Labels

Who are you? Who am I? Simple questions that defy easy answers. That’s why we often use labels to describe ourselves and others. But those labels can easily miss the mark. They fail to capture what the mid-20th century psychiatrist Paul Tournier called “the meaning of persons,” who we are in all of our complexity. They even become accusatory (“You’re like “them,” whoever the “them” are). Hence, we judge others by labels and many times, those judgments are harsh.

We’re overwhelmed with labels these days. Political labels. Religious labels. Cultural labels. Even labels designed to describe human sexuality. Trust me, many of those labels are not flattering. As you read, I’m sure you can think of unflattering labels and names all the way back into your childhood. I know I can.

In the religiously Christian world I inhabit, we’ve got labels for every imaginable possibility. Catholic or Protestant (or Orthodox, or Mormon, or Pentecostal, or one of dozens of varieties of Protestants). Even among those who identify as “evangelical,” the list is endless: Evangelical Catholic. Social-justice evangelical. Republican evangelical (or RINO evangelical if you’re the wrong kind of Republican). Calvinist evangelical. Arminian evangelical. How about this: “Young, restless, Reformed.” Here is a new one: Evangelical Thomist. I guess we now have labels that identify our favorite folks from church history as the leader of our tribe. And sometimes identification with one or more of these tribes comes complete with its own “enemies list” of those whom we judge to oppose us.

Some labels can be helpful if they are descriptive and not derogatory. My African American friends often identify as “Black Christians,” a designation that distinguishes them from white Christians or white evangelicals. Oftentimes Black Christians share my same Christian faith and belief, but they share a Christian identity framed by 250 years of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. Even if I wanted to identify as a Black Christian, I couldn’t because my ethnic, social, cultural, and religious experience is far different. No, my European American identity shapes how I receive the gospel message.

That is an example of a label that can be helpful in many contexts. But lots of labels can be judgmental and derogatory. For some Calvinists, the term “Arminian” is a synonym for heresy. (And the favor gets returned.) And, when we disagree with someone, we often trot out labels, so we don’t have to take seriously their point-of-view.

Label’s I’ve used.

I’ve been pondering the labels I’ve used to describe myself over what is now many years of life. I have a contrarian streak so when it comes to political labels, I started as a Republican because I wanted to vote for Pete McCloskey for president in 1972. (Who? Trust me. It’s a California thing.) I shifted to Democrat in 1976 because of Jimmy Carter (who I still think was an outstanding president. So go ahead and judge me.) In 1982, when I moved to North Carolina, I again registered Republican because 90 percent of North Carolinians were Democrats, and I thought the state needed a two-party system. I also liked what the Republicans tried to do a hundred years earlier during Reconstruction when they sought to give Black people the right to vote. Finally, in 1996 I became tired of both major parties and registered as “unaffiliated.” I’ve been happy ever since with that tag because it represents my displeasure with both the D and R parties.

I’ve tried out a few other labels. San Francisco 49ers fan (a label I have been proud of since I was seven years old). Beatles fan. That still fits well as I now own their entire collection on CD. Charlottean, as that speaks of the city I’ve lived in since 1982. I’m also a San Franciscan, a label I still claim because that’s the city of my birth and I still love the place, warts and all. My love of books labels me a “bibliophile,” and “theological librarian” describes well my professional vocation. “Happily married” describes my 45-year marriage to Renee. You get the picture, though I assure you that there is more to me than even those labels can capture. I know it’s the same with you.

There is one other group of labels especially meaningful to me because the Christian faith shapes my identity. Within Christianity, we love our labels. We’re not afraid to identify our faith with them. And often we use them to identify the kind of Christian we are not! My labels have changed quite a bit. My first label was “Advent Christian” given that is the Christian denomination through which God led me to trust Christ as my savior and Lord. I still use that label in a broad sense given that what I learned from Advent Christians shaped my understanding of eschatology in terms of the New Testament teaching regarding the coming new heaven and new earth.

I tried on Pentecostalism for a couple of years in the midst of the Jesus Movement. I liked the sense of God working in tangible ways here and now. But it was far too intense for my more cerebral ways. They were afraid of the larger questions that I was asking and given that so much of Pentecostalism has gone with the “prosperity gospel” (more labels) and the “seven mountain” theory of cultural control, I’m glad I left when I did. The fullness of the Holy Spirit does not necessarily come through specific emotional practices (though I don’t discount that God can work through our emotions as well as our intellect).

“Reformed theology” was the next stop on my label train, and here I landed for quite a long time. I loved the systemic approach to Christian theology articulated by John Calvin and his successors. It was a more intellectual approach that seemed to integrate Christian faith with philosophical and cultural realities in ways that made a lot of sense. Reformed theology understood the value of human culture and tempered it with teaching about sin and the fall of humanity that rested on Holy Scripture and human experience. I especially like the Reformed notion of “common grace,” the idea that science, nature, and academic disciplines like philosophy and the social sciences have great value. “All truth is God’s truth” many Reformed theologians proclaimed. I still think they are right.

As I got older, two things troubled me about Calvinism. The first was the Calvinist concept of “limited atonement,” the idea that Christ’s death atoned only for those whom God had chosen or “elected” before the beginning of time. It seemed to make the death of Christ unnecessary because if God chose some and rejected others, what was the point? The other was how Calvinism minimized, even eliminated human free-will; in other words, we live in a deterministic world with little or no authentic human freedom. Through the work of Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner in his little book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, determinism became popular in mid-20th century academia and the resurgence of neo-Calvinism fit well with deterministic ideologies permeating the biological and social sciences.

To me, both of those ideas seem profoundly unscriptural. The apostle Paul only talked about predestination in corporate terms and the letters where he writes about it are written not to individuals but to congregations. Moreover, the New Testament indicates clearly, I think that salvation is offered to anybody who believes and offers their allegiance to Christ. So, while I consider myself Reformed in the broad sense of that word, Calvinism no longer describes my Christian faith.

There’s one other label I’ve used to describe my Christian faith for much of my adult life, and that is “evangelical.” British Baptist historian David Bebbington offers the classic understanding of the term. Evangelicals are those who believe in the centrality of the cross of Christ. Evangelicals follow the New Testament in teaching that Christian conversion is essential to Christian faith (see John 3). Evangelicals think that Holy Scripture is the essential source of Christian faith and teaching. And evangelicals believe in an active faith that both proclaims the Christian gospel and addresses human need. I still believe and teach those things.

Yet “evangelical” no longer means that in the 21st century. Now it is a term used to describe political allegiances, not a relationship with Christ or connection with a congregation. You are an “evangelical” if you self-identify as one regardless of any biblical or theological meaning. The pollsters tell us that millions of people self-identify as evangelicals. But when you dig deeper, you find that many of them have little biblical understanding of the term.

That is now the dominant use of the label, at least in the United States. (Fortunately, evangelicals in the rest of the world have resisted.) I refuse to use a term bastardized by politicians and the media. So, what am I? Perhaps a “global evangelical”? Maybe a “gospel Christian”? (I like that term.) How about a “Nicene Christian,” since I identify with Nicene Creed’s essential summary of what Holy Scripture teaches concerning Jesus Christ? Perhaps it’s best to put all these labels away and simply call myself a follower of Jesus?

Beyond labels

I’m not as worried about labels as I was 20 or 30 years ago. There is a lot of boundary keeping in evangelicalism and evangelical churches and organizations, and those who work for them often use labels to stay in the good graces of organizational gatekeepers. There is nothing wrong with that, and there is a need to for a congregation or organization to have concrete biblical, theological, and historical principles to shape their work and ministry. Yet when our labels become a litmus test for what it means to be fully human or fully Christian, perhaps it’s time to step back and ponder how we use them.

