Happy Reformation Day!

The Reformation Polka
by Robert Gebel
[Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious"]

When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian!
Oh...

Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:
"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!
Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!"
Oh...

Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;
The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor.
"Are these your books? Do you recant?" King Charles did demand,
"I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!"
Oh...

Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,
By knighting "George" as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.
Use Brother Martin's model if the languages you seek,
Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek!
Oh...

Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

Let's raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,
And spread the word that 'catholic' is spelled with lower case;
The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,
So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance!
Oh...

Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

Fiction.

I haven't written fiction in over a year, maybe closer to two.  I need to start again -- the observational/analytical stuff I do here (rarely... sorry about that) really cranks one part of my brain, but the creativity/fiction section of my brain seems pretty atrophied at the moment.  Hm. What to do, what to do?

In Which I Unexpectedly Post a Picture of Kanye

(First: I lied.  I know I said I'd publish a follow-up to the Titus 2 post but I totally forgot and then didn't have time.  I'll try to get it wrapped up and published tomorrow.  Sorry.)

In the Facebook comments from the last post, a friend summarized the advice columnist's attempt at guiding the letter-writer thusly: "(1) grow up, (2) get to know her, (3) get married."  All excellent advice except for step two which is, alas, hopelessly vague.  Twenty or thirty years ago, there wouldn't have been any vagueness, because "get to know her" would have meant one thing: "ask her on a date."  Now?  Not so much.

And that's where the trouble lies.  When you combine all the varying advice young single people have been given, what you end up with is a mire of confusion, mixed signals, indecision, and heartbreak.  Seriously, how do you make a game plan out of that? 

Here's just a taste of the kind of advice I've received or heard over the last ten years or so:

Don't date. Dating is bad; Joshua Harris said so and if a 19-year-old kid says something in a book (!!!) that got published (!!!!!), it's probably true.  Get to know people only in a big group.  But it's a bad sign if you "struggle" with too much attraction toward one person, because that's lust and it's bad, so go after someone you feel really ambivalent toward.  Lack of attraction is HOLY, you guys.

Know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether he/she is "the one" before you make a move.  Be friends first, probably for at least a year, for some reason involving "seasons of life."  

Guys, you don't have to step up and take the lead until you're officially dating, so don't define the relationship until she breaks down crying in your car one day from pent-up frustration and disappointment.  And then tell her that you're just not in a season of life to be dating anyone.  Because your life situation has to be perfect and complication-free before you can be in a relationship of any kind.  

Ladies, allow your nurturing instinct free rein and make sure to be available to your guy friends around the clock, and definitely don't limit your accessibility to a guy you're interested in!  It's ok for "friends" to spend lots of one-on-one time together as long as they don't call it "dating" -- because dating is bad, remember?  If you're attracted to a guy, it means you should spend more time with him dropping hints.  If you're not attracted to him, that's ok.  You can still hang out with him all the time and tell him your guy troubles until someone better comes along.

Don't move too fast or you'll regret it.  But if you struggle with sexual temptation in your months- or years-long pseudo-dating awkwardness stew of a relationship, you'll probably be a social outcast and disqualify yourself from ministry forever.

AUGH.

So now, once and for all, let me make this as clear as possible.  The best way to get to know someone... 

You know what?  Let Kanye break it down for you.

I could have answered this guy's question in five words.

The highlight of Boundless, in my opinion, is the advice column, which almost always contains really straightforward, cut-the-crap, gospel-centered answers.  But not this time.  A fella writes in and asks, "How does a single guy pursue a godly woman in a romantic but godly way?"  I could have answered in five words, but instead, the columnist gave him a manifesto of the same kind of nonsense that's kept many a young man paralyzed with indecision since we started using the word "pursue" to describe what our parents called "dating."

What's in this seemingly designed-to-confuse relationship manifesto?  Stuff like, make sure you're mature enough to date (hint: if you're asking the question and you're old enough to get married, you are).  Ask God to "show you" what you need to do to move forward.  Figure out what your courtship/dating life should look like once you are in a relationship (uhhh... I literally have no idea what this means).  Be intentional about doing covert ops on -- er, I mean getting to know the girl you're interested in, mostly in groups but then singling her out in those groups to find out what she likes (because that's not creepy at all), etc. Overuse of the word "intentional" or some variant thereof seems to be mandatory in these kinds of articles.

And of course there's no mention of, like, letting her in on this process of determining if she's The One.  Just a lot of "determining" and "being intentional" and "using discernment" and "prayerfulness."  No wonder we're all so confused.

Want to know my pithy, five-word response to this guy's question?

Dear Confused Guy:
ASK HER ON A DATE.
Love, Laura

Not enough for an entire advice column?  Fine.

Dear Confused Guy:
If you find yourself attracted to (because physical attraction is OK; you don't have to confess to your accountability partner that you thought a girl was cute) or otherwise interested in a godly woman, ASK HER ON A DATE, probably within a few weeks of first realizing your interest.  If she says yes, then take her on a date. And if you have a good time on that date, ask her on another date. Rinse and repeat, and remember that you're a Christian.
Love,
Laura

See, friends, we have this handy-dandy cultural shorthand for discovering if someone's interested in us.  Ladies, if a guy is interested in you, he will ask you out.  Fellas, if a girl is interested in you, she will say yes when you ask her out.  See how easy that was?  Now, sometimes one party can be interested while the other isn't -- or one party might be dating someone else already.  That's not so hard to handle either!  Ladies, if a guy is not interested in you or is already seeing someone, he will not ask you out.  Fellas, if a girl is not interested in you or is already seeing someone, she will say, "No, thanks," or, "Actually, I'm already seeing someone" when you ask her out.

