A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

 "Julia liked the church environment, the caring and support, the concept of renewal and inclusion through baptism. Yes, and why not? That Brad seemed to approve only motivated her further. We suspect Jesus had little to do with any of it."

"Then she met Xavier, and for the first time she understood what sexual desire felt like. How hard it was to control the urge to want to touch someone, and be touched by someone. How that desire lit you up inside, created what felt like actual heat in your groin. And so, she could excuse Brad somewhat, knowing that, as she'd been taught at New Hope, men had even more trouble controlling their desires than women did. By this standard, Brad was just being male... Sure, it's be great if a girl's own stepdad never though of her that way, but maybe that was asking too much."

"Here we have no choice but to be trite and say, 'Hindsight is 20/20,' and, 'what's done is done,' and continue with our story, because it's in the telling of a tragedy that we sow the seeds, we hope, of prevention of future sorrows."

"A trial would be futility made into spectacle."

Interesting enough but not all I hoped it would be. I picked it up because I saw it on Goodreads and the 'Gram and the blurb made it sound like something I'd like. I thought it might make a good Fall read with the cover :-) Having the neighborhood as the narrator was a unique and engaging choice, but did make it difficult to get to know any of the characters well enough to care much about them. So, I did encounter one of my big hang-ups--lack of a sympathetic protagonist. But I was very interested in the portrayal of purity culture, and the plot was interesting enough to pull me along. Here's the thing about plot-driven books, though--tragedies (and we were warned that this would be one) can leave the ending quite unsatisfying. And there was no redemption through development of any other character which I found disappointing. I did appreciate that though some of the more toxic elements of purity culture were called out, it was clear that it was purity culture itself that was doing damage, not faith or Jesus. It would have been a solid 3/3.5-ish star read for me, except for the other matter which is that it seemed okay as art but awkward as an attempt at activism. This article talks more about that, and in it the author says, "It provides the same frustration one feels at Thanksgiving, when your self-described open-minded aunt won’t shut up about the beautiful gay couple she waves to at the gym," and that's such a good metaphor for the vibes this book was giving me. So overall, I'm going with a 2.5, rounded up to 3 stars. 

Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher

"We create opportunities to be disappointed with God when we put our hope in things he never promised." 

Quotes:

She points out how we prioritized events, role models, and books and often neglected discussions with parents (or other mentors, friends, community, etc). "Our choice to detach the topic of sexual purity from the whole of Scripture and life, turning questions that are meant to press us further into prayer, the church, and God's Word, into books, conference and websites. But the subject of sexual purity is too nuanced to squeeze into one book or conference. It must be integrated into our regular conversations" (12).

"Virginity as purity neglects Jesus' call for the pursuit of whole-person purity, which includes not only the hymen but our whole body, mind, and heart" (22).

"One question Christians need to ask is: What happens to the message of sexual purity when it is taught apart from Christ?" (22).

Observations about how purity was marketed to American teenagers: "The books I read growing up focused on how my sexual behavior would impact my life, my reputation, and my marriage" (23). "Growing up, the emphasis was on 'me and Jesus' more than my role as a member of the body of Christ. I didn't even become familiar with the term 'common good' in regard to Christian theology until I began graduate school in my early thirties" (23).

She points out that purity was often portrayed as a gift one gives their spouse upon marriage, not primarily about something between a person and God.

She calls attention to the truth that "sexual self-control is a lifelong pursuit." Unlike many of us were implicitly taught, temptation doesn't go away when one gets married. From a later chapter: "Christian dating books communicated a similar message: sinful lust was just a byproduct of singleness, and once I was married, I would be so sexually satisfied that lust would  become a nonissue. Sex would love it. Sex would solve so many things" (95).

"Virgins or not, Christians are real people who wrestle with sexual temptation. Instead of fixating on our virginity, our goal as Christians must be God's glory in our sexual brokenness. The elevation of virginity and the promised reward of great married sex for the chaste not only creates false expectations but makes the pursuit of sexual purity all about personal fulfillment.

"Christine Gardner put it best when she said that the solution for evangelicals is not 'to value virginity less but to value God more.' Too often our elevation of virginity neglects the true source of our purity. 

"Books like Every Man's Battle reinforce lust as the problem, and rules like Graham's make avoiding women the solution. Christian write Katelyn Beaty acknowledges that men who practice the Billy Graham rule likely do so with good motives, believing that 'it's better to limit interacting with women altogether than open the door to temptation.' However, she also points out that this way of dealing with sexual sin elevates 'personal purity' above the biblical command to love our neighbors. Instead of teaching men to avoid women, a proactive strategy for battling sexual lust urges men to see women as neighbors" (63).

"I think about what I would tell my son--that his body is a gift, something God declares good. That his sexuality is not a threat to fear or a weapon to wield. That women are not objects to use or to avoid but are beloved of God, partners in the gospel, and coheirs of the kingdom. That we are all image bearers of God but are born into Adam's sin. That we are endowed with dignity, but dignifying others is hard and takes care and effort. And that it is worth the effort, and God is with us as we wage war against sin and selfishness" (64).

