unfaithful) provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. Divorce is easier. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage. It is easier to be “abnormal” now. Since the 1960’s, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable.

Although the contours of marriage have changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still overwhelmingly define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, even though many break their vows. They are pulled between opposites and are still sorting things out. They want the connection of marriage, but they have slowly become accustomed to being individualistic and consumeristic. They want the security and safety of marriage, but they still want all their choices unencumbered. They want to marry or exclusively cohabit, but then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan, but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

What is the best way to marry?

Even though there are very few negative social consequences for breaking former sexual codes by not being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. Even same-sex couples want to marry and thirteen states will allow them to do it legally. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why people mate the way they do, but I do want to respond to what is happening with grace and discernment.

It is an interesting era. I am watching it as something of an outsider, since I and my Anabaptist tradition do not tune our faith to the varying pitches of government music or the society’s dance. As far as I am concerned, state and federal government definitions of marriage do not necessarily serve to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith. I don’t think legislation on sex, finances, or even procreation will protect marriage enough to make it work. It takes commitment. I don’t think couples need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But I do think they need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

As a church, we have not fully answered all the questions (including the ones that come through the gossip chain): Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that many of those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited?

A new look at the spectrum of how people, in general, are changing marriage from contract to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt:

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle! Just stand up during the Love Feast; we’ll marry you and you can have a big party on your fifth anniversary.
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before they enter their covenant publically. That would be something like the way we embrace people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publically affirmed covenant.
  • Maybe we should stop keeping secrets. Why should someone feel like they are secretly married just because they have not jumped through all the sometimes-arbitrary hoops? Why shouldn’t we help people have healthy, godly relationships with the people they are living with?
  • Maybe we can help people who are getting married to relax about it and not try to meet the demands of the wedding industry. That might encourage others to celebrate the relationship they have made with more freedom and less stress.

Here are some more blog posts and pages about marriage:

The Marriage Story (August 2012) http://rodwhitesblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-marriage-story/

Keep Talking about How Your Lover Is Doing with Jesus (April 2012)

Monica and the new marriage (June 2011)

Go Ahead and Marry (2000)

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Sorting Out Cohabitation and Marriage

Building community,

Cohabitation has increased dramatically in recent decades in the United States (and in Circle of Hope, too!). In the U.S. it climbed from 500,000 couples in 1970 to nearly 6.8 million couples in 2009. Most young adults today will, at some point, live with a romantic partner outside of marriage, and the majority of couples now cohabit before they marry. It looks like a generation with so many divorced parents is deciding not to get divorced by never getting married. We should consider this a new stage of development in marriage. It is a new era with a host of new issues to sort out.

Many Christians think the 21st century increase in cohabitation without legal, covenantal or public recognition devalues marriage and undermines its goals. If recent research is a true indicator, Americans, as a whole, have not fully decided whether they agree or not.  Since 1960, cohabitation, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have become increasingly common and culturally acceptable. But even though there are very few negative social consequences for practicing these things without being married, Americans overwhelmingly choose to marry, eventually. I don’t think I can answer all the reasons why they do this. But I do want to respond to the reality of it.

In the past most people married for economic, political and social reasons. Today they marry for love. Postmodern people seem to think relationships save them. The love songs say it. The script of New Girl taught it in a recent sitcom episode. Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and now it is an arrangement based on mutual attraction. Once religion provided the sacrament, then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences define the arrangement. The cultural change that made this happen was the same one that gave us science, technology, freedom, and capitalism: the Enlightenment. It made human reason the measure of all things, throwing off ancient rules if they fell short of new scientific reasoning. The greatest accomplishment of the Enlightenment was the creation of the United States of America.

Among the many things the scientific advances of the creative era called the Enlightenment spawned were the increase of divorce and cohabitation. The capacity to marry for love and participate in infidelity provided by birth control shook old foundations and new foundations are being built in response. In 1900, two-thirds of marriages ended with the death of a partner, particularly when women died during childbirth. By 1974, divorce surpassed death as the most common way to terminate a marriage. By the end of the 20th century, divorce was considered both a common and culturally acceptable way to terminate marriage.

