The Value of the Unapplied

My home church, Redemption Tempe, does a very good job of applying faith to all areas of life. Over the past few months, they've gone so far as to interview a different individual every week during the service about their vocation and how they seek to behave in that vocation in light of their faith. We've had people representing occupations from fields such as athletics, medicine, education, and construction, and it's been very interesting and thought-provoking! One thing I have noticed, however, is that most of the people interviewed work directly with or for the good of other people: even the researcher interviewed a few weeks ago was an MD studying pediatric cancer, and there have been no artists of any type interviewed. While I know (from other events and from speaking with the pastors) that Redemption believes any vocation can be used for the glory of God and has intrinsic value, I have seen in other Christian circles a definite desire to justify any vocation or endeavor by directly linking it to some application for the good of humanity or the spread of the gospel.
For example, in this paradigm, the study of literature or history might be perceived as having value only insofar as the lessons derived from that study enabled one to better serve others or impact society. Music and the arts might be considered worthwhile only if centered on explicitly Christian themes, intended for use in church, or used for healing or comforting. In my own vocational sphere, science is often seen as "good" only when it is clearly bound to some clinical application or environmental good. The broader Christian community smiles upon things like diagnostic lab sciences; research into different diseases and their detection, treatment, and prevention; evaluation of food and water pollution; research into cleaner technologies; and projects to make clinically and environmentally relevant discoveries and tools available to underprivileged areas. The so-called "pure sciences," on the other hand - research simply for the sake of knowledge and discovery - are ignored or seen as less valuable, along with what I'll call pure art - art for the sake of beauty, truth, and creation.
It is not incredibly difficult to understand this way of thinking. People in the church believe (correctly) that our primary call in life, regardless of our vocation and talents, is to love God and to love others. It can be hard for them to see how reading a classic novel, painting a portrait, or studying the social habits of bees manages to accomplish either of those things, and so they consider them to be of lesser value. With some impressive mental gymnastics and a good imagination they might be able to find some connection between those occupations and practical relevant service to others or to God, but the link will always seem slightly tenuous and unreliable, casting a shadow of doubt on those activities and the people who pursue them vocationally.
Is this an appropriate way to view different callings and careers? When choosing a vocational path, should we be careful to select something with at least the potential for that sort of practical application in service to others? I have at least one friend who consciously made that a part of his career choice planning, and I went through a lot of soul-searching along these lines myself, trying to force myself to fit into a medical profession simply because of its potential to benefit others and open avenues for sharing Christ. Since then, though, I've come to believe that this is an incomplete way to evaluate vocation, and that what it ultimately amounts to is Christian utilitarianism.
What do I mean by that? Well, in secular philosophical utilitarianism, things or activities gain worth or moral standing in direct proportion to the quantifiable good or happiness they produce. This can be construed in terms of either personal happiness or social good (which is essentially the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people). Christian utilitarianism in its popular and loosely defined manifestations eschews personal happiness and satisfaction as a justifying end, but embraces the social good as a justifying end, adding to the definition of the social good things like freedom of religion, access to the Bible, and faith in God. Sometimes this social good is elevated to the primary end, even eclipsing what the catechism says is the chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Maybe this happens because the social good is a much more visible and quantifiable pursuit - I don't know. In any case, it can be very frustrating for someone who works in a more abstract field, whose vocation does not tangibly or directly impact issues of physical/emotional well being, poverty, social justice, education, missions, and so on, to try to justify their vocation and find lasting meaning in it, because of the strength and prevalence of this paradigm within the church.
What utilitarianism excludes is the concept that things are or can be "good-in-themselves" - that is, things do not necessarily require a justifying end to be valuable and worthwhile. Or, to put it another way, the joy of exploring and discovering more of God's creation is a good thing whether or not any clinically or agriculturally relevant application is ever made because of it. A piece of music or work of art is worth creating and delighting in because of its innate beauty or the truth it represents, whether or not it is explicitly Christian, or whether or not a lesson or parable can be drawn from it, and even whether or not it is ever shared. These things are not "less than" because they do not have a justifying end planned as part of their purpose and execution. They are simply good because of what they are: good because in pursuing them we reflect God's joy in creating beauty and order and glorify Him by probing the depths of that beauty and rejoicing in Him in it. That may be all. But it is more than enough.
I want to encourage the church to remember what the chief end of man truly is, to reflect on the woman in the Gospels whose sacrifice of worship was praised by Jesus as a beautiful act even though she could have used those resources to provide for the poor, to dwell on the countless unnecessary but wonderful things God Himself created. It is a good thing to devote our lives to the service of others, and I believe it should be our posture towards others in general even if it is not specifically related to our vocation. But it is not the only worthwhile thing, or even the greatest thing. The greatest thing is to glorify God, and one way we can do that is through immersing ourselves in the beauties of His creation, learning more about it, meditating on its complexities, imaging His creativity in our own art and invention. Our vocations may not be acts of service, but they can still be acts of worship, beautiful, valuable, and worthy of the time and diligence we invest in them.