Labels can never fully capture what it means to be human or be a follower of Jesus. I like how James K.A. Smith puts it. “While we rightly entrust ourselves to a God who is the same today, yesterday, and forever, we mistakenly imagine this translates into a one-size-fits-all approach to what faithfulness looks like. We are blind to our own locatedness, geographically, historically, temporally” (Smith, How to Inhabit Time, 5). The Triune God stays the same. We change through the seasons of life, and no matter how much we resist that it is true. That’s why labels cannot capture the essence of who I am, who you are, and who anybody else is. Labels are not necessarily bad, but they can be used to dismiss others and they can limit our understanding of who we are as created in the image of God.

Here’s a good exercise. Take an hour or so and write down all of the labels that you and others have used to describe yourself. Some of those labels might be painful and bring back bad memories. If that is the case, realize the deep love of the Triune God for you. You have become united with Christ in life and death. Whatever the past, in Christ you are no longer bound by that.

Other labels are ones you’ve used to describe yourself. How have those labels changed over the course of your life? Can those labels help you explore who you are at a deeper level?

Finally, how do you use labels to describe others? Does labeling others allow you to pigeon-hole them so you can dismiss whatever they say or do? He’s so-and-so and we know their kind. She hangs out with that crowd. He’s woke, or she’s a right-winger. He’s a holy-roller, or she’s a fundie.

David Brooks thinks that there are two kinds of people: what he terms diminishers and illuminators. “Diminishers make people feel small and unseen. They see other people as things to be used, not as persons to be befriended. They stereotype and ignore.” But, “illuminators have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know what to look for and how to ask the right questions at the right time. They share the brightness of their care on other people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up” (Brooks, How to Know a Person, 12-13).

Too many times, I’ve been a diminisher. I’m still learning to be an illuminator. It doesn’t come naturally for me. I need the Spirit’s help. I think that is true for all of us, even more so in this contentious age. May Christ help us.

Two books that have helped me think more deeply about labels and their use are the new volume by David Brooks titled, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (Random House, 2023) and a slightly older volume by James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (Brazos, 2022). But books are not enough. Learning how to navigate labels and learning to become an illuminator takes work on our part over a period of time, especially because self-centeredness is the default that all of us are born with. Yet with help from the Holy Spirit, we can make progress.

I’ve been away from writing for the past several months, mostly because of fatigue and my inability to concentrate in a focused way. While so much has happened during that time, perhaps it’s best to be quiet and allow the brain to rest. This week, I’ve managed to write two blog posts and I hope that is a sign of improvement. I have a couple of book projects overdue for attention that I want to get to this year and finish up in the next 36 months. Your prayers on my behalf are so appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Help for aspiring theologians (which includes all of us).

A half-century ago during my college years, my Christian faith ran into a ditch. I made a profession of faith in 1965 and I hung around youth groups for a number of years. I even dived into Pentecostalism and its highly expressive versions of Christianity. But the ditch came in the form of hard questions about life and living. My understanding of Scripture was low. And my questions were large.

Someone handed me a copy of a little book by John Stott titled Your Mind Matters. (I think it is still in print.) There I learned that the life of the mind is essential to a well-rounded Christian faith, and that Christianity offered satisfying responses to those hard questions. Then between my junior and senior years, I read Os Guinness’s brilliant analysis of the 1960s in The Dust of Death and I was convinced that the essence of Christian faith involved both the heart and the intellect. Ever since then, I realized that like all Christians, I was a theologian, someone who thought about God and tried to follow God and his will for my life.

Many of us have negative reactions to theology. It conjures up images of egghead intellectuals using language that requires a dictionary just to converse. Many theologians don’t even seem like followers of Jesus. And theologians often raise too much doubt, and then leave us hanging. Trust me. I have met some of these folks.

But those things are not real theology. Real theology, according to Kevin Vanhoozer, research professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, “is taught by God, teaches of God, and leads to God.” If theology is not centered on the Triune God and his communication with folks like you and me through Holy Scripture, it is bad theology.

What kind of person do you need to become to be an effective theologian, one who thinks well about God? Vanhoozer answers that question this way. “The short answer is “wise”: a person with understanding who knows how to live out what he [or she] knows and does so in ways appropriate to his [or her] circumstances. Wisdom is the virtue that regulates and balances all the other virtues.”

Three pairs of contrasting qualities

For Vanhoozer wisdom comes from grasping three pairs of contrasting qualities. The first pair is faith and reason. “Theologians [and apologists] need to believe firmly and think clearly. Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord and theology with trust in God’s word.” The great medieval thinker Anselm argued for a posture of faith seeking understanding. In other words, “we must believe in order to understand.”

Moreover, our human reason is vital as it “tells us what follows from the articles of faith revealed in Scripture. Reason exercises a ministerial function in theology, and is best viewed in terms of created, fallen, and redeemed human intelligence.” Hence, reason is a tool that helps us think biblically. “Relating things to the Triune God by thinking biblically is the reflex of a mature theologian.” Good theologians bathe their work in prayer. In the words of Helmut Thielicke, “a theological thought can breathe only in the atmosphere of dialogue with God.”

The second pair, Vanhoozer describes as “joyful truth-seeking and hopeful truth-telling.” In Vanhoozer’s words, “to become a theologian you must be willing to bear true witness and call out false witness, casting down idols and ideologies. That’s the shadow side of theology, but the best part is speaking light and truth…of God’s goodness.” Theology and apologetics exist to order the Church’s thinking toward the gospel of Christ. They are joyful tasks, but they require a thick skin because we tell people both inside and outside the church “that they are not lords of their lives.” In Thielicke’s words, theologians and apologists are “the conscience of the congregation.” We remind people, according to Vanhoozer, “that faith is not the same as anti-intellectualism, and that God is not a supporting actor in their stories but that we have bit parts in his.”

The final pair is boldness and humility. We boldly proclaim that “God is the origin and destiny of all things, and theology knows all things in their relatedness and connectedness to God.” But that is tempered with a healthy dose of humility, something especially important, “in the present political climate and blogosphere where it is harder to find good examples of humility” (and might I add common Christian practices like kindness, patience, and courtesy. It is the Holy Spirit who changes hearts, not us.) Thielicke warns us of what he terms “the disease of theologians…The cure is to love the truth more than our possession of it. You’ll find this to be especially the case when it comes to theologians’ preferred interpretations of Scripture.”

Good theology is Christ-centered

Let me illustrate Vanhoozer’s and Thielicke’s point with something happening as I write. A debate has broken out on social media regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the nature of his Christian faith. A few days ago, prominent evangelical pastor, John MacArthur, argued that Dr. King was not a Christian because his early writings expressed doubt about tenets of faith found in the Nicene Creed, specifically Christ’s death and resurrection. Others, especially within the African American community reacted strongly to the accusations. Was MLK a Christian? Was Thomas Jefferson a Christian? Or James Madison? I don’t know. The United States has always had people like them who have acted in ways to expand the freedoms and liberties promised in the American Declaration of Independence. I do know that Dr. King did base his work on the theological truth that every human being is created in God’s image, and I’m grateful for his important Civil Rights work.