"We create opportunities to be disappointed with God when we put our hope in things he never promised. Jesus did not die so that Christians could live out their own Nicholas Sparks novel. He died to set us free from slavery to sin, to make us new, and to draw us into the kingdom of God forever. It is not earthly marriage but the marriage supper of the Lamb that we are promised. It is adoption as sons and daughters that we receive, not because we stayed sexually pure or dressed modestly but because Jesus spilled is blood for our sins. Whatever our relationship status on earth, Christians can stand firm in their identity as children of the living God and as the church, his body, and his bride" (73). 

"Marriage is not the goal of sexual purity. God and his glory are the goal of sexual purity. Practicing purity is a form of worship, another way we praise God through obedience with our bodies, hearts, and thoughts" (80).

Pointing out the "Problems with the Promise of Sex"

"In I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Harris says that a commitment to sexual purity in singleness is like 'delaying our gratification' and 'storing up passion' that will make married sex more meaningful" (92). 

"My desire for sex as a divorced single differed from my desire for sex as a single virgin, but I was asking the same question in both seasons: What do I do with all this longing?" (101). THIS is what we need to talk more about. Some unmarried people long for marriage. Some married people long for children. Married people with children have unmet longings too! We all have longings. This should point us to the fact that we all have a deep longing for Christ, for heaven. 

"As a church, we must question any teachings that depict sex as a reward, a promise, or a need" (103). YES to that last one! How often do those in the church portray sex as a need (though, usually only for men), despite Christ himself and Paul and so many others in church history showing us that you can be a fully formed and fulfilled person without it. It is a gift for some, not a need for all.

What made me say "UGH": "John Eldredge says in Wild at Heart that Bathsheba goes unnamed because God was disappointed with her" (119). This makes me want to vomit. And this is the kind of teaching that goes hand-in-hand with the purity teaching I grew up with, the sexism and authoritarianism of it all that I'm untangling. I'm so thankful for Sandra Glahn's Vindicating the Vixens for offering another perspective to me on the story of Bathsheba, because how we interpret stories like this shapes how we view power, responsibility, and God himself.

Welcher postulates that Jesus, as an embodied person, was a sexual person without sinning sexually. "why does the fact of his embodiment make us uncomfortable? I believe it is because we struggle to separate sexuality from sexual sin, and therefore it is hard for us to imagine that Jesus could be both sexual and sinless" (129).

"When we sin sexually, it is not because sexuality is corrupt or because sex is evil, but because we are corrupt, continually exchanging the truth of God for lies (Romans 1:25)" (131).

Welcher offers some quotes from others who are re-examining purity culture, and have arrived at different conclusions, conclusions Welcher and I both would consider outside of orthodox Christianity. She quotes Bolz-Weber, "When two loving individuals, two bearers of God's image, are unified in an erotic embrace, there is space for something holy."

Welcher then says, 'Beloved, do not be deceived by such thinking. The gospel of self is everywhere, and it tastes sweet, like wine. Which is why we must drink all the more deeply of God's Word--so that our hearts are not deceived: God is about his glory. God loves you, and your highest good is to be about his glory too" (135)...."There is forgiveness at the cross for every sin. And we can grow from our mistakes, learn from our failures, and even look back with thankfulness at times when God showed mercy to us despite our disobedience. But when we start calling 'holy' what God calls sinful, we have ceased to honor him. We have ceased to understand what holiness means.

"Holiness is not premarital sex without shame. Holiness is the Lord Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" (135).

"... if I am honest, I must admit that my genuine mercy often gets twisted up in my desire for human praise. I may start out with the right motives, but somewhere along the line my desire to be loving morphs into a desire to seem loving. And I can start to soften the edges of what sin, calling what God has deemed filthy, clean. And in doing so, I fail to love God and my neighbor" (136).

"So many of us walked right past the gospel on the way to a purity conference" (137).

"The Christian pursuit of sexual purity is biblical, but it must flow out of a recognition that it is Jesus who makes us pure. Otherwise, we become Pharisess" (137).

"I too believe that the church has failed in its approach to sexual purity. We have turned sex and marriage into household idols. We have talked about virginity as if it were a means of salvation. We have adapted a version of the prosperity gospel. We have shamed victims of sexual abuse for actions committed against them....But, beloved, upholding God's command to keep sex within marriage has not been one of our failings. And I will stand by all the other antiquated sticks-in-the-mud who still remember Jesus' words in John 14:15: 'If you love me, you will obey me' (WE)" (139).

"How can a Christian flourish sexually according to God's sexual ethic? By surrendering, body and soul, to God the Creator and lover of our souls" (139).

"Fergeson points out that 'it was not legalism for Jesus to do everything his father commanded him. Nor is it for us'" (141). I love this argument. All the "untangling" or "deconstruction" should be a quest to find what is actually right and for me, that is based on Scripture, and therefore I believe obedience does matter. That is what we must stand on! It makes me sad that later in the same paragraph Welcher goes on to defend this orthodox position with one of my least favorite arguments, what some apparently view as a self-evident observation but I find broken: "It is precisely the fact that men and women are different that makes their coming together as one through sex in marriage such a beautiful mystery. The communication it takes. The intentionality and patience" (141). It's as if the only thing that can make us diverse is our gender. It's as if any two people don't need communication and intentionality to be in close relationship. 

She again quotes Bolz-Weber: "we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people" (142). And if that isn't just a summary of the spirit our day, I don't know what is.