Made in the Image of God

Before having a baby, I didn't think that much about my body. I wasn't particularly bothered by any aspect of it but I didn't really love it either... I just kind of used it and tried to keep it healthy and otherwise ignored it. After having a baby, my body jumped up on center stage and started screaming for my attention in a way it never had before, even during the tumultuous changes of adolescence. Suddenly my belly looked different, my breasts were bigger, I was producing milk, another human being (albeit a tiny one) was visibly and tangibly depending on my body for his very life, I hurt in unexpected places, and a line across my abdomen was raised and numb. Every time I changed, or took a shower, or went to the bathroom, or nursed my baby (so essentially all the time), the changes in my body stood out to me, and I didn't like them.

At first it was really hard. I wanted my old body back, and I wanted to have it to myself again. No more stretch marks, loose muscles, or scars; no more semi-continuous physical touch; no more worrying about "overdoing it" in the simple everyday activities of life; no more struggling to balance my baby's and my husband's needs for physical closeness. I would try on my old pre-pregnancy jeans and get depressed, or catch a glimpse of myself wandering the house in pajamas and feel ugly and inadequate.

But as time went by, something surprising began to happen. The negative feelings were born of the difficulty of the transition from a pre-pregnant body, through pregnancy, to a post-pregnant body, and they were natural. Change can be hard, and it takes time to adjust. And because those feelings were simply a product of the transition, they didn't stick around forever.

One day I looked at the dark web of lines on my abdomen and thought, I am a life-giver.

I looked at my lopsided, leaking breasts and thought, I am a life-sustainer.

I looked at my weary arms after rocking my baby to sleep and thought, I am a comforter.

I looked at the curves of my body curled around my baby as he nursed away his tears and thought, I am a safe haven and a place of rest.

In the blurred-together days and endless nights of those first few weeks, my body had somehow, in all its raw and rough reality, began to take on the image of God as it never had before, and in so doing, reminded me how God is all those things to me: the giver and sustainer of my life, my comforter when I am sorrowful or discouraged, my refuge from the fears and toils of life. How can I look at my body and think it is ugly, when it is a witness to me of the goodness and faithfulness of God? It is beautiful, when it shows me His image, because He is beautiful. We read in Genesis that we are made in the image of God, but I think we forget that this includes our physical bodies just as much as our spiritual, emotional and rational capacities. I know I had never thought of it that way before, anyway. God has left testimonies of Himself in the smallest, most physical and material details of our lives, so that we don't need to be deep and profound thinkers to see His presence and be reminded of His character, and if we open our eyes to those glimpses of Him, I think, our lives will be more beautiful. The things we take for granted, the things we hardly think about, even the things that we dislike - they are worth looking at a second time, with new eyes, to see if we can find a picture of God within them.