This social media conflict is useless, and all it does is create more discord in an already divided and fearful populace. That is not the work of good theologians and apologists, those who are called to testify to the Christian faith and the hope we find in Jesus Christ. Conflicts like these demonstrate the need for Christian virtues like kindness and humility, virtues that take a lifetime to develop. We Christians believe that the ends never justify the means, and ungodly means are harmful to the gospel of Christ and to others. Good theologians practice kindness. Good theologians cultivate Christian humility.

Vanhoozer leaves us with this. “The serious point is that whatever your location, your theology should build up the Church in the knowledge and love of God so that it can worship in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23-24)…Our vocation is to speak the truth and love the truth (the way of Jesus Christ) we speak and those to whom we speak it.”

So, whether God calls you to become an academic theologian, a church leader who communicates Christian truth within your congregation, or a Christian who follows Christ in your everyday life, you can be a good theologian–one who thinks well and represents Christ well with love for the gospel and kindness, patience, and graciousness expressed through your speech and action. You don’t need big words–just a love for Christ and an intellectual curiosity that engages you to study the Christian faith in more depth. I can’t think of a better way to represent Christ in our daily lives.

If you wish to read the entire article, here is the bibliographical information: Kevin J. Vanhoozer. “Letter to an Aspiring Theologian: How to Speak of God Truly.” First Things (August 2018). Letter to an Aspiring Theologian by Kevin J. Vanhoozer | Articles | First Things. If you are interested in reading more about why Christian theology is important, might I suggest A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke, and Who Needs Theology by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson.

Giving thanks

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and there is much to be thankful for. It’s always good to write down the things for which we are grateful be it in a journal or a more public place like a blog post. We can be thankful for things big and small, and writing them down helps me to ponder things that I too often take for granted. So, here’s my list:

I’m thankful for my wife Renee and the forty-five years of marriage that we will celebrate on December 2.

I’m grateful for theological schools that train Christian pastors, apologists, and scholars for service to the church.

For the many friends I’ve made over the course of my life across the country.

For C.S. Lewis who died 60 years ago today. He found Christ and God used his amazing intellectual gifts to write books and essays that have impacted many throughout the world, including me.

For the opportunity to visit Maui four years ago and experience one of the most beautiful places on earth on a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

For the good books that I can pull down out of my library that teach me more about life, about history, and about God.

For magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, Christianity Today, Christian History, Comment, and The Economist that keep me in touch with daily life and help me to think better.

For the San Francisco 49ers who have brought much joy to my life over 65 years and for Brock Purdy, a Christian believer who came out of nowhere to become the Niners starting quarterback. He reminds me that there is a world where good guys overcome great odds to succeed.

For blocked punts, safeties, two-point conversions, and plays that make football so interesting to watch.

For the ocean, a place for long walks on the shore with the water in your feet.

For the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in Bryson City, NC.

For Bruce Bochy, the best manager in major league baseball.

For the Santa Cruz, CA beach and boardwalk.

For a lazy afternoon at home with a bowl of popcorn reading or watching sports.

For the Civil Rights movement in mid-20th century that helped Americans see that slavery and Jim Crow were deep moral wrongs and that African Americans were fully human like everyone else. Thank you MLK, Fred Shuttlesworth, John Lewis, and others for your sacrificial work.

For presidential libraries and museums and the great tours and insights into history that they offer.

For the congregations we’ve been part of: Parkside Community Church in San Francisco, Granada Heights Friends Church in La Mirada, CA, Dulin’s Grove Advent Christian Church in Charlotte, Forest Hill Church in Charlotte, and our current congregation, Calvary Church in Charlotte. I’m thankful for churches large and small of every denominational stripe that practice faithfulness to the message of Christ.

For Charlotte, our adopted city, that in our 41 years here we have watched grow into a major metropolitan area.

For Jimmy Buffett and Gordon Lightfoot who gave us such great music.

For good Mexican food, biscuits, and scones.

For independent bookstores like Main Street Books in Davidson, and Park Road Books in Charlotte.

For coffee shops near and far, especially the independent ones that serve unique coffee and coffee drinks.

For Rosalyn Carter who just died at age 96.

For good mental health practitioners and especially those who know how to integrate Christian faith with the practice of mental health.

For my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who conquered death and is alive today.

For this opportunity to write on my computer and to share with you what I am thankful for.

I hope you have a good Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Terrorist violence and Christian hope

You’ve read and seen the news. Israel suffered a massive terrorist attack at the hands of Hamas, a Palestinian group whose one goal is the eradication of Israel. Hamas has been clear about this since their inception and they control the Gaza strip politically, economically, and socially. And polling data has consistently shown that the majority of Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas and their political goals.

For its part, since 2005 Israel’s policy toward Hamas has been one of neglect. Israeli leadership has thought that at the very least, Hamas has stabilized Gaza and offered structure to Palestinian society. At the same time, Israel has experienced internal political turmoil over the current Prime Minister’s plan to limit the power of the country’s judiciary.

All of that went out the window last Saturday, and the reaction inside the Jewish state is one of grief and outrage over the 1,200 people (at this writing) brutally murdered in a terrorist attack that stunned Israeli intelligence and the country’s politicians. As I’ve watched the news unfold, I’m reminded of how so many Americans, myself included, felt in the days following 9/11. While I know that there are two sides to every story, the wanton murder of so many civilians, especially children, is an unspeakable horror.

The hostages from several nations seized by Hamas remind me of the hundreds of Ukrainian children that Vladimir Putin and the Russian army took from their homes and parents in 2022. And like Ukraine, Israel has suffered a horrid attack from individuals bent on their destruction. In both Ukraine and Gaza, those hostages will be extremely difficult to free meaning that their suffering and the suffering of their loved ones will continue well into the future.

A bleak picture

It’s a bleak picture. Outbreaks of war and violence are never pretty and sadly, we are seeing them across the world. Even the country where I live, the United States, has become more unstable and divided. None of us who live today are immune from the consequences of the Fall of humanity described in Genesis 3 and indeed throughout Holy Scripture.

Yet God calls us to live in this world. I’m reminded of the prophet Daniel who not only lived in captivity in Babylon but thrived as God’s follower in that very world. Daniel understood that world, but he also understood the greatness of the Triune God that we Christians claim to serve. No matter what, no event can thwart God’s purposes for us, for humanity, indeed for his entire creation.

So, what can we do as we watch this horrid violence unfold? First, we speak. We condemn this horrid attack that has killed and injured thousands of innocent civilians. And in our condemnation, we look for ways to support the families of those who have been killed or taken hostage. There are good organizations like World Central Kitchen (one of my favorite relief organizations) who are doing yeoman work feeding those who are suffering in Ukraine, and in crisis spots throughout the world.

Second, we encourage our government to support just policies and oppose dictators like Vladimir Putin and terrorist organizations like Hamas. At the nexus of both of these wars is Iran. Iran is supporting Russia with military arms and supporting Hamas through all kinds of military and logistical means. Meaning that U.S. support for both Ukraine and Israel are critical at this moment. Too many cowardly politicians want us to withdraw from both places, why I don’t know. Perhaps it’s easier for them to sprout propaganda than deal with the reality of the world we live in. Write and call your congressional offices and encourage them to support the citizens of Israel and Ukraine.

Third, Christians must passionately condemn anti-Semitism wherever we find it. Anti-Semitism is once again growing in the United States and around the world. It’s a virulent disease that led to the slaughter of six-million Jewish people in the World War II holocaust. Do you realize that so many younger people in the U.S., Canada, and Europe do not even know what the holocaust is? How about you and your church. Is your congregation willing to speak about and condemn anti-Semitism? As Christians we need to speak the truth that all human beings are created in the image of God and that Christ’s sacrifice is for all who will embrace it. As the Sunday school song puts it, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight!” I would probably add, “city and country, left and right” to the song as that reflects some of the major differences we face in the United States.