Observation in the "What Will We Tell Our Children?" Chapter:

"By all means, go on dates. But do not fall for the purity culture lie that dating, courting, or marriage have cornered the market on intimacy. Our view of intimacy is too narrow, too entangled with the act of sex itself, when we thing that it can only be achieved by a dating or married relationship. That distorted thinking makes cross-gender friendships seem like a threat to purity instead of precious gifts from God" (153).

It wasn't mentioned in the book, but I heard Welcher discuss this on a podcast and mention that it is good for us to look back on what we were taught and question, work on constantly stripping away the extrabiblical, cultural, personality cult stuff and pushing further into timeless truth, and also it is good for us to have humility. She pointed out that in the same way that our well-intentioned leaders and parents and mentors espoused the teachings of purity culture, and later we are realizing what was harmful and less than true, we are likely reacting to things in our culture and teaching those under our influence things that are more than or less than truth and could potentially harm them as well. Let us do our work, and let us be humble and careful.

She quotes Joshua Harris from the I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye documentary: "You can change your mind about things." and then says, "This might seem like an obvious statement, but when it comes to our theological beliefs, changing our mind can look like sinking sand. One question could be one step toward drowning" (175).... "While writing this book, multiple friends and acquaintances have shared their concern over my questioning something the church has been teaching for so many years. With the recent news of Harris' deconversion, I can see why. Questions have led some, like Harris, to a full-on rejection of the Christian faith. Consequently, questions can look like the beginning of the end. But the idea that asking questions is something only 'liberal theologians' do is untrue. Asking questions can be a form of humility when what we are questioning is not God but our own fallible views about God. I have build my theological house on the foundation of God's Word. That is not what I am questioning. Rather, I want to examine the influence of Christian subcultures, like purity culture, on our interpretation of God's Word" (177).

"...we are a body made up of sinners saved by grace. We mess up. We get things wrong. And we ought to view it as a privilege, not a burden, to do the work of learning how to more clearly and lovingly represent Christ and his Word" (178).

"Sex is not a human right, and it is certainly not our Christian right. Some say, 'love is love,' but we know better: God is love" (179).

"We must talk more about the gospel than we do about lust because Christian obedience is about worship" (182).

"Purity is important to God--so important that Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, had to die so that we could live. But, too often, purity rhetoric hyperfocuses on what we should and shouldn't do instead of what Christ has already done. It neglects the gospel and places personal striving above the finished work of Christ" (183).

For me, purity culture teaching was so tied up in sexist gender roles and authoritarianism, that even the title of this book felt a bit rebellious. So I appreciated Welcher's words on the topic: "Questions have led some, like Harris [author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye], to a full-on rejection of the Christian faith. Consequently, questions can look like the beginning of the end. But the idea that asking questions is something only 'liberal theologians' do is untrue. Asking questions can be a form of humility when what we are questioning is not God but our own fallible views about God. I have build my theological house on the foundation of God's Word. That is not what I am questioning. Rather, I want to examine the influence of Christian subcultures, like purity culture, on our interpretation of God's Word" (emphasis mine).

I found this work so helpful. So many observations of patterns worth examining. Was it perfect? No, but we all need discernment as we read, so: read it anyway. Is it possible to represent the nuance contained in these topics in 200 pages? Of course not. (The treatment of same-sex attraction, though integrated into the conversation in a way that is refreshing compared to the purity culture that doesn't acknowledge anyone could ever not be heterosexual, particularly left me thinking more space was needed!) Welcher points out from the beginning that these topics need to be fleshed out in everyday conversations in relationships, not just in books. That is kind of the point, and one of the critiques of purity culture that made sexuality seem so separate from the gospel. On the whole, my views have landed pretty similarly to Welcher's so far, and I'm grateful to have a book that dares to examine these things while maintaining an orthodox perspective, and a devotion to keeping the gospel central. Because ultimately, that is why it's worth even fussing about this stuff: "Purity is important to God--so important that Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, had to die so that we could live. But, too often, purity rhetoric hyperfocuses on what we should and shouldn't do instead of what Christ has already done. It neglects the gospel and places personal striving above the finished work of Christ."

06.20.2020 🎧 All Things Considered by Knox McCoy

"It's important to examine our 'why' when it comes to clinging to specific beliefs. Is it because we believe in them so fully and completely that anything less would seem disrespectful? Or, is it because we prize the stability of our beliefs above all else, even more than their content?"

Okay, so first off, I loved his motion to reconsider the need for sex scenes in movies. (And, may I add, books?!) Ever the over-serious, though, I wanted the tone to stay more consistent. Was it a comedy, or reflections on deep-seated questions central to life and reality? Somehow the mix of these things made me feel it was lacking in both areas. Still, I enjoyed this one. The author's narration was fun, as I generally find his other work (The Popcast, the Bible Binge, and his newsletter). I love the the premise, that all kinds of ideas and beliefs are worth reconsidering. It seems a timely message. I would love for us all to normalize the message of this book and of @CH1ONESO on Twitter (I don't know anything else about her but I love this quote): "NORMALIZE CHANGING YOUR OPINION ON SOMETHING AFTER LEARNING NEW INFORMATION. IT'S OKAY. I PROMISE."