Marriage in the Church

An acquaintance of mine recently remarried. She's a friend of mine on Facebook because I know her family well, but I'm not particularly close with her. She and her new husband look incredibly happy together, and all of our mutual friends were congratulating her on her wedding. But I didn't. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole situation. I don't know why she divorced her first husband (or even if she initiated the divorce). I do know that she still seems passionate about following and serving God, and probably is a lot better at those things than I am. It just gnaws away inside me that this is her second husband, that the vows she made the first time around have been broken, and that the community around her - the church community, the Christian community - spoke no words of sorrow or rebuke over the brokenness and is now publicly rejoicing in her new marriage. I don't know her story, and knowing her family I doubt that this divorce was entered into lightly, so I don't want to judge her specifically. For all I know, her first husband was abusive and unfaithful. But it makes me think. And in general, I see the church rejoicing at the beginning of marriages (which is all well and good) but sitting back silently when those marriages falter and fail.

Marriage is not strengthened when divorce is accepted.

The institution of marriage is a good thing, a God-ordained thing, meant to bring joy and sanctification to the participants and designed to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. So it is both natural and fitting that the church community should (in general) rejoice and celebrate the coming together of two people in marriage! But the intent and design of marriage necessitate boundaries and limitations to it. We would not rejoice if a father tried to marry his daughter, or if a man tried to marry multiple women, or if a friend tried to marry someone we knew to be abusive; those of us with more strictly Biblical views would also not rejoice if a man tried to marry another man, or if a Christian tried to marry an unbeliever. Some of those marriages act against the first purpose of marriage by destroying the spouses' joy or by making it more difficult for them to walk with God and grow in their faith; others work against the second purpose by twisting that imagery and distorting our understanding of the relationship between God and us as the church. Seeing the immediate and temporal happiness of the individuals entering into one of those skewed marriages might make it natural for us to want to rejoice in their coming together - but it might not be fitting if the relationship is inherently flawed.

One could respond that all relationships are flawed to some degree, and that no marriage adequately represents the relationship of Christ to the church, and I would of course agree. My own sin puts strain on my own marriage every day, eats away at my joy and my husband's joy, and dims our marital reflection of Christ. But incest, polygamy, and homosexuality are insurmountable obstacles to accurately reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church, no matter how happy and committed the individuals may be. On the other hand, a mismatched marriage would have the essence and character needed to reflect that relationship, and thus not be inherently flawed, but it may be unwise for a myriad of reasons. So I think the church should be firm about rejecting the first type of relationship (those which are in essence unable to reflect the full Biblical imagery of marriage) and should counsel against the second type but provide as much support as possible to those already in the midst of one (so that a bad situation might possibly redeemed, and the significant sin or area of discord used as a catalyst for sanctification and increased faith).

Divorce is difficult for me, however, because I'm often unsure of which category it falls into. Clearly, it destroys entirely the Christological imagery of marriage. Christ will not "divorce" or abandon His church, and our lack of faithfulness will not tear apart the relationship either. But I know that after a divorce people can go on to do great things and become great men and women of faith, and that God will even use the divorce to draw them to Himself. And the church should play a role in that redemptive work. Our judgment of the sin should not push the sinner farther away from Christ; rather, we should seek to respond in a way that pulls the sinner deep into the love whose depth and length and width and height are said to be beyond comprehension. The challenge is to do this well without compromising the truth that divorce hurts individuals, families, and society, Christians and unbelievers alike, by twisting our understanding of Christ's commitment and love for us.

So should I rejoice in a remarriage following divorce? I have, once, when the man remarrying had been abandoned by his wife in middle age for no reason other than her own feelings and whims. But even then I wondered if he should have let her go or if he should have continued to pursue her in love as long as possible, like Christ pursues us when we turn to our idols of comfort or power or respect. It's not a black and white issue, and I think culturally we are inclined to prioritize happiness over commitment. We might say that we value redemption more than atonement... we encourage people to simply move on and start over instead of taking the time to wrestle with and repent of the past. When someone vows before God to be committed to another person for a lifetime, and shoulders the mantle of reflecting God in one particular relationship just as he or she has endeavored to reflect Him as an individual, it is a serious matter. It is not to be entered into frivolously. That is why the whole church stands together (or should, at any rate) in witness to and support of the couple making those vows. It is an equally serious matter when those vows are broken, and yet the church does nothing. We rejoice when the oath-breaker stands a second time to make those same promises to a different person than before - but do we provide the counsel and support needed to make sure that this time the promises will be kept through the hard times once the swell of romantic love has ebbed away?