Prayer for hope and justice amidst suffering and violence

Finally, we must pray. We pray for care and comfort for all on every side who’ve been brutalized by this unconscionable attack. We pray for justice against the perpetrators. And we pray that we won’t be consumed by emotion and hatred toward others. And that is how I want to end:

Triune God, once again we witness the horror of violence and brutality.

We shocked by senseless death, and by the hatred of so many.

Our hearts break for the civilians, people who were living their everyday lives when the terror and violence came.

And our hearts break when we see anti-Semitism once again rear its ugly head on the streets of Israel and in the words and actions of people in our own country. The lies, the conspiracy theories all directed against people of Jewish descent; people whom you have called your people in Holy Scripture.

We desire justice. We don’t fully know what that looks like, but we do know that it involves the removal from power of those who perpetrated these horrific acts.

We desire peace, but a just peace–one that will allow people to live and work together; a peace that is not merely the absence of war.

We pray for Israel and its citizens. Please comfort and care for them in this time of their great need. We pray the same for Ukraine and its citizens, as they suffer through the consequences of what seems like endless war.

Triune God, we’re reminded once again how fragile our lives are and that we live daily in your gracious care. Help us to be aware of the sufferings of others.

And help us to speak and live by the good news of Christ’s gospel.

Amen

Before You Send that Email

One of my librarian tasks was to teach writing skills for beginning seminary students, something that I did for over ten years. Most of our adult students came to us after a long absence from higher education and needed refreshers on research and writing. So, I not only focused on research and writing skills, but tried to demonstrate how good writing is essential to effective ministry.

One place where we easily get tripped up is with communication via email and social media. Hence, I did a unit on these types of communication with the goal of having them understand these media and how to use them. Below is an excerpt on how to communicate effectively via email. I hope you find this helpful.

You’ve done it. So have I. You got an Email that rang your chimes, and you fired off a response destined to get attention. But now you’re having second thoughts. Should I have sent that? Perhaps I should have waited and thought more about it. Perhaps I should have picked up the phone and talked with the person. Did I compound the problem by sending it to others?

Email is part of most of our lives whether at work, at church, or in our personal lives. Unlike text messages and most social media where the length and depth of communication is limited, email allows for both brief and substantive interactions between you and others.

Email tends more toward informality than print communication, and because we are using a screen it’s easier to ignore the standards of good writing and communication. But sloppy or poorly written emails create misunderstanding and problems. Hence, we need to practice good writing skills when using email or social media.

How to communicate with email

I use several rules for good email communication.

First. Never, never, never, never respond immediately to an email that upsets you. Wait 24 hours until you’ve had the opportunity to cool off, ponder the message, gather your thoughts, and write a proper response.

Second. Treat email like you would any written communication. Use proper grammar and punctuation. Write proper sentences. Twentieth-century communications specialist Marshall McLuhan is famous for saying, “the medium is the message.” What he means is that how we communicate is as important as what we are trying to say.

Third. Never use all-caps when you communicate by email or any social media. What does all-caps communicate? That you are screaming at the recipient and none of us likes to be screamed at. (I have the same response when I am in church, and the speaker spends a lot of time shouting or yelling at the congregation. I simply find ways to tune out that person.) Also, avoid sarcasm.

Fourth. Always (and I mean “always”) proofread your work before you hit the “send” button. If it’s an important communication, you don’t want any silly typos or errors that distract from the importance of what you’re communicating.

Five. Avoid the “send all” feature as much as possible. Only use that feature when you are communicating information for a specific work or task group. For example, when I supervised a work group of several people, I used this feature to send meeting agendas or communicate policies necessary for the group to carry out their work.

Sixth. Before sending your email, ask yourself if there is a better way of communicating. Certain subjects necessitate in-person communication. (In other words, don’t ask someone to marry you via email. Or don’t tell your supervisor by email that $20,000 is missing from an office account.) Communicate appropriately.

Seventh. Be gracious to others when writing Email (even if you’re expressing disagreement or a problem). Scripture teaches that all humans are created in the “image of God” meaning that all of us have inherent dignity and worth from our Creator even though we all contend with the consequences of the fall. Remember that when you communicate by email or social media, you are communicating to fellow image bearers.

I like how David Shipley and Will Schwalbe put it, “The most effective emails manage to be clear and succinct but also friendly.” If you want to learn more about how to communicate well via email, I highly recommend their book Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Home and Office (Knopf, 2007).

When I took communications in college, Marshall McLuhan was in his prime and one thing he said has stayed with me: “The medium is the message.” What McLuhan meant was that how you say something is just as important as what you are saying. In other words, you need to think as carefully about how you communicate something as what you actually say. Whether it is preaching a sermon, leading a meeting, writing an email or Facebook post, or interacting with others we need to think about how we express ourselves. That does not mean we neglect speaking or writing the truth or describing reality; it does mean that we want to make sure that the way we say something does not distract from the message we bring. None of us is perfect, but the more thoughtful we are about what we say and how we say it, the more effective our work will be.

Hanging Out in Barbieland

Two months ago, if you told me that I would sit in a movie theater watching
a movie about the infamous Barbie and Ken, I would have given you a puzzled
look and maybe questioned your sanity. The early hype suggested that this was a kid’s movie about dolls; dolls that made a toy company very rich. Thanks, but
no thanks!

Folks, this was no kids’ movie. As I watched I was reminded of the 1998 film The Truman Show where the filmmakers used realistic fantasy and humor to make larger points about culture and society. Barbieland is much like the giant stage that housed the unknowing Truman and a massive cast of film characters and technicians, only in this world the Barbies run things and the Kens hang out on the beach. (For those of you who did not grow up with Barbie, Ken was her male alter-ego.)

Who are we: questions of identity.

In Barbieland, the Kens find their identity only through the Barbies. In one
especially hilarious scene, as Barbie and Ken leave Barbieland for the big city
of Los Angeles, Ken is dressed in a pink shirt adorned with the letter “B.” But while Barbie searches for her creator (if you haven’t seen it, I won’t give it away), Ken is “corrupted” by a male-dominated world and heads back to share his new reality with his fellow Kens. And Barbieland becomes the Kendom, and the Barbies now find their identities not in themselves but in the newly liberated Kens. Matriarchy is transformed to patriarchy.

No wonder this film sparked so much commentary and controversy. Barbie
has something to upset everyone–progressives, populists, and everyone with a
stake in the current gender wars. One progressive critic suggested that the
depiction of gender in Barbie is “too binary!” You get the picture.

So, how do we unpack this film? First, I must acknowledge that Barbie has struck a one-billion-dollar nerve for many Americans and Canadians (and others). Barbie taps into the cultural angst we often feel about a world marked by division over fundamental questions like “What is a man?” or “What does it mean to be a woman?” These questions of human identity are front and center in an age driven by technology and large corporate and government institutions. Add to that the expressive individualism that marks our society and you have a recipe for potential chaos.

Those questions even cause division among Christians and the divisions among us can get pretty heated. Yet, I think that the Christian faith offers profound guidance in the first chapter of the Bible: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Moreover, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). An image is a mirror, and we are created to reflect God’s very character. All humans are created in God’s image no matter if they are male or female; or Black, Asian, Caucasian, Latino, or Indigenous.