Although the purpose of marriage has changed over time, the definition has not.  Americans still define marriage as being sexually exclusive and lifelong, but many engage in infidelity and divorce. They want the connection, but they have slowly become accustomed to being totally individualistic.  They choose to marry or exclusively cohabit and then have extramarital sex or divorce, even though they no longer have to get married. “Freedom” is the slogan but they seem to still be pondering with the Apostle Paul: “Yes, everything is permissible. But not everything builds up!” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

As a result of all this confusion, family law has lost any moral basis. It is easier to get out of a marriage than a mortgage. This change in culture is made clear when one looks at court decisions. At the end of the 1800s, the Supreme Court referred to marriage as a “holy estate” and a “sacred obligation.” (Reynolds v. U.S. 1878). By 1972 the same court described marriage as “an association of two individuals” (Eisenstadt v. Baird. 1972).  The Defense of Marriage Act (1996) attempted to remedy the Supreme Court’s philosophical direction that accelerated the change in society. But the adaptation of marriage has continued anyway and that law is being whittled away. The Obama administration selectively enforces it. As a society, people are still sorting this out.

For Christians who have not tuned their faith to the varying pitch of government, such as I am, the lack of federal protection for marriage merely serves to increase the integrity of marriage as an expression of faith: not of sex, finances or even procreation, but of commitment. Couples do not need an excessive wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment. But they do need the sanction and participation of a living community in Christ to make a long-lasting covenant that is centered in the covenant we keep with the Lord.

The question is: Do believers need a wedding ceremony or a legal document to make a commitment? The essence of marriage is not sex, or money, or even children: it is covenant. Does the covenant need to be made in traditional ways — especially now that those mostly-extra-biblical ways are becoming discredited? A new look at the spectrum of how people are changing marriage from covenant to cohabitation might come up with some advantageous ways to adapt.

  • Maybe we could free some people from the ceremony trap — some people don’t marry because they are saving for the bling and the spectacle!
  • Maybe we could honor people by acknowledging their cohabitation before the covenant is publicly committed – that would be something like embracing people as members of the church community before they make a covenant with the body.
  • Maybe we should more clearly express our understanding that people who have sex are, essentially, married, albeit poorly and dangerously. But then, some of them are better married than some people who live together with a publically affirmed covenant, just secretly. Why would someone get married secretly?

When someone told me recently that they were about ready to have sex with their girlfriend, I said if he was going to get married, I’d marry them immediately, if he liked. We’re still sorting that out, too.

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Genesis 2: The Marriage Story

Doing Theology, Marriage and Family,

On Saturday we opened up the topic of marriage at our leadership training. There is a lot of change coming to fruit in U.S. society regarding marriage and the changes can be very confusing. Some of our confusion came to my attention when a cell asked me for a “private session” to talk about cohabitation and same sex marriage. When we had talked over some of their issues, one of them finally asked, “So Rod, what is marriage?” I’m not sure why the question surprised me, but it did. I realized we had some theologizing to do. Their thinking had been colonized by the philosophies of the age that did not recognize Jesus; they needed to talk. So let’s keep talking, here — gently. Arguing about intimacy and sex is never a good idea, in my opinion.

This is some of what I was saying on Saturday.

Understanding marriage starts with a story, not a definition.

Though U.S. laws and philosophies demand otherwise, any wisdom about marriage is going to start with a story; and it will be one about relating to God at the center of it. Some people connect with congregations of the Church and one of the first things they ask for is the congregation’s definitions surrounding sexuality to see whether it is tolerable. If that is you, I can only ask that you are patient with our Bible-like ways. If you ask Jesus, “What is marriage” he will probably tell you a story. Marriage is too mysterious and too full of God to reduce it to a definition one can control and fight about. U.S. society has no center, so it is in a constant fight about definitions that become laws. The kingdom of God just does not work like that.

Genesis 2 is a marriage story

Marriage of Adam and Eve. Jean Fouquet (1420-1481)

 

One of the first stories about marriage is in Genesis 2, where the Bible collects tales about the creation of the world. Among the many things that Genesis 2 is, it is a marriage story. I think we learn three things from it:

We are not alone in our garden, God is with us.

I suppose when God presented Adam with Eve, the man could have responded in other ways than with the wonder he expressed. He could have said, “What in the world is it?” Likewise, Eve could have whispered to God as they walked down the aisle of Eden, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” Instead, Adam and Eve went with the miracle and trusted God for what was being created.