06.20.2020 🎧 What is a Girl Worth? by Rachael Denhollander

This is one of those books that you wish never had to be written; you wish such material for a memoir never even existed. But in this world where the realities of sexual abuse and systematic cover-ups are all but ubiquitous, it is so important for these stories to be told--and listened to. Denhollander has given us a gift in sharing her story with the world. Her boldness in sharing her story publicly, as the first named survivor to come forward and in this book, is nothing short of inspiring. I know not everyone feels that way. As a former member of a SGC myself, I know that many see her as attention-seeking, overly-brazen, a troublemaker. This grieves me deeply. Honestly, I think most of these people are not malicious but just mis-informed. (Obviously those with influence who are doing the misinforming have no excuse.) I hope that these folks will get curious and read her story. I learned so much from her, not only about the Nassar case itself, but about what life is like for survivors and what dynamics are involved in abuse (grooming, power plays, confusion, shame). Highly recommend. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

I wrote down one quote, from the area where Denhollander shares about the church's silence (or worse) during their ordeal with the investigation. She shares that they then had about $3000 worth of tools stolen from her husband's work van, and the multiple church leaders reached out with support.

"'Do they realize that the damage done to me, to us, through this investigation is so much worse than the damage done to your van?' 

"I heard him sigh. 'I don't think they understand, or know what to do.'

"He was right. We knew their silence wasn't malicious. But no one had any idea what to do, and they weren't asking. It was okay not to know what to do. It wasn't okay not to ask what they could do. By and large, the events of the last few months had been a sharp reminder of the uphill battle survivors face. To find justice, to be heard, to be understood, to have anyone even care. And I constantly wondered, as I reflected on how hard the process was for me, despite healthy relationships on both sides of the family, 'Who is going to fight for survivors who have no one? Who is even going to see the survivor who isn't on the news? Who will find these hurting people and tell them how much they are worth?"

Another quote, emphasis mine:
"If I were motivated solely by the desire to triumph, my gifts could become dangerous to others, and ultimately, to myself. But the safeguard against this, they told me, was to be motivated instead by love. Love would ensure a willingness to hear and see the truth, even if it meant I was wrong. Love would ensure compassion, even for those who did wrong, while still enabling a fierce pursuit of the truth." 

06.8.2020 📘 All That’s Good by Hannah Anderson

Psalm 27:13 "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

"And without discernment, I had little chance of finding the security and happiness that I wanted—that I think we all want."

"New technologies have certainly complicated and altered how we receive and engage with information, but at root, we’re facing the same questions that human beings have faced since the garden of Eden: How can I know who and what to believe? How can I make choices that lead to a successful life? How can I avoid mistakes? How can I know what is good?" (23).

"Manhandled. What a perfect word to describe what has happened to God's good world" (38).

"Discernment does not overlook the brokenness of the world. It does not deny its need of redemption. It does not excuse sinfulness, live in a false reality, or pretend that a damaged statue is just as good as a carefully preserved one. What discernment does is equip us to see the true nature of the world and ourselves--both the good and the bad" (42).

"[Our world] doesn't know the difference between pleasure and goodness...Because in comparison to the brokenness, anything that brings momentary relief feels good even if it doesn't provide lasting goodness" (49).

"In order to find lasting happiness, we must invest in things that last, we must store up 'treasures in heaven.' Because what ultimately makes something good is not whether it brings momentary pleasure but whether it brings us eternal pleasure, whether it satisfies both our bodies and our souls" (52).

"At its essence, worldliness is a disposition of the heart--the belief that goodness comes from the immediate satisfaction of temporal desire" (54).

"You do not develop discernment simply by reading labels, restricting yourself to certain contexts, or following lifestyle rules. You also dn't develop discernment by reacting to evil. As James K. A. Smith describes it, this kind of holistic formation is 'less about erecting an edifice of Christian knowledge than...a matter of developing a Christian know-how that intuitively 'understands' the world in light of the fullness of the gospel.' In other words, you develop discernment by becoming a person who knows how, not simply what, to think" (57).

"Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." --Flannery O'Connor

"While truth is based in facts, it involves more than facts and does not end with them. The detective must root her observations in reality, but solving the case means making sense of reality. As she sorts through the facts, she must know which are important and then coordinate them into a plausible theory. She needs a way of looking at the facts that explains them. She needs a truthful frame.
"This is why pure rationalism and scientism cannot lead us to truth; such approaches cannot tell us how to interpret, arrange, and discern the meaning of what we see, touch, feel, taste, and hear. Nor can they assure that we will be ethical in the process.  Pursuing truth requires more than knowing where the facts lead. It requires the honesty to actually follow them, regardles sof who they implicate.
"In this sense, truth is holistic; it relies on both the material and the immaterial" (74).

"Rather than relying on our own wits, Christians believe that the 'eyes of [our] understanding' are enlightened when we submit ourselves to the One who is truth Himself. Humility--not little gray cells--makes us wise" (74).

 "Finding the truth relies on the character and integrity of the one handling the facts" (75).

"We must allow truth to make us more honest people" (75).

"When we encounter someone who holds a viewpoint we don't agree with, we can begin to view their whole existence through the lens of our disagreement with them. Instead of getting to know them and engaging their ideas, we assume that we already know them because we know where they stand on a certain political or religious question. And the degree to which we disagree with them on this question becomes the degree to which we will disrespect their hunanity. They become our cultural enemy with whom we can't imagine having anything in common. We can't imagine that they, like us, are people who love their families, walk their dogs, work hard at their jobs, enjoy a good book and might just be working toward the common good (even if we disagree about what 'good' looks like)" (86).