I can think of so freakin' few genuine, legitimate reasons NOT to act like this, most of them involving some kind of catastrophic relationship blowout in the recent past.  So, if you didn't just break off an engagement or ditch an abuser or something similarly disastrous requiring some healing time, what's the holdup?  Ladies, if a godly man asks you on a date, you should probably say yes.  Guys, if a godly woman has caught your eye, you should probably ask her on a date.

There now, we've got that all settled, right?  RIGHT??

Sigh...

Titus 2 is for Single Girls, Part 1

In my observation, when a pastor preaches on Titus 2, this is what often happens (caution: hyperbole ahead):

Married guys, MAN UP and lead your families!  No!  Just shut up and do it!

Married ladies, you need to be mentoring younger married ladies and teaching them what you've learned.  We love you, and we know it's tough to be married to us horrible, horrible men.  Don't be discouraged even though we keep telling you that you have the hardest and most-critical-not-to-screw-up job in the world and that you're basically 100% responsible for your both your husband's fidelity and his self-esteem.

Single dudes, have some self control, and get married!  And quit watching porn and playing video games!  And get a job!  And move out of your parents' basement!  And you suck!  And there's basically no hope for you!  UGH SINGLE DUDES UGH.

Single ladies... uh... I dunno.  Be patient I guess?  Maybe?  Yeah, I got nothin'. 

At Sojourn we're blessed to have pastors who handle God's word... well, a lot better than that, and I could address the problems with each one of those paragraphs, but I'm only going to deal with the last one, because I think it's the place where even the most well-intentioned, careful, Gospel-centered teaching can kind of go off the rails.

What do we do with single women in the church?  In the case of Titus 2, I think what we often imply is that her calling is on hold until she gets married, and even then that her calling hasn't reached its ultimate fulfillment until she starts having kids.  Then, we seem to say, you're really living out your calling, sister.

How do we make sense of the biblical teaching that seems to speak primarily to married women with children, when all around us -- both in the Scriptures and in the Church -- are unmarried, childless women? 

I think the key is to begin to see the connection between calling and identity.  Calling, in the Scriptures, is a function of identity -- sometimes a current identity; more often what we might call a prophetic identity, a declaration of a new identity given by God to the person he's calling.  So when we see passages that call us to a certain set of actions or attitudes, I think it's important to ask what identity is behind those actions. 

For example, God calls all Christians to care for the poor and the alien.  What identity is behind this?  Ultimately, we are a people whom God has rescued from the ultimate poverty and alienation, and we paint a picture of the Gospel when we reach out to the poor and alien.

What about Titus 2?  What is God telling all women about who we are (or are becoming by grace) through these instructions to married women with kids?  I'll address that in Part 2 tomorrow.

Titus 2 is for Single Girls, Part 2

(Read the first installment here.)

Yesterday I said that I think an important factor in interpreting and applying biblical passages about women is the idea of the identity that underlies the instruction.  Today we'll take a look at Titus 2, starting in verse 3:


Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.  Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.


OK.  What we have here are a list of behaviors that, I believe, are to characterize all godly women, not just older women and younger married women with kids.  Reverence, control over our tongues and our appetites, guidance for younger believers, love, purity, homeward orientation, kindness, and godly relationships should mark the lives of all Christian women!


Now is where I ask myself: What does this passage say about who I am in Christ? 


In Christ, I am


In Christ, I no longer am controlled by my sinful desires because He has given me a new nature controlled by the Holy Spirit.


In Christ, I am cleansed from sin and made pure.


In Christ, I am ushered in to a new

Sometimes I Feel Like I Need A Vacation

From serious posts.

My pal Jamie Barnes is currently on his way back from Waco, where he was at a (by all accounts pretty sketchy) conference.  He just tweeted that he feels like he never goes through the security line quickly enough, and I replied that, if you travel often enough, you'll soon have the satisfaction of looking down on all the noobs who don't realize that they can't bring their 3 full-size bottles of shampoo in their carry-on bag; and what's more fun than derision?  I mean really!

And that got me thinking of all the funny security-line and airport stories I've amassed over the years since I started traveling.

A recent favorite, in the Sydney airport on my way home from this last trip to Australia: a full-grown woman had a nuclear-attack-siren-level temper tantrum upon being asked to do the normal stuff you have to do in the security line.  Like, you know, wait your turn.  She was trying to snatch her bag and purse off the belt and shove through the line -- and she actually did cut in front of several of us, muttering that she didn't have time for this nonsense.  The security screeners, bless 'em, were just cracking up behind their hands as she screeched, "I want to speak to a manager!  This is absolutely unbelievable!  I have a plane to catch!  You can't make me wait here!  I'm in a hurry!  Give me my things back!"

There are really only a few things you need to know when traveling, most of them variations of stuff you learned in kindergarten.  Wait your turn.  Use your manners.  Read the directions. 

Any funny or horrible stories from your travels, dear readers?