This raises my second takeaway. Barbieland (and the Kendom that temporarily succeeded it) are places where only the beautiful people existed. Women and men of physical beauty, intelligence, and glamor were the inhabitants of this society. In Barbieland, the less popular Barbies are shunted to the outskirts of town much like in our own society where persons with disabilities and immigrants often live on the margins of society. Barbieland and the Kendom are false communities where only the beautiful, the rich, and the smart are full members.

New community.

Yet the Christian faith imagines a new community, a multitude of Jesus
followers “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and
languages…standing before the throne and before the Lamb” [Jesus himself] glorifying the Triune God (Revelation 7:9). It’s a place where Christ welcomes all who wish to follow him, a place for sinners like you and me, a place where men and women are welcome to follow and serve Christ, and a place where those marginalized by society are especially welcome.

That community is being formed right now in Christian congregations where Christ is central. Obviously, our churches are far from perfect. We struggle. All of us live with what the philosopher Charles Taylor describes as “social imaginaries,” the beliefs, values, and assumptions we bring to life and living. These imaginaries are much more than what some Christians call a “worldview.” They involve assumptions about life and living that are not only unspoken but unconscious. And they are deeply cultural. We are influenced by culture so deeply that often we don’t recognize it. I could say more, but just like Barbieland and the Kendom, we are formed by cultural values that we simply assume are true. To become a new community, an outpost of God’s kingdom, means we learn to acknowledge those hidden cultural assumptions and embrace intentionally the gospel and the teaching of Scripture.

Barbie has much to say about masculinity and femininity. In my view, the men in the film are often emasculated. Look at the male character Allan. His only value is as an ally to Barbie, and that seems to be our modern cultural understanding of the purpose and role of men. I like how Mike Cosper describes Allan: “Allan isn’t really a hero. He’s not a love interest for Barbie, and we don’t know what happens to him in the end. Barbie herself embraces embodied, gendered humanity as the gift that it was meant to be. Ken recognizes the failure of his own “Kendom” and the absurdity of his utopia, but we’re left wondering what he’ll do next. With Allan, we don’t really care—but that’s the point. He’s just Allan the ally, and his only job is to support Barbie.”

If that is the “progressive” understanding of men, the opposite far-right populist version is just as horrid. Again, Mike Cosper: “you’ll find arguments about prepping for economic apocalypse, avoiding seed oils, and determining whether a new father should ever change a single diaper. (He should change thousands, and if he’s a Christian, he almost certainly will.) Unlike that of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, this masculinity is performative and reactionary, interested in aesthetics and display on social media more than the serious, lifelong work of being a good and faithful man. To the extent that it’s meant to be taken seriously (and mostly it’s not), it doesn’t seem interested in the formation of virtues that would make masculinity distinctly Christlike—such as gentleness, self-control, sobriety, compassion, and generosity.” Sadly, the populist right has as little to say as the progressive left.

Greta Gerwig, the creator and producer of Barbie, tries to make several points. The biggest one is the best societies are those where women and men live and work as partners where and value each other. I fully agree. Men and women are created in the image of God and have been gifted by God to exercise stewardship over the creation God has given to us. Yet, that message is submerged amidst all the entertainment, frivolity, and posturing. The Truman Show had the same problem. Barbie is a film that requires you to process what you have seen. Don’t bring children but go see it. Better yet, see it with a group of Christians and then go out for coffee afterwards and discuss what you saw. My wife Renee and I loved the film and it sparked some good conversation for us.

Mike Cosper’s reflection on Barbie can be found at Christianity Today online. How Then Should Men Live? | Christianity Today, August 31, 2023. For our next film, we plan to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 and my guess is that will not deserve too much commentary.

Books

Our men’s small groups at church meet monthly, and we read together a book that our group leaders select so that we’re all thinking about the same things over a period of time. We’re just starting a new book titled Disciplines of a Godly Man by Kent Hughes, a retired pastor who served for many years as the senior pastor of College Church in Wheaton, IL. As I leafed through the book for the first time, I noticed that Rev. Hughes had asked a number of prominent evangelicals to list the books that had influenced them most.

I found that exercise fascinating. The author then compiled a listing of the books that were mentioned more than once and leading the list were two titles that many of you will know. There were 15 mentions of the Institutes of Christian Religion by John Calvin (this was a rather Reformed group) and ten mentions of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

The author asked those he selected to respond to four questions to list five books (Christian or secular) that deeply influenced them, list their favorite book of those that had influenced them, mention their favorite novel (yes, there is room for good fiction), and finally list their favorite biography. He assumed that the Bible would be at the top of everyone’s list, so he asked for books beside the Bible.

An exercise like this is helpful because it clarifies who has influenced me in my own Christian journey of faith, and it gives me insight into the faith of others. I’m one of those folks whom if you invite me to your home or office, the first thing I notice is your library and the books you have on it. So let me share with you the books that have shaped my thinking about faith and about life, and hopefully you will find some insight into what I think and what I value. This list may be different this time next year.

Six that are influential.

1. The first is Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright (Harper, 2009). Wright demonstrates that our hope as Christians is found in the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, not in some Gnostic fantasy of entering a disembodied state upon our death. We are bound for a new heaven and new earth where we will live as embodied persons with resurrection bodies like the one Jesus has when he was raised from death. I’ve heard a lot of unbiblical speculative preaching about this. Wright, however, points toward a different more hopeful future for followers of Jesus. This book rocked my theological world, especially with Wright’s biblical teaching about the Kingdom of God and about the return of our Lord. (No rapture, no “I’ll fly away.” Just simple hope that Christ has conquered death, and that those who are “in Christ” will do the same at the time of his great appearing).
2. Next is Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism by George Marsden (Oxford, 1982). After I moved to Charlotte from California in the early 1980s, I read George Marsden for the first time, and he helped me make sense of late 19th and early 20th century American Christianity. I discovered that more liberal Christians were not the only ones allowing modernism to shape their theology. Fundamentalists did the same thing in different ways. Both tried to apply their versions of Christianity to society that had begun to secularize, and both had difficulty discerning what was truly Christian from what was mere cultural preference. This book helped me grasp the value of history and of understanding Christian theology in more historical terms.
3. Then comes The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan Hatch (Yale, 1990). At this time, I was working at the Advent Christian General Conference and had struggled with locating that denomination’s historical context. Hatch helped me see that the Advent Christian Church was an American restorationist group that framed its beliefs in distinctly restorationist forms. Hatch argues that the real American revolution took place in the first half of the 19th century where new Christian religious movements adopted distinctly American ideals such as individual conscience, soul liberty, democratic congregationalism, and congregational autonomy. These things were more cultural than Christian (though I wouldn’t necessarily oppose them) and for the first time I understand what made the Advent Christian Church tick and why it had arrived at the point it was in the late 20th century. Hatch laid the foundation for my later historical work in this area.
4. In 1978, Richard Foster released his first book, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (Harper, 1978). It was the first book on Christian spirituality that I had read, and it remains one of my favorites, a book that I reread from time to time. In the 1960s and 1970s, Christian faith was often viewed as a transaction, and one became a Christian by making a “decision” for Christ. In fact, the language of decision had replaced the earlier notion of conversion meaning a surrender of one’s life to Christ and justification before God through Christ’s atoning work. Foster helped me get beyond the “decision” and see that the Christian life was a progressive journey in sanctification through the practice of spiritual disciplines like prayer, silence, solitude, study, worship, and others. And Foster opened my eyes to great spiritual writers like Henri Nouwen, Brennan Manning, Dallas Willard, Robert Wicks, and others. All of these writers God has used to nourish my soul.
5. The fifth book is one that I have read within the past ten years and has influenced me as much as the first book by N.T. Wright that I mentioned; Life in the Trinity by my good friend and colleague Don Fairbairn (IVP, 2015). Fairbairn specializes in early Christianity, especially in the Trinitarian work of the fourth-century Cappadocian fathers. And here, he uses their work to point to the ultimate goal of the Christian life: that followers of Jesus are in continual fellowship with the Triune God as God’s adopted daughters and sons. I’ve always valued Paul’s teaching in Romans 6 regarding our union with Christ. But Don helped me to go even further by exploring John’s gospel about the oneness of the Father and the Son (and by extension, the Spirit) and how we are brought into that oneness.
6. The last book is one I read fifty years ago during the summer between my junior and senior years in college while working at Mt. Hermon, The Dust of Death by Os Guinness (IVP, 1973). At this time, I was sorting out the intellectual meaning of Christianity and Guiness offered a brilliant social critique of the 1960s in a way that made Christian faith intellectually credible for me. The Christian faith was no mere ideology or theological system. It was a way to think about the social, cultural, and ideological currents of life, especially with the rise of modernity and technology. Guinness set me on the lifelong road of intellectual discovery, one which I have never tired of pursuing.