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages foundering on the shoals of life, to see the church dimming its warning lighthouse beacon, to see her members laboring on the shore to pick up the pieces instead of helping steer the ship to safer seas, or throwing together hasty and poorly-built boats instead of taking the time to construct sea-worthy vessels before sending them out from port. Should we be there to help people rebuild after a divorce? Of course. But we should be working even harder to keep that shipwreck from happening in the first place, instead of just counting on the skills of the rescue team. Our marriages are not simply private contracts that only hurt or help the individuals directly involved; they are also public statements of the nature of Christ and His relationship to His people, and we as the church need to fight for them, stand beside them, and give them the supplies and guidance they need to sail safely across the ocean of time.

Tradition, Truth, and Advent

I understand why so many people have disliked tradition and ritual. It's so easy for people to become caught up in the actions and symbols, forgetting the truth that they represent, that one might easily think those actions and symbols are more of a danger and a distraction than they're worth. After all, one can pray genuinely without kneeling or lighting a candle, and one can rejoice in the coming of Christ without sharing gifts or decorating trees. But, despite all the potential dangers of symbol and ritual (and despite all the personality books that say I ought to dislike traditions in general), I find great meaning and significance in them.

You see, the human mind does not remain at a level. We fight to raise it by reminding it of the truths we believe and by dwelling on the beauties and wonders of the world; if we neglect these duties, we slip back downwards into mental confusion, apathy, ingratitude, and joylessness. Like the forces of Gondor ever watchful against the enemy in Mordor, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a failure in our vigilance could mean the loss of a bridge or the desolation of a beautiful land - and the fight to regain and restore what was lost will almost certainly be harder and more bitter than the original fight to preserve what was already there would have been. So, paraphrasing Lewis, it is incredibly important to set before ourselves everyday some reminder of the essential core truth of our faith - to give us the eyes to see clearly the spiritual realities around us, to inspire us to live in the beauty and joy whose fulfillment we hope for in Christ, and to strengthen us with grace for the daily and hourly fight.

I would argue that tradition - if the reason behind it is remembered - can be an excellent way of setting before ourselves those truths that we most need to hear. Because we did not create the traditions, they often remind of us of those aspects of our faith that make us most uncomfortable, or that we would be most apt to forget, as well as those that seem most natural and pleasant to us. Because they have endured through the years, they have (often, at any rate) been honed and improved by generations of people striving to obey and know Christ more fully. Because they are inextricably intertwined with the physical world, they help us engage our bodies in our worship and faith; because they repeat every day or every year as time passes on, they help link eternal truth and beauty with the temporal world in which we live.

I have to admit that, despite my theoretical interest in and appreciation for the traditions of the faith, I don't actually put that many of them into practice (the side effect of growing up Protestant, probably). Every Sunday I go to church and partake of Communion (can I say in passing how much I love that particular tradition? To have weekly such a tangible and powerful reminder of Christ's sacrifice and love is such a blessing), and every Christmas season I light the candles of Advent - but that's really all I do. I don't want to add in more traditions just for the sake of doing them, of course, but if there are others that will give me the same encouragement, redirection, and hope as the traditions of Advent, then I would like to make them traditions in my heart and home as well. We'll see how things go. But for now, Advent is here! The season of hope and expectation, of remembering that God Himself has come to dwell among us, of longing for His return and the restoration of all things, has begun! Lift up your eyes to the heavens and see, with the eyes of memory or with the eyes of hope, the Light coming to the world to cast away our darkness.

How to care about things (without being overwhelmed)

In one of the many film retellings of the classic story of Cinderella, Ever After, the formerly apathetic, self-centered, and purposeless prince says, "I used to think, if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stark raving mad!" So he chose instead, for years, to care about nothing.