"We can also begin to believe that being on top of the heap somehow means that you inherently deserve to be there. After all, in the natural world, the buck with the largest set of antlers is prized because he's been able to elude hunters and predators for years, long enough to grow his 14-point rack. Translating this to human community, wouldn't that mean that the folks at the top of the economic, social, and political ladder somehow deserve to be there? And correspondingly, that folks at the bottom somehow deserve to be there as well?
"But here is where Scripture adjusts our understanding of what is 'natural.' The Scripture teaches us that God, and not our own merit, ordains the course of our lives. None of us can control the family we are born into, the education we receive as children, the social function of dysfunction that we inherit. WE do not get to pick our IQ, our personalities, or our gifting. We are responsible to steward these gifts, but at the end of the day, God makes some of us mice and some of us lions. And he does this, not as a reward for our ability, but for His own good purposes.
"Furthermore, Jesus cautions those with positions of earthly authority to use their influence, not for themselves, but for the good of those under their care. 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them,' He says in Matthew 20. 'It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' (vv. 25-28). It's as if Jesus is asking the lion to protect the lamb" (105).

Of the priests in Malachi 2: "The priests' unfaithfulness to both their wives and their work revealed them to be unfaithful men to the core. In this sense, their adultery did not make them impure; they committed adultery because they were already impure. They had divided hearts" (114).

"One mistake that we can make in pursuing purity is to assume that naivete or ignorance is the same as discernment. But having never encountered evil is not the same as knowing the difference between good and evil or knowing what to do when you encounter it. Quite the opposite, the Scripture suggests that naivete can actually lead to impurity because simple people, as Proverbs calls them, are primed to be manipulated" (117).

"The solution to impurity is not simply abstinence or ignorance; it is to pursue what is pure" (119).

"Ultimately, utilitarianism becomes a threat to discernment when it teaches us to evaluate what is good and bad by earthly definitions of value...When we embrace a utilitarian mindset, what Mark Noll describes as 'dominated by the urgencies of the moment,' there is the possibility that we will miss the values of an eternal God" (134).

"Simply because we are drawn to something does not mean that it is worth pursuing. After all, doesn't the search for purity teach us that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked? How can we trust our own desires?
"In the fourth century, Augustine, a bishop in North Africa, pondered these same questions and suggested that the problem isn't that we love things that we shouldn't, but that we love what we should in the wrong way. Our sense of beauty isn't wrong, but we're not allowing beauty to do what it's supposed to do: draw us to love God more fully and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The fact that we can respond wrongly to beauty helps us to understand the tension between attraction and lust" (134).

"...when the Scripture calls us to whatever is commendable, it is calling us to do something greater than niceness--it's calling us to speak what is right and good. It is calling us to speech that is richer and more robust than platitudes or silence. Remember that discernment is not concerned primarily with our social comfort. It is concerned with goodness" (142).

"Are our words euphemos? Or blasphemous? Do we glorify things that deserve shame? Do we shame things that deserve glory? When Paul writes that it is shameful even to speak of things done in secret, he is not putting a gag order on exposing hidden sins or limiting us to a set of socially acceptable topics. Once again, he's emphasizing that what we choose to speak about and how we speak about it are part of the message we send to each other and the larger culture we create. We must consider and give appropriate weight to each topic" (148).

"Elie Wiesel observes, 'Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.'
"Instead of encouraging silence, Paul calls us to use our words to expose evil, to literally call it out. As much as speaking whatever is commendable compels us to speak appropriately about what is good, it also calls us to speak appropriately about what is bad. And the only appropriate way to speak about evil is to call it by its name" (149).

Footnote on page 159: "The skill of putting a book down is one every reader should master. You do not owe the author a reading. It is the author's job to write in a way that draws you in and keeps you engaged. If this book does not keep your attention, I now extend my unqualified permission to close it and go read something else."

"'Discernment,' C.H. Spurgeon once quipped, 'is not knowing the difference between right and wrong, it is the difference between right and almost right.' Tweaking that ever so slightly, discernment is knowing the difference between what is good and what is better" (167).

"I can trust him enough to walk away from good things because I know that there is no shortage of goodness in His world, and as a good, good Father, He will provide for His children" (168).

"...in his book How to Think, Alan Jacobs notes that none of us can actually think for ourselves" (173). Added to the list.

"Like the human body, the Body of Christ has mechanisms to identify contaminating influences and expel them. But sometimes, the Body can become sensitized and mistake good things as threats and, in an effort to protect itself, will end up attacking itself" (176).

"The terrifying thing about a severe allergic reaction is that, technically the allergen does not harm the body; the reaction does" (176).

"Because discernment sees both the good and the bad, it is neither idealistic nor pessimistic. It affirms the brokenness of this world as well as God's ongoing work of redemption" (190).

"We must seek our value from God, not from what other people think of us. This frees us to make decisions that are truly good rather than pleasing other people" (193).

06.06.2020 🎧 Onward by Russell Moore

The target demographic for this book is those that are, like Moore, in the culture of theological conservative evangelicalism that tends to also be politically conservative. I have some overlap, and my take is: if you fit in this group, I highly recommend it. Moore calls Christians to live biblically, and follow Jesus in valuing eternal kingdom over present power and showing kindness and
demonstrating the dignity of every human life. "The arc of history is long, but it bends to Jesus."