Is there a favorite?

It’s hard to pick a favorite from the ones that I have listed. And I could list more books like Henri Nouwen’s little book, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership which is the most important ministry-related title that I have read. So let me suggest some important authors. At the top of my list would be Rev. John Stott, the British evangelical leader, who thought deeply about biblical exposition, evangelism, and social concern in the 20th century. His book The Cross of Christ is the most important theological book in my library, and I think describes the essence of the Christian faith better than any other that I know. I would add Christian historians Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and Thomas Kidd to that. I read everything they produce and I’m currently in the middle of Noll’s magnum opus titled America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization 1794-1911 (Oxford, 2022). It may reach my top six.

Novels and biographies

I haven’t read as many novels as I would like so I’m a bit hard pressed to pick one that stands out. But Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully written novel about life in apartheid South Africa that reminds me of the dignity of every human being. Every human is created in the image of God and has a fundamental human worth given each by their creator, even if our humanity has been distorted by the Fall described in Genesis Three. It is here where Christian thinking about humans must begin, and the themes of sin and grace must shape our evangelism.

I like John Grisham’s novels and have read almost all of them. Grisham has a knack for explaining the intricacies of the law and how the law works its way out in courtrooms across the country. Someday soon (I hope), I plan to tackle Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers, but I need to clear the decks before I take that on.

Regarding biographies, there is one that stands out and that is George Marsden’s Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Edwards was the most important theologian of the 18th century and Marsden has written a wonderful biography of his life that captures the essence of the man and his time. This is a superior book and a pleasure to read. William Manchester on Douglas MacArthur, David McCullough on John Adams, Charles Marsh on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Stephen Coats on Martin Luther King, Jr. are biographies well worth reading.

Since I was a boy, I have always loved to read and I’m thankful that my mother instilled a love for reading in my life. I’ve also been encouraged by fellow Christians along the way by what they were reading. And my professors had a knack for encouraging me to read. Today, there is never a time when I don’t have at least two books going. Why? Because reading opens our lives to fresh ideas and inspires us toward thinking about life and faith both realistically and hopefully. There is nothing like sitting in my easy chair with a good book and getting lost in its pages. And there is nothing like sitting in a bookstore with a nice cup of coffee perusing some titles that I’ve pulled off the shelf.

When I meet someone for the first time or have lunch with a good friend, the first thing I usually ask is “What are your reading?” So, let me ask you that. Leave a comment and let me know what you are reading. Or let me know what books have influenced you. I’d love to hear about what you are reading.

“Nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about.”

A long time ago, the Beatles composed that line as part of Strawberry Fields Forever, a tune that illustrated the massive shift in the tone of their music. I thought of that line while listening to a conversation between two professors debating the appropriateness of transgender identity. The first argued that reality is external to ourselves and discovered through human reasoning based on evidence (part of what theologians’ call ‘general revelation’) and through God’s revelation through the Christian Bible. His counterpart claimed that reality emerges from the individual, and that each person determines their own distinct reality. In other words, each individual has their own ‘truth’ to discover and we learn to “speak my truth.” Because “my truth” may differ from “your truth,” what is right for me may not be right for you.

This notion of individual realities each existing apart from each other with little in common is the essence of what modern philosophers describe as “postmodern.” In the “modernist” way of thinking that gathered steam in the 18th century, truth and reality existed independently of human perception and discovering them involved the use of reason and logic. Unlike the biblical and early Christian writers who viewed what is real and true through the lens of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ and through Holy Scripture, modernist thinkers argued that reality was discoverable only through reason. The early 19th century began to change even that, and now we are at the point where the postmodern ethos (which picked up societal steam in the 1960s and was captured so well by writers like John Lennon of The Beatles) tells us that there is no external truth, that everything we encounter is relative. All we can do is discover our own internal truth and then speak “my truth” to others.

Postmodern Turn

This “postmodern turn” appears throughout all of life. We hear celebrities speaking all of the time about “my truth.” Young people are taught to “pursue your dream” no matter how far-fetched or unrealistic that is. (Yes, I wanted to be a pro-baseball player like my hero Willie Mays, but there came a time when I realized that my skill level was nowhere near what it needed to be.) In postmodern thinking, “truth” and “dreams” become disconnected from reality. Even within evangelical Christianity, the music we often sing describes Jesus as my buddy who is here to help me discover “my truth” and realize “my dreams.” Yes indeed. “Strawberry Fields, Forever.”

In America in the 2020s, we see this postmodern turn become more bizarre. Parents approve gender-reassignment surgery for their children because their child is unhappy being a male or a female. Citizens vote for celebrity politicians. People afraid that their children will be taught the truth about slavery and Jim Crow and feel bad. The explosion of foul language (especially the “F-word”) in public venues and the media because self-expression is the most important value in a postmodern world. I could pile on the anecdotes, but you get the picture.

Assisted suicide on the move

Last night, I read a recent Christianity Today article about the growth of medically assisted suicide in Canada, where it has been legal nationwide since 2016. (Several U.S. states including Oregon and California also have laws permitting medically assisted suicide.) In our postmodern world, suffering of any kind is taboo. The author, a medical doctor in Canada, Ewen Goligher, reported that “some patients with disabilities or mental illness reported that assisted death was proposed to them without their instigation” (October 2022, 50). In 2022, over 10,000 Canadians were killed through medically assisted suicide and Goligher writes that “the logic of assisted death has proven inexorable: If death is therapy that addresses psychological wounds of suffering and the feeling that life is pointless, then who shouldn’t be considered eligible?”

All of us have experienced physical, emotional, and mental suffering and some of us (myself included) struggle with anxiety and depression. But what if when we reach out for help, we’re confronted with suicide as a treatment option? If we are severely depressed or mentally ill, can we resist the medical professionals who offers that option? In a postmodern world where suffering is taboo and where the cost of medical care continues to rise dramatically, I fear the pressure toward medically assisted suicide will become even greater. Goligher reminds us that “to value a person is to value their existence. A willingness to deliberately end someone’s existence therefore necessarily devalues the person. If people matter, we must not intentionally end them” (51).

Please don’t misunderstand. I know from experience and interaction with others that suffering can be deep and debilitating. And I know the almost desperate desire to relieve the suffering of others close to us. But the best response is not assisted suicide but palliative care for those who are suffering and dying, and good mental health care for those who suffer emotionally. Sadly, palliative care is hard to find and both government and the medical profession seem unwilling to prioritize it. Such is our postmodern world.