God expresses the Trinity’s character by creating us male and female in the Lord’s own image. Our coming together, is a mysterious, complete picture of who God is as we love one another as male and female. This is not the only way the image of God in us is revealed, because it happens when I love my children or comrades, too, and it happens when I choose to be my true self in the Spirit. Obviously, Jesus and Paul are not married and recommend their condition as a way to be married to God, so to speak. So people who are not married must not feel like they are missing out on the heart of the matter. But marriage is a basic way we creatures show how we are made in God’s image. The story of creation ends with marriage being the “moral” of the story: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). One of the basic reasons for the story was to explain why people get married and how God is with us in that.

Marriage is a primary way we come to our wholeness.

We all might know that in the story of Adam and Eve they get in quite a bit of trouble together. They make some choices that have some severe consequences. Their oldest children are not very well put together. I don’t think the whole clan has fully figured out how to be human for the first few chapters of the Bible, if then. In this process of sin and redemption, crime and wonder, marriage is a central crucible for growth. It is a laboratory for learning love. It is a crucible because it contains some volatile stuff that needs a gracious container to mature in. Many of us have blown up the lab a couple of times, and we know what I am talking about.

Yes, marriage is for romance and pleasure, but those elements are not enough motivation to sustain a love that can suffer like God’s. Personal satisfaction (whatever that moving target is!) is not enough to make a marriage worthwhile over time. If marriage is a practical process of learning  how to be a human who can be his or her true self in Christ, how to be a person who is able to come together in a kiss that is packed with mutual care, then we are getting somewhere.

Marriage is a primary way we fulfill our purpose

Some people think that Adam and Eve just wandered around in the garden hanging out, naming new animals and fruit they discovered. Not entirely. It says they were given the garden to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). They were partners. They needed each other. Then sin made their work even harder! They were charged to be fruitful and cover the earth — have children, create community, keep the earth in shape, develop humankind. They had a whole earth to explore and tend and an eternity to do it. Their relationship had innate purpose. Just as God created them in a purposeful way, with love and goodness in mind, they were to be creative and purposeful.

Some of us have had relationships in which having the relationship was the goal of the relationship. Perhaps one partner was the avoider and one partner the pursuer — that often keeps couples occupied. Maybe both partners surprised themselves and their mate by discovering new issues they had with intimacy — that often gives people something to do. All relationships are challenging, but relationships with nothing else in life but the relationship are even more difficult. No person can be our “everything” – thanks for the confidence in me to think I could be, but no thanks. Being made for more than a relationship with your mate is not an either/or thing. Having a purpose should enhance intimacy.

How do I think community is created?

There is a lot to learn from the story. On Saturday, we began by thinking about what our parents’ marriages had been like. How did they bring us into creation? It makes a big difference to how we think we are to function in it. We are part of their ongoing story. If the family was eating forbidden fruit all day, it makes a difference.

If you are considering making a marriage covenant, are attached to a regular sexual partner, or are cohabiting, I think it is crucial to understand the story you are writing. When mating, Jesus followers probably want to match the creation/re-creation story in significant ways, since we are in the process of creating a new community with two people  at the center, and we are leading the community of the church in significant ways by what we do.

These days people tend to have

  • sealed off love (don’t connect too much) or
  • solace love (hang on for dear life), when what we want is
  • synchrony love (mutuality and understanding).

We tend not to know our own story too well, or to even think we should have one. We are more reaction than action. The marriage story in the creation story encourages good meditating. It causes us to consider how God is in everyone’s picture. It helps us make sensible choices in relation to others. Nice work, spiritual ancestors!

Keep Talking about How Your Mate Is Doing with Jesus

Building community, Marriage and Family, , ,

The biggest impediment to keeping faith with Jesus might be a good man or a good woman — or at least a man or a woman who wants me.

I have often wondered out loud how long it will be before a new follower of Jesus is derailed by a new unbelieving boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes it seems like such a person is sent to the newly-faithful to see how faithful they want to be!

Almost everybody wants to love. The newly faithful are good to love. It is ironic that just as they start accessing a deeper way to love, the very thing that faith unleashes is the very thing that can do faith in! Jesus saves a needy person, brings them into community; they get stabilized and processed a bit, and they immediately use their newly softened heart to connect to someone who disconnects them from Jesus! Or if the person is OK with Jesus, in the abstract (in the, “It’s so cute that you are a Christian,” kind of way), they disconnect their sweet believer from the community and mission that is not that cute. This is a significant struggle right now all over our network.

