Well...there's not a whole lot new going on at the time being.  I should hear something from the church I had the phone interview with in a week or so.  They were having the other candidate in last weekend or this weekend for an actual interview, so they said they would let me know what was going on when that was all through.  I've sent some other resumes as well to other churches, so we'll see what happens.

Next weekend, I preach my second wedding.  This one is a bit more formal than the last one I did, and so it is taking a lot more work to put together.  I am pretty much done, though.  Just fine-tuning some things.

That's about it really...

Today the logic goes something like this: "Calling a ruler 'Son of God' is out of style.  No one really does that nowadays.  We can support a president while also worshiping Jesus as the Son of God."  But how is this possible?  For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts.  To which do we pledge allegiance?  Surely, one of them must have the wrong idea of how to move history.  Can a servant serve two masters?  To say that we must kill our enemies and join the popular project  to "rid the world of evil" is to call Jesus unrealistic.  And that is possible desirable for many; surely his ideas do not resonate with any common wisdom.  But can you call Jesus the Son of God and also say, "He just doesn't understand the world today?"  How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says "Jesus is the answer" next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to say, "Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world."  Remember, Jesus' followers were burned alive, beheaded, or fed to lions.  They knew evil and the "real world."  They would meet it face to face.  If there was anyone who tried to deal with evildoers and terrorists, it was certainly first-century Christians.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.  After all, what is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life...?
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.  2008.  166)

There are many many more topics that could be mentioned when discussing marriage, but I believe that we have laid a decent foundation.  Before I make some closing remarks about marriage, I would like to take some time and review what we have spoken about in the past few weeks. 

Foundations in history

Marriage is firmly grounded in the human story.  From the very beginning, our first parents were called to an early form of marriage.  God made man and woman for each other.  He intended marriage to be between men and women.  But marriage was not an institution until the time of John Calvin, when a civil/religious ceremony was imposed on the people.  Marriage has been in this form ever since.

Foundations in Scripture

As stated above, marriage began, in a sense, with Adam and Eve.  God created them for each other, and they entered into a monogamous relationship.  Little form for a marriage ceremony is found within the pages of the Christian Bible.  Tradition and history are the primary dictators of how the marriage ceremony is conducted.  But one thing is for sure: marriage is to be honored by all of humankind, and is intended to be a picture of Jesus and His relationship with the Church.  It is also the place where people are called to best portray the image of God inherent within the human race.

Gender Roles

One of the things that was messed up as a result of the fall was the harmony in the relationship between man and woman.  Man would seek to dominate woman, and woman would seek to dominate man.  Power sharing and equality were tossed out the window.  But, this is not how God intends for us to stay.  Within the marriage relationship people have the opportunity to, in a sense, reverse the curse of the fall.  Men and women can, once again, live in harmony with one another.  In fact, they are commanded to do so.  Husbands and wives are called to mutual submission and service.  Men are to give themselves up for women and women are to submit to men.  There is nowhere prescribed in Scripture an idea that women stay home, barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.

Sex

A Christian philosophy of sex centers in the worship of God and in the gender equality mentioned above.  As I stated in a response to one of my readers, As Christians, everything that we do should be done for God's glory, to glorify Him. When we glorify God, we are worshiping Him. Worship does not happen only at church with our Bibles open hearing a sermon, or doing a Bible study, or singing songs, but all of life is worship, or should be.

We are commanded in the Bible to pray without ceasing. Prayer is our primary means of communicating with God. If we are communicating with God, we are worshiping Him. So, we should worship God without ceasing.

As we are to be constantly in communion with God, and we are doing everything to His glory, then even as we have sex, it should be done to His glory,to glorify Him. It should be done as worship...

Scripture calls a husband to "rejoice" in his wife and to be "exhilarated" with her love. Rejoice is an interesting word because it is the same word that Paul uses when he calls us to "rejoice in the Lord always"...Jesus told us that we serve God by serving others so also we "rejoice" in God by "rejoicing" in our spouses. We serve God by serving our spouse. We please God by pleasing our spouse.