"...the biggest problem is not that we lost the culture war; it's that we never really had one....If the Bible Belt had held a truly 'radical' sort of religious vitality, we ought to see regions with higher church attendances strikingly out-of-step with the rest of the country when it comes to marital harmony, divorce rates, sexual mores, domestic violence, and so on. We're not the cultural warriors we think we are, unless we're fighting for the other side" (18).
"Every genuine culture war starts with friendly fire...A renewal of cultural witness starts where is started in Nazareth, a reconsideration of who we are." 
"A study by one of research group suggested--to much press fanfare-- that a new 'progressive majority' is the face of American religious life. Religious progressives will soon outnumber religious conservatives, and this new 'moral majority' will be a liberal one, the interpretation went. My first question was, 'What is a progressive in this story line?' After all, William Jennings Bryan, the anti-Darwinist of Scopes trial infamy, was a progressive. But so was the biblical inerrantist Calvinist Charles Haddon Spurgeon" (20).
"The church is the embassy of the coming kingdom, not the fullness of that kingdom. Our mission is defined in terms of a gospel appeal to reconciliation now, not in the subjugation of our foes. That's why Jesus read the portion of the scroll about the year of God's favor, but did not read the wording immediately following, about the 'day of the vengeance of our God' (Isa. 61:2). There is a day of judgment, but the church warns of this judgment; the church does not carry it out (1 Cor. 5:12). That's because this time-between-the-times is defined by gospel invitation. As long as it is 'today' it is the 'day of salvation' (2 Cor. 6:2). The gospel itself gives us a vision of the kingdom in which the swords of the Spirit and of the state are keeps separate until the King himself appears to end this suspension of judgment and to make the nations his footstool" (66).
"The kingdom's advance is set in motion by the Galilean march out of the graveyard. We should then be the last people on earth to skulk back in fear or apathy. And we ought to be the last people on earth to uncritically laud any political leader or movement as though this were what we've been waiting for. We need leaders and allies, but we do not need a Messiah. That job is filled, and he's feeling fine. We are neither irrationally exuberant, nor fearfully isolated. We recognize that from Golgotha to Armageddon, there will be tumult--in our cultures, in our communities, and in our own psyches We groan against this, and work to hold back the consequences of the curse. But we do not despair, as those who are the losers in history might. We are the future kings and queens of the universe" (67).
"My denomination was founded back in the nineteenth century by those who advocated for human slavery, and who sought to keep their consciences and their ballots and their wallets away from a transcendent word that would speak against the sinful injustice of a regime of kidnapping, rape, and human beings wickedly deigning to buy and sell other human beings created in the image of God. Slavery, they argued (to their shame), was a 'political' issue that ought not distract the church from its mission: evangelism and discipleship. What such a move empowered was not just social injustice (which would have been bad enough), but also personal sin. When so-called 'simple gospel-peraching' churches in 1856 Alabama or 1925 Mississippi calls sinners to to repentance for fornicating and gambling but not for slaveholding or lynching, those churches may be many things but they are hardly non-political. By not addressing these issues, they are addressing them, by implicitly stating that they are not worthy of the moral scrutiny of the church, that they will not be items of report at the Judgment Seat of Christ. These churches, thus, bless the status quo...

"The truth is, the call to repentance is a necessary word in order to interrupt our headlong rush toward the way that seems right in our own eyes, a way that leads to death. That shows up in our private actions and our corporate decisions. It shows up in the systems we put in place to perpetuate our sin, so that we don't have to consciously think about such things" (99). 
"The idea of aborting an unborn child or abusing a born child or starving an elderly person or torturing an enemy combatant or screaming at an immigrant family, these ought all to be so self-evidently wrong that a 'Sanctity of Human Life Sunday' ought to be unnecessary as 'Reality of Gravity Sunday'" (115).
"...the charge that the pro-life witness of the church is compromised if the church does not support extensive gun-control measures. Some ask, 'Is gun violence not a pro-life issue?' Of course, gun violence is a pro-life issue. Murder is evil and is a violation of the dignity of the person and the right to life. That said, what people mean typically when they speak of gun violence as a pro-life issue is not gun violence, directly, but about gun control measures. Many Christians and other pro-lifers support gun control measures, of course, and some support very extensive measures. But the gun control debate isn't between people who support the right to shoot innocent people and those who don't. It's instead a debate about what works in solving the common goal of ending violent behavior" (129). Emphasis mine, because I want everyone to hear and know these words!!
"When I served, as a very young man, as an intern and then campaign aide to a United States congressman (who was an is strongly pro-life), our only real disagreements came over mandated family medical leave and foreign aid. I was for both, and he was opposed to both. I thought family medical leave, for example, would help to ensure that mothers would be better able to keep their babies, and thus discourage abortion. He thought legislating this federally would prevent small businesses form employing as many people. The single mother I was worried about would, he was afraid, be laid off from her job and be just as vulnerable to the abortion-mongers. I disagreed with him (and I still think I was right), but our disagreement wasn't about the value of human life. We had a difference on the prudential means to get to a common goal" (130). Once again, this almost moves me to tears to just see this articulated. I so wish that the two sides of the political aisle could see this, and stop demonizing the other side!
"We might disagree on the basis of prudence about what specific policies should be in place to balance border security with compassion for the immigrants among us, but pro-life people have no option to respond with loathing or disgust at persons made in the image of God" (132). This is followed by a nice reminder that "No matter how important the United States of America is, there will come a day when the United States will no longer exist" (132).