Strategic resistance

So, what should we do when postmodern people tell us that it is OK for kids to change their gender, or for people (especially those who are physically disabled or mentally ill) to end their lives? I think we start in the family of faith. What responses do we make to postmodern arguments? The Christian faith has much to say about human value and dignity, about each person being created in God’s image. We think that every human being has an essential dignity that comes from being created in God’s image and that gives you and me and everyone intrinsic worth no matter who we are. Are we prepared to make that case in ways that point to the value and dignity of human life?

Moreover, do we practice what we believe and teach? For example, I think that one of the marks of a healthy congregation is seen in its ministry to persons with disabilities. Another is how it treats women. Given the rampant sexual abuse problem in evangelical churches, it’s hard to persuade others to listen to what we say about human dignity and worth. Another is in a congregation’s willingness to “speak the truth in love.” Truth without love is harsh. Love without truth is mushy. When I worked as a Young Life volunteer many years ago, we had a saying when we worked with young people. We had to “win the right to be heard.” In other words, we had so demonstrate that we cared about others before they would hear the gospel message we wanted to share with them.

Congregations must also encourage Christians who are in the medical and psychological professions. Who are the doctors and mental health professionals in your congregations? Do you understand their stresses and challenges? Are you helping them integrate their Christian faith with their professional practice in ways that they can speak to these matters? I’ve been blessed to know quite a few psychologists and mental health professionals. They have blessed me with their understanding and care. I hope I’ve blessed them by helping them to think through how their Christian faith informs their work. Sadly, too many congregations look upon mental health practitioners with suspicion because they have bought into the lie that mental health practice is somehow unchristian.

I’m sure you’ve noticed my words about postmodernism and its harmful effects have been directed toward Christians and their congregations. Because that is where we must begin. Nobody will listen to our words about transgenderism and medically assisted suicide if we do not practice our faith in how we interact with and treat others. We should seek legislation that protects those who face the brunt of these destructive practices. But when we contend for legal protection, we must address the matters at hand and not engage in harsh rhetoric or vindictiveness. Our task is to create understanding that all human beings are created in his image.

***************************

Ewen Goligher writes about the growth of medically assisted suicide in Canada and the United States in “Dying Wish” found in the October 2022 Christianity Today on pages 46-51. A good place to start for grasping a Christian understanding of transgender persons is Mark Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (IVP, 2015). Ericka Anderson has just penned a very helpful article on how congregations and youth ministries can approach transgender persons. “Youth Bring their Questions on Transgender Identity to Church: Gen Z evangelicals are forcing a discussion on LGBT hospitality.” (Christianity Today, 6.23.23, online). https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/june-web-only/youth-ministry-transgender-lgbt-church-pastor-gen-z-questio.html?share=Wel%2fZf%2bNxYHcHI8SDWzN7f818QYk9r3c&utm_medium=widgetsocial.

I’ve framed this post on the biblical notion of humans as created in God’s image. The best book I know on this topic is one that I just read by Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (IVP, 2023). “If we take seriously the Bible’s claim that God created us, then our human identity is firmly linked with our Creator. We are who we are because of who God is and who God intended us to be. We cannot accurately define ourselves without reference to God” (47). I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Shiny, Happy Gothard

My TV viewing habits are strange. I’ve never watched a reality show like Survivor or The Amazing Race. I refuse to watch Cable-TV news stations like FOX, MSNBC, and CNN. I’m allergic to so-called religious broadcasting and outside of some curiosity about Jim and Tammy Bakker almost 40 years ago, I’ve never watched outlets like the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death has framed my understanding of television.

So, when a friend texted me last week and suggested that I watch the new documentary about the Duggar family, Shiny Happy People, I thought it was worth a look. I had heard of the Duggar family but like all reality TV, I ignored them. I may have seen them once or twice on The Today Show but a story about a family with 19 kids struck me as unrealistic at best and bizarre at worst. I mean, if a couple wants 19 kids, I’m OK with that as long as they can support their family economically and give their kids a good education so that they can get good jobs and flourish as human beings. And to be honest, I wondered how a couple could send 19 kids to college or trade school to get the intellectual or vocational training they need.

To my surprise, the Duggar reality show was not so much about their family per se as about their claim that all of us should have large families like them. Having large families is God’s will and hence we should reorder our lives and our churches to propagate them. The source of this claim? A guy named Bill Gothard, a single man who claims to have cornered the market on Christian marriage and Christian families.

I had heard of Gothard before. In the late 1970s, I attended his week-long Basic Youth Conflicts (IBYC) seminar at the Long Beach (CA) Civic Auditorium. Over 9,000 people packed the place all listening to Bill Gothard, a short man wearing a drab blue suit with an overhead projector. As he spoke, the audience busied themselves writing notes in big red binders distributed by IBYC. The social pressure to accept his ideological teachings about Christianity was overpowering. The former Southern Baptist turned Anglican writer and speaker Beth Moore put it this way. “I didn’t realize how much influence that whole Gothard movement had on my church and on my social circles until watching those…episodes. I didn’t realize that’s where the umbrella talk all came from. I didn’t realize that’s where saying parenting stuff like ‘first time every time’ came from.” Gothard led these seminars throughout the United States and Canada with thousands attending at each location, and the thousands of “alumni” made sure that Gothard’s teachings became known in evangelical and fundamentalist congregations across North America.

Authority/Submission as Ideology

The key words in the Gothard schema are “authority” and “submission.” For Gothard, the Bible presents an ideological system where right relationship with God can be found only when an individual is in submission to authority. Hence, the Christian family is viewed as series of hierarchical “umbrellas” where the husband is the dominant force in the family. Men submit to God. Women submit to their husbands. And children submit to the wife who is responsible for managing the daily affairs of the household while the husband earns a living for the family. In society, citizens are required to submit to law enforcement; workers to their bosses; and congregants to their pastors. A society functions well only when individuals understand and practice the roles of authority and submission.

The Bible is drawn upon to support this tight system of authority and submission, despite the fact that Bible verses cited are mostly taken out of context with little understanding of what the biblical writers actually said. To top it off, the Gothardian ideology draws upon an ideology called Reconstruction. Reconstructionism views Old Testament civil law as binding on Christians even though the New Testament teaches that the Old Testament law has been fulfilled by life, death, and resurrection of Christ and we now live under what the prophet Jeremiah described as “the new covenant,” a covenant shaped by God’s grace expressed through Jesus Christ.

The second time I heard Gothard was at a “pastors conference” in Greensboro, NC in 1985. This time, Gothard had something new to teach his followers. It was not enough to follow the system of authority/submission that he laid out in those big red notebooks. Now, Gothard wanted the pastors (all of whom were men since Gothard thought evangelical women pastors were an abomination) to start having bigger families. Families with ten or more children were held up as examples. There was even talk of how men could reverse vasectomies if they were unfortunate enough to have had one. It was a bizarre day.

My second trip to a Gothard event came about five years after the first major sex scandal embroiled the IBYC ministry. Gothard’s brother Steve had been caught in sexual relations with several minors at an IBYC center and while he was removed from the ministry, his brother Bill Gothard banished him to one of the organization’s campus buildings in Minnesota. After all of this, I dismissed Gothard (though I continued to warn others of what I saw as dangerous teachings), and he fell off of my radar screen. So, it wasn’t until a few months ago that the connection between Gothard and the Dugger family started to become clear.