Figuring out how faithful people mate has been a struggle from the beginning. Paul, in particular, talks about it quite a bit in the Bible. He really gets into the subject with the church in Corinth, Greece. He has a lot to say in his letters to his dear friends about how they are relating, and we have been pondering his revelations ever since. This is the group to whom he writes the famous 1 Corinthians 13 about love. This is the part of that chapter which is often excerpted for weddings:  

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

When Jesus frees a person to love like this, they are a very attractive mate! Many people are glad to receive the Jesus-like love of a Jesus follower as long as the lover doesn’t bring Jesus along with His love. And many people who love like Jesus are very hesitant to unhook from a person who doesn’t like Jesus precisely because they have learned to hope and persevere in love like Jesus!

Yoked with your mate

Maybe that is why Paul wrote again in 2 Corinthians 6 about being overly involved with people who are not involved with Jesus. He says not to get “yoked together” with unbelievers, like mismatched farm animals trying to get some plowing done. Animals that are yoked conform to each other’s ways or they constantly chafe under the yoke. When it comes to followers of Jesus connecting with people following something else, it can be a bad situation for both parties. When a Christian is intimate with an unbeliever, it is like inviting someone to defile the “temple of the living God,” Paul teaches, since the Spirit of God resides in His people. Paul is not saying that an unbeliever is all bad or that he or she can’t be loved and redeemed. He’s saying that they don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into, and they should not be lured into taking it lightly. Likewise, the believer should not try to hide their light so an unbeliever is comfortable in their dark, as if that were possible, anyway. It is not good for either party. Something has to live or something has to die.

Paul has a long discussion about what to do about these situations in 1 Corinthians 7.  The message of Jesus has come to Corinth and there are quite a few marriages and engagements among the new believers that have been impacted, so Paul wants to talk about what to do with your mate. His main advice is that if a person can manage to not get entangled in sex and marriage at all, that’s a good thing. But I don’t think he really thinks that is going to happen for 95% of the people, so he tries to help sort things out. He says that people who are married when they come to faith should stay married. Don’t desert your mate just because they don’t come to faith. But if they leave you, don’t feel bound to them; let yourself move on. To people who aren’t married when they come to faith he says it would be just as well to stay unmarried, because if you get intimate with someone, they are going to hold sway over you – heart, mind and body; who they are is going to make a big difference in who you can be. So if you need to get married (and that is a good thing), make sure that Jesus can live with the person you marry. It is better to stay single than to be yoked to someone who is uncomfortable being yoked to Jesus.

Like Paul feels the need to talk to his loved ones about the specifics of making love relationships, about marriage, and about how they are having sex, we need to keep talking, too. The love of God poured out on us in Jesus is making us whole and setting us free to be our true selves. It is also making us very attractive to people who need our love, and many of them have no clue about the bondage they are in and the false selves to which they are committed. We need to be honest with ourselves about the limits of who we are in Jesus. We need to be honest with our lovers about what relating to us really means. We’re going to love them; that is what we do. But so is Jesus, and they need to let him be in the relationship, since He’s not going anywhere.

Monica and the New Marriage

Building community, , , , , ,

The statistics are in a duel when it comes to whether living together before marriage results in a higher rate of divorce. Around here we tend to call cohabitation “faux marriage” and one does not have to be “living together” to be in one. But that is beside the point (already!). Some statistics keepers say 45% of cohabiters breakup before they get married.  “67 percent of cohabitating couples who marry eventually divorce, compared to 45 percent of all first marriages,” claims Michael Foust.  Others are very skeptical about how the numbers are crunched, like Catherine Harris, who says that her sense of the stats is that cohabitation isn’t that big of an indicator of marital success. So many PhDs! Such a big internet to argue on!

Moral choices about marriage

Marital “success” is nice. But people are not consulting the stats before they decide whether to cohabit or marry, are they? “Success” is not a very convincing moral argument for a moral decision. Success is not even moral – or is that all we’ve got, now? Moral is still a discussion of right conduct, right and wrong according to one’s principles, or, in my case, how I should live in response to the way of life revealed by God, primarily in Jesus, and persistently informed by the Holy Spirit. Getting married is a significant place where we get to decide, “What is best for me to do? What is best for the person I love?” and also, “What does my community think is the right way to go about this?”