"Church/state separation does not mean the division of religious people from citizenship. Citizens come to decision-making, and culture-makers come to culture-making, with their consciences formed somewhere by something. A Buddhist may point to his Buddhist principles of the destructiveness of the unrestrained appetites in her reasons why she is concerned about environmental policy. And a Christian is well within the bounds of public discourse to point to the Bible as the reason why she cares about human dignity enough to oppose racially-discriminatory voter suppression or a lowering of penalties for child pornography. Church/state separation means that the church does not bear Caesar's sword in enforcing the gospel, and that Caesar's sword is not to be wielded against the free consciences of persons made in the image of God" (143). I can't help but be reminded of Adventures in Odyssey's summary of this, which, to my recollection, taught that the founding fathers, in all their Christian liberty expression love, created separation between church and state only so that the state couldn't run the church. I love Moore's perspective that it goes both ways. And I can't help but think of DLM, who wrote a book with a similar cover about American Christianity and kind of about how disillusioned she is with it, and came across to me as very confused, and I wonder if she'd been raised in a Christianity like this, would things be more cohesive and whole, less fractured and in need of healing?
 "The police power of the state is set up to maintain public safety and order according to the principles of public justice. Everywhere in the New Testament, the mission of confronting personal sin is given to the church, not to the state. Even in the worst case of sexual immorality, the ultimate step is excommunication, not the setting up of a police state to execute (1 Cor. 5:1-13).

"Any and every sin leads to personal death and judgment, but not every sin is a matter of public injustice. Murder is a personal sin against God and neighbor, yes, but is also an act of injustice and violence in the public sphere, in a way that anger in one's heart against a neighbor is not. Is adultery in the interest of the state? In some ways, 'Yes,' if the state is assigned to determine who is responsible for the breakup of a marriage covenant, in the divvying up of household resources, or in the determining of child custody. But the state has no interest in punishing adultery in terms of its effects on the moral or eschatological well-being of the adulterer. The state is incompetent to judge such things" (144).

"Christians should fight for the liberty of Muslims to be Muslims, to worship in mosques and to freely seek to persuade others that the Koran is the true revelation of God. This isn't because we believe Islamic claims, but precisely because we don't. If we really believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, we don't need bureaucrats to herd people into cowering before it" (145)
"Family issues can prompt some of the most heated 'culture wars' in any society for a couple of reasons. First, they are perhaps the most persona....Furthermore, family issues become more heated because we, naturally, wnt to protect our children form forces we believe will harm them. This can lead to a sort of seething resentment, when are compare mores we believe are going in a bad direction with the vision of the Bible, or, for that matter, just the neighborhood in which we grew up. If we believe, though, in the sovereignty of God, then we believe that we were not born at this time, and in this culture, by accident. If we belong to Christ, then this is our assigned mission field. To rail against the culture is to say to God that we are entitled to a better mission field than the one he has given us. At the same time, if we simply dissolve into the culture around us, or refuse to leave untroubled the questions the culture deems too sensitive to ask, we are not on mission at all" (181).
"Jesus demonstrated that the gospel does not come for those who are sexually 'pure' or with family 'values,' but to the broken sinners, as every last one of us, except him, are. The people who disagree with us on family issues--whether same-sex marriage or cohabitation or monogamy or any other issue--aren't part of some conspiracy, as though they were cartoon super-villains plotting in a lair. They are, like all of us, seeking a way that seems right to them. We ought to love those who disagree with us, including those who see us as bigots. They are not our enemies. This means we ought to stand for Christian conviction, and also avoid ridicule or hostility toward those who disagree" (182).
"We ought also to be those who see family issues as more than sexual issues (though not less than this). If we care about families, rather than just protecting our families, then we will care aobut everything that pulls families apart...[examples of abused women and children, immigrant families]" (183).
"And one of the greatest threats to the family is poverty. We can argue about whether unstable families lead to poverty, or poverty to unstable families, but we ought to recognize that the two go together. Whatever our views on welfare reforms or on the right amount of the minimum wage, we should recognize how much economic hardship is present for single mothers trying to provide for their families in the absence of men who have died, or have left, or are imprisoned. These families should not be demonized to score political points. Again, we may not always agree on what economic policies will lead to family flourishing; there will not always be a clear 'Thus saith the Lord.' But shouldn't we at least have a church injecting a moral consideration into such debates, so that we recognize that we are not green eyeshade-wearing accountants measuring out dollars and cents, but that we must also take into consideration costs on human lives and families? 

"At the same time, we shouldn't pretend that our gospel ministry means simply addressing 'spiritual' issues while avoiding issues of marriage and family. The gospel went forward with a call to repentance from all sin, including sexual and family sins, and the instructions for how to live in this newness of life included a word on reordering sexuality, marriage relationships, extended family, the rearing of children. We must be just as definitive, whatever the social or political or even legal cost. 