“Shiny, Happy” Nightmare

The original Duggar series ran for a long time on the TLC Channel up until 2015. It portrayed a large, happy family where everyone worked together and coexisted well with each other. The reality was far uglier. The Duggar’s failed to educate their children, especially the young girls who were expected to get married at a young age and have large families of their own. Education was home-school only and with IBLP approved curricula. (The IBYC changed its name to the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP) in the 1980s.) That curriculum was woefully lacking and did not prepare young men or women for college or careers. Marriages were arranged through a complex system of courtship, and women existed in a patriarchal system that allowed them no independence whatsoever. In fact, women were considered under the “authority” of their fathers even as young adults, and marriage represented a transfer of authority from their fathers to their husbands.

Yet the authority/submission dynamic was slippery, and it opened the door for all kinds of abuse in the Duggar family and the Gothard/IBLP organization. There’s no need to describe all of that here. Shiny, Happy, People tells the whole sordid story and as hard as it is to watch, I encourage you to do so. Recasting the Bible as a story of authority and submission distorts its message. The Bible’s message is one of sin and grace. All of us, men and women alike, have been created in God’s image (see Genesis 1:26-28) and while the entire human race has fallen into sin (Genesis 3), the biblical story is all about God’s grace for us expressed through Jesus Christ.

The Bible’s relational dynamic is not based on authority/submission. As Ephesians 5:21-33 makes clear, submission is seen as mutual; “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Marriage is a partnership where husbands and wives submit equally to Christ and to one another. No umbrellas here.

And no umbrellas in church, either. Of course, we have leaders in church and as followers of Jesus, we’re to listen to our leaders and encourage them in their work. But in the Bible, Christian leaders are not power brokers but servants. Jesus makes that clear in his own ministry. Yes, Christian leaders have power, but they are to use that power as a servant of Christ and of God’s people.

What I found especially sad about Shiny, Happy, People are the stories of people burned by the Gothard system who have lost their Christian faith. They were fed a deeply distorted almost-cultic understanding of the Christian faith, one that stripped them of their humanity. But God doesn’t do that. Instead, he sends Christ to restore our true humanity.

I happily describe myself as a Christian humanist. By that I mean God’s desire that all of us should flourish as human beings in the world and reach our God-given potential. We can do that in a variety of ways if we are following Christ. Following Christ is not about finding your place in a distorted reality of authority and submission. It is about what the Apostle Paul describes as “union with Christ” in Romans 6, about learning to follow Jesus amidst the hopes, joys, and struggles that we encounter in our daily lives. I hope that the Duggar family can find true freedom in Christ.

The documentary “Shiny, Happy People” can be found on Amazon Prime. It’s a four-part series; each episode an hour long. As with all television, it should be watched with a critical eye. For example, in episode four they try to link all evangelicals with authoritarianism and a desire to control others politically and theologically. That is a huge stretch and one that lacks evidence. While it may be a popular opinion on the political left it is a gross generalization. Having said that, I don’t doubt that the Gothard movement has political aims given that it is a Reconstructionist movement at heart. And yes. I did trash my big red Gothard notebook many years ago.

Forgive

Like so many, I’ve thought much about the death of Tim Keller this week. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020, many of us who benefited from his ministry and his published works knew that he faced a serious life-threatening challenge. Yet, when we heard the news of his death last Friday, it was still a shock. For many, myself included, Keller was the most important Christian apologist of our day. At a time when many turn away from Christ; when many Christians buy into what Jacques Ellul termed “the political illusion,” Keller was writing the kind of apologetics that deeply impacted our very being. No wonder that so many thoughtful people heard Keller and read his works and were drawn to the Savior that he loved so much.

Several weeks before his death, Russell Moore interviewed pastor Keller (before his brilliant apologetic work, he served two congregations including Redeemer Church in New York City), and Keller’s words summed up for me the essence of the Christian faith. He said something like this: If Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and he is; everything will be OK. He followed that by saying that he was convinced intellectually and existentially, that Christ has been raised from death and is alive now. Therefore, everything will be OK because we trust in a sovereign, just, merciful Triune God. It all comes down to that!

Before his death, I had started reading his last book, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? (Viking, 2022). This morning I finished the second chapter and came across this gem of a paragraph. After describing the secular ways of forgiveness as nothing more than “cheap grace” (to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s term), he writes this:

“The cheap-grace model of forgiveness focuses strictly on inner emotional healing for the victim, on “getting past it and moving on,” but then ends up letting the perpetrator off the hook. The little-grace or no-grace models basically seek revenge, which can lead to endless cycles of retaliation and vengeance, back and forth, between the victim and the wrongdoer. What all these secular models lack is the transformed motivation that the vertical dimension brings. The experience of divine forgiveness brings profound healing. It is grounded in the faith-sight of Jesus’s costly sacrifice for our forgiveness.

“This reminds us that we are sinners in need of mercy like everyone else, yet it also fills the cup of our hearts with his love and affirmation. This makes it possible for us to forgive the perpetrator and then go speak to him or her, seeking justice and reconciliation if possible. Now, however, we do not do it for our own sake–but for justice’s sake. The motivation is radically changed” (34).

In other words, authentic Christian forgiveness does not excuse wrongdoing. The women who were sexually abused by Larry Nassar do not have to give up on seeking justice for his abuse of them. The people who have been harmed by abusive leaders like Mark Driscoll and Ravi Zacharias do not have to let those individuals off the hook. Forgiveness is not a “get out of jail free” card.

I like how Martin Luther King Jr. put it (and Keller quotes these words on page 35), “He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love…We can never say ‘I forgive you but I won’t have anything further to do with you.” Hard words but remember this is the man who faced down Bull Connor and his cops and their dogs in what was a police-riot on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama 50 years ago in 1963. Forgiveness is hard, and it can never be divorced from the pursuit of justice. But it is necessary.

Keller reminds us that “our society cannot live without forgiveness. When it is absent, the results are horrifying. Unaccountable numbers of shooting deaths in urban areas are revenge attacks from gangs and even family members. So many of the so-called mass shootings are attacks by gunmen who have nursed grudges. The genocides we have seen in events like the Soviet slaughter of Ukrainians in the 1930s, the Nazi holocaust against Jewish people in the 1940s, the butchery of Pol Pot and the Kemer Rogue in 1970s Cambodia, and the genocide against the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda in 1994 tell us what happens when the practice of forgiveness disappears from society. Our opponents are not only wrong, they are dangerous and must be eliminated!

I don’t know about you, but I confess to having a hard time forgiving others, especially during my young-adult years. Lewis Smedes reminds us that forgiveness often comes slowly and the larger the offense, the more slowly it comes. He’s right. Some of that forgiveness did come slowly for me and only when I grasped how much that Christ has forgiven me of. My number of days in this life grows shorter, and because like Tim Keller I’m convinced both intellectually and existentially that Christ has been raised from death I want to learn to better follow him and practice the kind of costly forgiveness to which he challenges me and all of the people of God.

I’m through only two chapters of Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? and look forward to fresh insights I will gain from the pen of this humble servant of God. I do all I can to avoid Christian celebrity worship but I do admire followers of Jesus like Tim Keller, N.T. Wright, and others who combine keen intellect with strong faith and deep Christian kindness for others, even those with whom they disagree. Tim Keller reminds that in his great love, Christ offers salvation and hope to Democrats, Republicans, Independents (like me), people who are immigrants and refugees at our southern border and around the world, people who are Black, Asian, Latino, Native American, and white (in other words, for folks from every tribe, nation, language, and people). No person is beyond God’s reach no matter who they are and those of us who are his followers have the privilege of embodying his love in how we speak and in how we interact with others.