An awful lot of us seem to be floating around in the rudderless ship of our personal decision on the ocean of our undefined thinking when it comes to moral choices about marriage. Many of us are not in a family system with any strength to guide us and most of
us are not part of a community we respect to inform us. The new marriage is a personal expression of “whatever.”

The new “marriage”

Monica Mandell appears to be an evangelist for the new marriage. I ran into her in the latest edition of Philadelphia Magazine. In the online version she gushes “Living together is a phenomenon previous generations did not experience. Although the divorce statistics show that it does not matter if you rush into marriage, marry your high school sweetheart or live with your future spouse, it must make things a lot easier to actually know the person you are marrying. Not only are women in the workplace today, but  they are also having premarital sex! Can you imagine being with your partner for the first time on your wedding night? It is a miracle that so many unions lasted from that generation!”

I took just a cursory look at the stats and there is no way one can say that it does not matter how you marry or whether you don’t marry. Of course it matters, unless nothing matters. One stat that I found most stat keepers agreeing on is that people who value marriage are more likely to stay married.

What’s more, let me be amazed at how Dr. Mandell breezily dismisses virginity with a “Can you imagine?!” I am surprised she did not include the implied “OMG!” Yes, Monica, I can imagine being with my partner for the first time on my wedding night. I don’t think marriages automatically die from lack of virginity. But I don’t think they are worse off with it, not by a long shot. The couples I counsel put a lot of stress on their love and they undermine the development of their commitment by never having any thresholds to cross — like a wedding and wedding night. Forming a healthy relationship that contributes to one’s spiritual health is not a light matter.

Monica’s shallow pool

She goes on, “Modern women should be seeking to balance good marriages with good jobs. Happy, productive parents breed happy, productive children. Having weekly mahjong sessions, lunches and shopping might have been considered fun as a standing operating procedure in the past, but the 1950s are over. Marriage is a partnership. Women who are not using their brains to full potential are selling themselves short.”

First of all, the 50’s were 60 years ago and the stereotype of the TV fifties never existed. That being said, I think Monica means that “postmodern” women “should” be doing the
balancing act she describes. They are more likely than modern women to see themselves as the defining factor in what should happen.

Secondly, families are built in a context and they are not just about happy productive parents (who apparently get their happiness from their marriages and jobs). Marriages happen in the world and “successful marriages” happen in community – hopefully in an extended family, ideally, in the church.

Thirdly, mahjong is not that easy. Using one’s brains as an economic tool is not always that satisfying, either.

I’ve got a feeling that Monica Mandell’s sense of what is good is mainly derived from economics. Looking for love aside, the lookers for love, these days, cohabit because they are shopping. “Getting what one wants” is the principle, shopping is the moral act. Monica’s byline names her: “Director of the Philadelphia office of Selective Search, the premiere (off-line) upscale matchmaking firm for the most eligible singles.”

From what I can tell from the website, Monica is a personal mate shopper. This is what her
website promises the men: “Selective Search Clients are single because they’re selective and don’t want to settle. We honor our Client’s preferences and don’t judge them, regardless of their criteria. In fact, we don’t consider having preferences like age, religion, and physical or personality type as being ‘picky’. We think it’s about knowing who and what you want and being selective….It’s our goal to introduce to you to that ‘needle in the haystack’ – a high caliber woman who will make you happy and fulfilled.” For a “premium fee” the website says, she will find you a premium selection.

Perhaps she “should” have added: Can you imagine the best possible, potential mate to try out in your very own bedroom? We deliver! Marriage as a commodity sounds like a perfect adaptation to a society that is all about economics, now that we have hollowed out its soul and forbidden God to influence it. I am not saying that everyone cohabiting is that shallow. But I am saying that they are wading in a shallow pool.

The Real St. Valentine: Marriage as defiance

Poetry, , , ,
If Valentine had been photographed

This poem reflects the theme of our benefit last Friday night that promised to uncover the “real” St. Valentine. I’m not sure the event did that, and I am not sure this poem does much better, since it references later exaggerations as 3rd-century fact. But my valentine said it needed to see the light of blogosphere day. So I offer it to you.