Money

Finances boil down to one word: communication.  As long as husbands and wives are open and honest with each other in this, and all other areas for that matter, then there will be no problems.  As long as all purchases are done with the consent of both partners, then there will be no surprises when the bills come due.  And if you can keep out of debt, you will be even better off.

Closing thoughts

Marriage is supposed to be a beautiful thing.  You are supposed to be happy with the one that you marry.  You are supposed to love them with all of your heart and to stay with them in all times, good and bad.  There very well may be rough patches in your relationship with your spouse, but these are no reason to just up and leave.  If your relationship is grounded in love and mutual submission; if there remain open lines of communication; if each partner is seeking the pleasure of his or her beloved, then your marriage will last.  The world may say your nuts, and other Christians may think your relationship is backwards (after all, men submitting to women, or even mutual submission for that matter, is not popular among Christians steeped in tradition rather than Scripture), but if you are doing what God has called you to do, then you will be blessed with the most beautiful relationship of your life.

A friend of mine was asking some questions and speaking of his desire to do what God says and speaking of his seeming lack of actual desire to do it, and I posted a response that seemed more directed at my own life than his...so I am going to share it here because maybe there is someone else who needs to hear it too...

Working in a hospital environment like I do tends to make me sort of calloused to the needs of others. Every single day, I go to my dead-end job of parking people's cars, and every day I see people who's loved ones are dying or who's children are suffering from various cancers or men who can no longer speak and have one of those little electronic voice boxes that makes them sound like that robot at the beginning of the Beastie Boys song "Intergalactic," and, more often than not, I don't give a damn. I want to care, but more often than not, I just don't.

Or at least that is what I used to think.

For the summer, we hired on a 20 year old college student who was the daughter of one of the laziest workers we have. But this girl had a heart bigger than she could handle. A 16 year old boy was in a car accident and was on life support. The family came every day for two weeks and she built a relationship with them. When the boy died, she could not recompose herself and dry her tears all day. A man came in with a different one of his five daughters every day due to some internal problems. They were doing tests and prepping him for surgery. The doctors opened him up, and found his insides consumed with a cancer the tests couldn't detect. He was given two weeks. We never saw him again. She cried.

I think most Christians are insulated from the world around them in much the same way as non-Christians. Cancer, hunger, poverty kill most people inside, so we put up buffers between us and those problems and choose, rather, to debate politics and theology and who the best baseball team is. And, in an ironic twist, we watch reality TV to escape reality.

Maybe I am saying all of this more for myself than for you, but we minister unto the world by living as Jesus did. And we can, and should, do this in our middle-class and dead-end jobs. We can have as many Bible studies and prayer groups and worship sessions and Sunday services and Christian books as we want, but if that doesn't translate into (even flawed) actions, then it is all a waste and is worthy of being flushed with the rest of our daily crap. The Prophets stated it, in God's Name, as a question: Why do you call Me "Lord, Lord" but don't do what I tell you?

The physical and spiritual, together as one

As I stated previously, sex is indeed spiritual.  But how can this be?  How can something like sex bring us closer to God?

In itself, foreplay, intercourse, and orgasm are nothing more than physical acts that come and go.  Once done they are done.  The spiritual is found in the enjoyment of the event.  When we enjoy the good things that God has given us, we are showing our appreciation to Him for them.  Simply the fact that you are finding pleasure in your beloved is enough.  When sex is used as intended, God is pleased, man is pleased, and woman is pleased.

And this is really the point of sex.  It is not about making babies and filling the earth and subduing it, although that is one of the outcomes of intercourse.  It is more about finding your joy in the joy of your beloved.  Even the ancients understood this.


That being said, how does one find this joy?  How does one acquire a sex life with one's spouse that is beautiful and glorifying to God?