I wonder if that's how most Americans are today. We are constantly presented with so many causes and needs - with starving refugees in Africa, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, human rights abuses in China, environmentally destructive practices in the US, and countless natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Sandy in New York, not to mention the myriad of social and political issues on both sides of the worldview split. The sheer quantity and magnitude of the problems overwhelms us, and so we bury our heads in the sand and seek our own personal happiness while closing our eyes and ears to the needs all around us. Now, it makes sense that we feel overwhelmed. There really are more problems (and problems of larger scope) than we could ever hope to fully address with our limited time, skills, and resources - and how could we ever hope even to figure out which problem most deserves the time and resources we could give it? If we help to rehabilitate former prisoners in our local communities, do we need to feel guilty that we are not also helping to train and restore former sex slaves in Thailand? If we donate to food programs in refugee camps around the world, do we need to feel guilty that we are not donating to our local food banks? It's not difficult to picture ourselves suddenly snapping from the weight of it all and, in the words of the aforementioned prince, going "stark raving mad!"

But this madness is not by any means a necessary or unavoidable consequence of beginning to care about one problem or another. We just need to give ourselves the permission to accept our limitations and the command to work within them to best of our abilities. Acknowledging that we are fallible and limited simply by nature of being human allows us to truly care about one specific problem - and devote ourselves to its correction - without feeling guilty about all the other problems we don't have the time or skills to adequately handle. And once we truly care about something, it will be a joy, a source of meaning and purpose, to throw ourselves towards its resolution. I think all the half-hearted efforts we make in life stem from the absence of this genuine concern about the problem and the concomitant desire to see it resolved; that they are, in essence, the output of a guilty conscience prodding an apathetic will into temporary action. But if we let ourselves deeply and genuinely care about one or two problems (that we are capable of acting upon in tangible, relevant ways), and allow ourselves to dispense with guilt about all the other hundreds of problems in the world, we can start to act with our whole hearts, with a motivated will, and with real purpose.

And I have a suspicion that we just might find our capacity for caring and acting increased as we go about the process of living with purpose instead of apathy, until we have touched more lives and brought about more good than we ever imagined possible.

An Introvert Looks at Community

Community seems like a beautiful concept, when thought about in the abstract - having people to love and be loved by, to know and be known by, to be able to mourn together and rejoice together, to cut through the deadening fog of isolation we've constructed. Even the tensions, conflicts, and hurts that accompany community seem welcome, if only we can have - even for a single moment - true connection of minds and true fellowship between hearts. To be known and valued - to have a place where one belongs - that is the climax of community and the prize for which everyone strives.

But most experiences of community fall incredibly short of this ideal. It's not that people have issues and those issues can make relationships messy and difficult; rather, it's that we attempt to artificially induce community in various ways and rarely (if ever) succeed in re-creating the matrix of shared life necessary for the opening of doors and the tearing down of walls. We meet with a group of randomly selected people once or twice a week and call them our "community," but never feel comfortable enough to share our deepest fears and dreams or expose our genuine personality - or, worse, realize after we've made ourselves vulnerable that (because of their own fears or self-defenses or lack of support) no one really cares about our sorrows and our hopes. So we fall back into our silences or our postures and regret that we ever revealed our real selves; we go on participating in our "community" for the sake of appearances or because of fun activities without engaging or investing in a deep and meaningful way.

Our churches, which ought to resemble that most closely-knit community, the family, are not exempt from this sort of artificiality, with its corresponding hypocrisy and superficiality. People greet each other in a scripted way, when the pastor or worship leader directs them to do so, and sigh with relief when the awkward moment is past so they can retreat back to themselves and the few friends they already know. When the sermon is over, the church empties as fast as possible, except for a few cliques who've managed to stay connected internally while remaining separate from the rest of the church body. In small groups, people share carefully selected prayer requests - small specific needs or vague and generalized issues, neither of which leaves them vulnerable before the rest of the group - or discuss the activities of their weeks without a word for the passions, emotions, and ideas churning inside them or the beauty and darkness of God speaking and sin acting in their worlds. There is always a fear of judgment; there is always a suspicion that the group is not bound together by an authentic-enough love to handle such dialogue and revelation.

I am sure that the solution to all of this is not to further separate and isolate ourselves - to give up on community because it has failed us so many times. But what, then, is the solution? What steps can we take toward genuine love in community?