The first almond blossoms had begun to green
when the Goths began to mass in the north.
Emperor Claudius, the Butcher, turned his eye
to the budding men of Rome’s underground.

Where love flowered, he put down his boot
and forbade the young men to seal their vows,
“Rome is doomed if her imperial needs
Are thwarted by the demands of squawking babes.”

The church in Rome had grown like a wild vine,
and tending it was a priest named Valentine,
who was blind to the edict and married the church
and included the faithless in proclaiming their faith.

The powers quickly found his garden of grace,
burst in and beat him beyond recognition,
then buried his love even deeper in their prison,
where forty-six captives soon sang praise by his side.

The jailer’s blind daughter in the first dew of spring
had never seen a flower or the first light of day.
The saint prayed again and light spread further;
his last words to Julia: “From your Valentine.”

On the day lovebirds mate in 269, they say,
the guards dragged him to the place of execution.
For marrying against the emperor’s order
he lost his head in a final spray of blood and love.

The powers rage against the blossom of covenant:
each spring a new war, each day a deeper blindness,
every season of time a new martyr to take a stand
in the ever-foolish cause of revealing God’s image.

Principle Christianity Is Too Easy to Choke On

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, , , , ,

But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop. Luke 8:15

The Lord’s parable of the sower is a hopeful story. But no more hopeful than creation itself, in which a single seed actually does result in many more seeds, even hundreds of seeds.

But the parable is also a starkly truthful story, and that can feel very discouraging. Because some seeds don’t take root, some are eaten by birds, and some, even when they take root, can die from lack of water or by being choked out by weeds.

I’m thinking about seeds that are getting nowhere this morning. I’m the kind of farmer to whom every seed counts.

Parable of the Sower Lisa Snow Lady Acrylic on canvas 2010

People in the weeds

I am especially thinking of the much-loved friends I have who have been effectively choked out by weeds, or, by now, have faith that has been so ill-watered for so long that it is about dried up. Even more specifically, I am thinking about my friends who have what I call a “principle faith”. They received “the seed” of the word of the kingdom of God as a set of thoughts, a system of belief, even as oral tradition from their parents. When they took their faith on the road, when it encountered a world hungry for their allegiance, when it was surrounded by the jungle of desire and demand, it did not have the stuff to withstand the weeds of opposition.

A faith based on principle alone has a hard time standing up against other forces demanding allegiance on a more visceral level. But many people were persuaded to rely on principles at an early age. I’m not sure why Christian parents and teachers did this, but they sat their children in classes to get their training for a life of faith. I know, I went through some of these. Among the first things a child learns from such classes is that Christianity is about learning things in a class! In our classes, we were taught stories from the Bible which all had morals — sometimes more like Aesop’s fables than the Bible. We learned principles of faith, which were extracted from scripture. For instance, from the parable of the sower the following principle might be derived, “It is God’s will that I should be good, productive soil and bear a very fruitful crop for the storehouses of the kingdom.”  Advanced students might argue that they had a more accurate principle to propose. And so it started. Every paragraph, even every clause, in the Bible had a secret meaning that correlated with all the other meanings in a rather intricate system of right thinking that one needed to master to be a good Christian.

Do we really need to be better students?

As most children in school do, a lot of the students of Christianity didn’t listen too well. They were like most of the of the students of 11th grade math who never mastered higher math skills and certainly never used them after 11th grade! Hopefully, they aren’t all like me, but I became much more adept at cheating than at higher math skills as a result of trigonometry. If the principles of math are hard to convey, the “principles” of life in Christ are much harder! Math can be reduced to some principles, perhaps. But life in Christ needs to grow among weeds. The inorganic approach to teaching about Jesus needs a classroom to live in, not real life. So there are many problems with the teaching that a lot of my friends received. They ended up with a smattering of good thinking (or disputable theology) and that’s about all they have of the word when they are facing the weighty issues of their lives.

Does everything happen for a reason?

The friends I am praying for this morning have a “principle faith” that took them quite a distance on the pilgrimage of faith, but eventually it got them lost. For instance, a couple of these friends had very disheartening break-ups with people with whom they had been having sex for a year or so (and so the break-up was a no-marriage divorce and felt like one). The only faith they could apply to the situation was the common, unshakeable assurance a mother or teacher had taught them that, “Everything happens for a reason,“ which is an application of a faulty principle based on an interpretation of Romans 8:28 among other things. It wasn’t enough. Their faith started to wither.