Men, it starts with us.  For many marriages, sex is understood as nothing more than a marital right.  And it is treated as such.  Sex, if it even happens, is about pleasing the man and making some babies.  There is nothing really beautiful about it.  And, more often than not, women are left unsatisfied. 

This is why it begins with us.  We have a responsibility to our wives to help them find their joy in us as their husbands.  We are to seek out what it is that pleases them and do everything in our power to do that for them. 

As a side result of the wife being satisfied, we as the husbands will also be satisfied. 

And as love and joy are found by both partners, enjoyment increases and the picture of God as separate yet one can be more fully recognized.  As we enjoy sex with our spouses, we are also worshiping God for worship is not limited to singing songs, reading the Bible, and praying, but also in enjoying all the good things that He has given us in life.

As a result of enjoying sex, the sex life actually improves as well. As we worship God with our bodies in this way, our relationship deepens with our spouse.  This is why sex is so important to a healthy marriage.  It is in these intimate times that we learn more about each other.

When it becomes dull

There almost inevitably will come a time, even if it is just one day in a hundred, when simply laying together and making love will seem dull.  These are the times when the sex life of a marriage begins to fall by the wayside.  And, as a further result, sometimes, the rest of the marriage as well.  What do you do?  How do you maintain a sex life that is pleasurable and glorifying to God?

Trying new positions is always an option.  There is absolutely no Scriptural support for the idea that man must always be on top.  In fact, what position is used is nowhere to be found in the Bible at all.  These details are left up to the individuals in the relationship.  Outside of Christianity, though, much has been said regarding this aspect of sexuality.

Hindu's have a work called the Kama Sutra.  In this work, sex is spoken of as a spiritual matter and what position one uses lends itself to different connections with the Divine.  I won't go that far, but I do believe that a different position every once in a while can keep things interesting enough as to maintain a joyous and God-glorifying sex life.

In the end

Sex is vitally important to a healthy marriage.  Regardless of whether or not you believe that having sex is an act of worship, you cannot over-estimate the important role that sex plays in a healthy marriage.  Each aspect of a healthy sex life, from foreplay to orgasm, is designed to magnify pleasure and make the marriage relationship that much more intimate.  And in the end, a healthy sex life does indeed glorify God, whether you want to admit it or not.

The particularity of each life is obscured by reductionizing abstractions.  Life leaks out of us as we find ourselves treated as objects, roles, images, economic potential, commodities, consumers. - Eugene Peterson

One of the most divisive issues within the Christian church here in America is the issue of gender.  On the one hand, you have the group called the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which states that its aim is "to set forth the teachings of the Bible about the complementary differences between men and women, created equally in the image of God, because these teachings are essential for obedience to Scripture and for the health of the family and the church."  Among these ideas is that men are to be the dominant partner in marriage and women are to be submissive to their husbands. 

On the other hand, you have the group Christians for Biblical Equality, which which believes "that the Bible, properly interpreted, teaches the fundamental equality of men and women."  This group would say that husbands and wives are to work together in marriage equally, and not in a hierarchical structure.

Whatever your personal view of all of this is, I want us to look at what the Bible says.  Set aside what you believe the Bible says and walk with me through the Scriptures as we discuss what they say about gender roles in a marriage relationship.

The Beginning

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."...So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.  The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18, 21-24 TNIV)

From the beginning, God has desired for His creation to be like Him.  When He made humankind in His image, I believe that He made them to be in relationship with themselves as He is in relationship with Himself.  I think this might be part of what is meant when the Bible says, in Genesis 1, that God made us in His image and that He, "Created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:21 TNIV).  He created them be one in kind and substance, but different in their functioning within creation.

But, despite their different "functions" within creation, even when Moses was penning Genesis, he seemed to have an understanding that men and women were to be more equal than not.  Just as God took woman from man, so man returns to woman.  Woman would not exist had man not existed, but neither will men exist if not for women. Because woman was taken from man, that is why man leaves home and goes back in to woman in marriage.