"And we should do so as those who recognize that, in the short-term, we have lost the culture war on sexual and family issues...So be it. Long-term, though, we ought to stand by our conviction that marriage and family are resilient precisely because they are embedded into the fabric of creation and thus cannot be upended by cultural mores or by court decrees. The sexual revolution, if we're right about the universe, cannot keep its promises. Unhinged sexual utopianism can only go so far before it leaves the round around it burned over, like every other utopianism. We need to be ready, after all that, to point a light toward older paths, toward water that can satisfy" (184, emphases mine).
Moore describes the Parks & Recreation episode where Leslie Knope teaches sexual education to seniors, and depicts the Christian view as at once prudish, judgmental, and ignorant. Moore says that he did stop watching partway through that episode, and that obviously, he disagrees with the viewpoint that was being expressed. "But that's not why I shut of the television. I don't mind hearing other viewpoints, and I'm not afraid of them...I turned it off because I was bored. This program was presenting a viewpoint with the kind of smug assurance of rightness that simply caricatured, unfairly, the views I hold. My point is not that this was rude to me. The point is that they weren't talking to me at all. The story wasn't intended to engage an alternative position, and to show why it fails to measure up. Instead, the program was meant to cause people who already held such views to nod their heads in affirmation at the morons who oppose good common sense, and to feel much better about their moral and intellectual superiority... Now, in this case, that's fine. There are more people who hold to the view articulated in this program than those who hold to my views, and the program wasn't trying to win an argument anyway. They were reveling in an argument already won.

"I'm not worried about television comedies. I didn't want a boycott or a campaign against them. I was provoked, though, to think about how often we, as the Body of Christ, do the same thing. We can caricature our detractors' positions in the grossest terms, in order to help reassure us that those who oppose us out there are particularly stupid or peculiarly wicked, and we can get 'Amens' from our side. But that's preachiness, not preaching, and there's a difference.

"Jesus' preaching took clear stands, with sharp edges. But Jesus never turned the sword of the Spirif into a security blanket for the already convinced" (198).
"Many of the ideologies and practices and policies we must confront are indeed deadly. But we aren't preaching to those in bondage to such dangers if we simply repeat slogans...Our opponents, are not...conspiratorially plotting the downfall of the good and the true. They believe themselves to be following the right way. Only when we speak to their consciences can we get to where people are, as we all once were, hiding from God" (199).
"When unbelievers hear a canned, caricatured picture of their views, they recognize what I recognized in that television show. They conclude that we don't wish to convince them or even to talk to them, simply to soothe the psychologies of our partisans. Preachy propaganda doesn't arrest the conscience" (199).
"The worst thing that can possibly happen to us has already happened: we're dead. We were crucified at Skull Place, under the wrath of God. And the best thing that could happen to us has already happened; we're alive, in Christ, and our future is seated at the right hand of God, and he's feeling just fine. Jesus is marching onward, with us or without us, and if the gates of hell cannot hold him back, why on earth would we be panicked by Hollywood or Capitol Hill? Times may grow dark indeed, but times have always been dark, since the insurrection of Eden. Nonetheless, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not, the darkness will not, the darkness cannot overcome it. The arc of history is long, but is bends toward Jesus" (204). 
"We want not simply to convey truth claims, but to do so with the northern Galilean accent that makes demons squeal and chains fall. Kindness isn't surrender. Gentleness isn't passivity. Kindness and gentleness, when rooted in gospel conviction, that's war" (205).



I was positively delighted by Moore's count of being encouraged by a mentor that "Of course, there is hope for the next generation of the church. But the leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the Christian subculture. They are probably still pagans" (206).
"Persistence itself is no sign of fidelity" (211).
"...Jesus never promised the triumph of the American church. He promised the triumph of the church" (215).
"Sin is not neatly marked out in silos marked 'personal' and 'social.'"
did he talk about the NT being written to people without power? but we are "more like the Pilates"??

05.30.2020 🎧 Sarced Endurance by Trilia Newbell

"It's tough to understand and balance the fact that our faith is through grace alone by faith alone and we are called to pursue good works to the glory of our Father" (33).

"God's grace is sufficient. Pain is hard, and he knows it. Enduring suffering is at times akin to torture, and he doesn't ask us to deny that. Sometimes we want to give up. He doesn't expect us to grin and bear it, and he doesn't leave us alone. 'His grace is sufficient' means he is with you. He will sustain you with his righteous right hand" (47). True, but the use of that word torture. The suffering of the children of a sovereign God is akin to torture, and yet somehow he is good. Oof.

The choice of Randy Alcorn as an example of endurance irked me. He had to learn humility with a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes (the difficulty of which I have to right to demean, but in this age with treatments and his access to medical care, and his obvious good support network just make it difficult for me to find that very compelling), and he "was arrested for blocking the doors of abortion clinics," for which he had to pay a large settlement and could only make minimum wage or his wages would be garnished, and he still has the royalties of all of his books go to his ministry so that he won't have to pay the settlement against his conscience. Am I the only one who has a nasty taste left in my mouth after hearing that example? Anyway...

"Lift your weak knees, unless they are bowed down in prayer to the One who saves. God isn't asleep; he's awake and active in our midst. If every person leaves the church and we divide in every way possible, we still have a great mission to go and make disciples of all nations. If every social issue that seems to smack Christian ethics in the face becomes law, we continue to preach the truth in love and serve our neighbors" (86).

"Of course, God isn't physically present. We can't touch him or hold his hand. But he is there just the same, guiding our steps and counseling our hearts according to truth, if we'll only listen" (88).