People are more compelling than principles

Another main thing that I’ve seen choking out the weak little seedlings of principle faith in many people is the demand for allegiance from an unbelieving mate (usually one they are prospectively marrying). That demand is a virulent weed. Once you have sex with someone, it is hard to have what is always an intimate discussion about faith based merely on a set of morals or principles and not on a relationship with God that is as intimate as a sexual one with your lover. But in the cases of the dear people I am remembering, their relationship with God never got that intimate — it was all on paper, it was all in their head, it was all a theory they were applying and not a life growing in their redeemed heart.

They were never good soil. “Good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” One can’t hear the word of Jesus like it is more classroom material to be boiled down to the couple of things one can remember — not if it is supposed to withstand robust competition. Noble hearts hear the word from the Word in an ongoing, well-developed, Spirit to spirit relationship that is rooted in eternity — deeper than any human relationship. One has to retain the word of the kingdom of God like good soil retains water – much more than one strains to maintain a relationship with a mate, even. One must hear the word like a call from a master to direct one’s energy to the task of the day – it can’t be the background philosophy that lightly colors what one is really doing.

What does God think?

My friends did not have the faith they needed to stand up to their circumstances. They still have the same thoughts their mother or a well-meaning teacher taught them, but whatever they needed to hear in their heart got choked out by whoever they finally hooked up with. That connection was probably the noblest aim they could come up with, since their faith was merely theoretical and their love/sex relationship quite real. If they were married to the job, instead, as so many are, the job likely parched their scrawny thoughts about God, and the world at large rewarded them with something tangible for that. They may end up great parents and co-workers. But they are not going to be Jesus-followers unless something drastically changes.

Well, they may think they are Jesus followers. But if they don’t open their heart to hear with their heart, if they don’t retain what the Spirit of God implants, and if they don’t doggedly produce the crop of faith, hope and love that their master bought the farm to produce, will God think they are Jesus followers? What would make Jesus think that?

Mating choices

A life in the Spirit, Marriage and Family, , , ,

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;  but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.  Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.  Philippians 1:20-26

The other night at Rabbi Time we had a lively discussion about marriage, sex, “dating” — that whole fascinating area. One of the main things God reinforced for me through the discussion was that many of us need a redeemed set of reasons for what we are doing, in general, now that we have turned to follow Jesus. And we need to apply them to marriage, sex and “dating” (unless you kissed it good-bye, of course).

Agape and Phileo Love: We Need Both | HuffPost null

The Bible on mating

If one looks in their Bible concordance for “marriage, sex and dating” a few passages can be located — but probably not the verses from Philippians above. Yet I think what Paul writes there might give more direction for how to connect than other passages. Who one marries or considers marrying, how one connects sexually, isn’t another “area” of life that the Bible writers don’t seem to go into too specifically. Sexuality and spirituality are at the very heart of who we are and everything said about anything is applicable. In essence, the Bible writers are giving direction for sexual relationships all the time, and periodically they get specific.

For instance, Paul is trying to decide whether it is more profitable to live or die (a much weightier subject than, “Who shall I marry?” even, and certainly weightier than, “Shall I go for an orgasm right now?”)! He decides that God will likely spare his life for further mission — if not, that is even better. That is good direction, I say, for how to make all sorts of decisions about intimacy. When we were talking the other night, a few times it seemed necessary to say, “Who you marry is a missional matter, not just personal.” Somehow, it seems that most Christians think such wild talk is for missionaries, as if their own purpose didn’t matter so much!

How to choose

Is it really so foolish to think that if one were looking for a mate they would want to find a good partner for fulfilling their part of the mission of Jesus to redeem the world? Wouldn’t that be as likely to result in satisfying sex and decent family life as wondering if you were aroused enough to sustain a long-term sex life, or attracted enough to think your relationship would stand the test of time, or whether you were ready enough to make a commitment that would include you staying home at night periodically, or to stop drinking so much, or to compromise some of your perfectionistic expectations?

There are a lot of variations on how and why we connect. I am hardly trying to sum them all up in a few paragraphs, here! But I do want to suggest that having a purpose and assuming someone else would share it with you is pretty sexy. Honestly, I think it is more deeply erotic than mere skin-to-skin or attraction-to-attraction can sustain.