God's plan from the very beginning was that humankind would be equal with each other.  But something messed this plan up.  People chose to do their own thing and go their own way and, as a result, what God had brought together, humankind had ripped apart. What was once harmony was now discord.  Where there once understanding and mutual respect, injustice now stood.

To the woman [God] said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband [to rule over him], and he will rule over you." (Genesis 3:16 TNIV)

The End

Thousands of years pass, and women are dragged through the dirt.  Inequality becomes the norm.  Women are made to bear the brunt of the guilt for abuse, sexual neglect, and adultery.  If a woman is raped, she is forced to continue in her suffering by being forced to marry her rapist.  But this is not God's plan, and despite these things being commanded in the Law, I do not believe that they are God's will for His people. 

Enter Jesus.

Jesus comes and shows us exactly what God is like.  He shows compassion to those who had been marginalized by His own people and treats them with respect.  He allows women to learn from Him just as any man would.  He is followed by women, and women are even referred to as His disciples.  And this doesn't stop when Jesus dies.  Women hold a prominent place in the early church.  They are named by name.  The business woman Lydia.  Paul mentions Phoebe, a deacon; Priscilla and Aquila, Paul's co-workers; Mary; Andronicus and Junia, possibly a married couple, and both are referred to as apostles; Tryphena and Tryphosa; Persis.

God's plan is on it's way to being re-established, His kingdom reinstated, and Paul is at the forefront. He talks about proper marital sexuality, saying that not only does the wife's body belong to her husband, but the husband's body equally belongs to his wife.  They are not to deny "each other."  But then he says something, in Ephesians, that is grossly misinterpreted, and has been for centuries.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:22 TNIV)

The church, centuries after these words were written, latches on to this admonition to keep women in control.  Free-thinking women are called "witches" and are burned and tortured.  But this is not what Paul meant, and it is not God's plan.  (And wives submitting to asshole, abusive husbands is not what God wants for His people, either.)  And His own Scriptures make this clear.  Context is key.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, people have never hated their own bodies, but they feed and care for them, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:21-33 TNIV)

It starts with a general admonition to all people to submit to each other.  Then he tells wives to submit to their husbands.  And I can hear the applause as the letter is read.  Men high-fiving each other and laughing as they nudge their wives in the ribs and whisper, "See?  I told ya he was one of us!"  But then he does something so subversive that it shocks even the sensibilities of a culture as accepting of women's rights as our's.  He tells husbands to love their wives as Jesus did the church.  He tells the husband to "give himself up for her."

The heiarchy is turned upside down.  No.  Better.  It is shattered.  As if Jesus saying that rulers lording over those under them is not to be so is not enough, Paul goes so far as to say that wives should serve their husbands AND husbands should serive their wives.  Wives should submit, but husbands should submit as well.  Mutual submission.

Paul calls for a return to God's original plan: for us to be in God's image.  And Marriage is supposedto be that image.  Men in equal relationship with women.  Different in "function", just like the Father, Son, and Spirit all "function" differently as their own aspects of God come forth, but of the same substance. Men and women are not fundamentally different, they are fundamentally the same.  Whether from dirt or flesh and bone, men and women are, at their cores, the same.  They come from the same substance and originate from the same Creator.

The husband and wife should "flesh" this out in their relationship with each other.  Wives should submit to their husbands as they do to God, but husbands should submit to their wives as God did to His church: He became like her, served her, and died for her.  If a husband is not doing this, then he has no right or business complaining when his wife won't submit to him.

I could go on and on, and I really want to.  Suffice it to say that when men and women are viewed as fundamentally different, and roles are imposed; when husbands are viewed as husbands and wives as wives, rather than as the individual human beings that they are, harmony is broken.  And when harmony is broken, whether between humankind and God, or even between men and women, the result is death.