Faith Dance

Wrigley Field

Even people who are not baseball fans enjoy the ambience of Wrigley Field in Chicago where the Cubs play.  Today, Jennifer and I will be here:

The Great Sex Charade

James Loder:

"The great sex charade is the popular celebration in the media and in our society and culture at large of sexuality as the major indicator of intimacy between persons. Our culture is rife with the attention-getting power of sexuality, and we are saturated with the notion that sexual attractiveness is the key to interpersonal success and true happiness. But we do not ask what is at the core of interpersonal success. Culturally co-opted sexuality is a charade, a game designed to conceal the underlying reality it suggests. It is a deceitful rampant pretense to satisfy something in us that is far more profound, namely, the longing for an intimacy that ultimately ties us into the life of God."

He goes on to say that the "intimacy in the Spirit of Christ not only runs deeper than any human "intimacies" but hs the power to redefine them all in terms of one's own in-depth relation to God.  The conclusion to be drawn from this is that spiritual intimacy is definitive of all other versions of "intimacy," including sexual claims to such closeness.  The sex charade appears and thrives in church life as in the world because we do not know how nor do we have the theological nerve to investigate the depth of spiritual intimacy that we want in all our leaders and fellow members in the koinonia.  Such spiritual intimacy is the most truly explosive and most neglected force in the life and death of our church communities."

Gnosticism, Social Bodies, & Friendship Between the Sexes

One of the more interesting reactions I've encountered on more than one occasion when I have talked about or written on the reality of deep friendship between the sexes is the assumption that I am advocating something that borders on Gnostic spirituality between men and women. 

One of the central tenants to Gnosticism is that the material world is inferior to the realm of the spirit (and therefore sex is inferior) is something that man needs salvation from.  Gnosticism (at least the popular version orthodox Christians react too) exalts the "spirit" over the "flesh." 

The thinking is that if Christians (such as myself) desire a deep intimacy with the other gender, but not sex, they are actually flirting with a gnostic relational spirituality that desires to put the "spirit" over the flesh.  For an essential part of a man and woman in this life  is the desire to consumate the relationship in the fullness of physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy.  All orthodox Christians currently believe that men and women enjoy the full range of intimacy when faithful, covenantal sexual intercourse happens between husband and wife.  Its the emphasis upon the language and experience of the fullness in body and spirit between man and woman over against the notion of a limited express of physical intimacy between a man and woman as friends that inspires "Gnostic" problems in male-female friendships.

Cross-Sex Friendship Quote of the Week

"Faith awakens trust in the still unrealized possibilities in human beings--in oneself and in other people.  So faith means crossing the frontiers of the reality which is existent now, and has been determined by the past, and seeking the potentialities for life which have not yet come nto being."  Jurgen Moltmann  The Spirit of Life

Holy Friendships, Boundaries, and God's Purposes

"Yet many of us spend our lives concealing and containing ourselves from others.  This is a particular problem for clergy, who tend to inhabit the role of experts or professionals and thus see people as parishoners, or potential parishoners, but rarely as people with whom we can open up in vulnerability to the intimacy of friendship.  We complain about living in a fishbowl, but we also feel safe in that glass enclosure.  We allow ourselves to be seen, but we control when to touch or be touched, when to conceal our passions and emotions and when to reveal them.  To make ourselves known to another is to not live without boundaries.  But we need to clarify how those boundaries reflect God's purposes and not simply our personal preferences." 

Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry

A Fun Day in Lincoln Land

Yesterday, at 7:30 a.m. Chicago time, Jennifer and I left for trip to Springfield Illinois to see where Abraham Lincoln lived before his presidency.  He lived in this house:

I had been here on a school trip back when I was 12.  Jennifer had never been here.  This is a shot of the house.

A Church Father's Counsel: Escape Rape thru Suicide

Church Father Jerome warning virgins about the cost of losing their viginity: "Although God can do all things, He cannot raise up a virgin after she has fallen.  He has power, indeed, to free her from the penalty, but He has no power to crown one who has been corrupted."  In case of rape, he warned virgins, "In persecutions it is not lawful to commit suicide except when one's chastity is jeopardized."

Forgetful of Their Sex

Something to Think About

"The relative lack of discussion about virginity, monasticism, widowhood, and the like in contemporary culture, especially when compared with the burgeoning literature, think tanks, and focus groups devoted to promoting successful marriages, only serves to put these states of life in greater relief.  They appear distant from each other; too distant almost to be considered even subset states of life within the state of life called Christian discipleship...It is time to consider the problem is more intently, especially at this time when marriage intoxicates cultural imagination on a number of levels.  Is it any surprise, indeed, that people who are single might be pining for a relationship, any relationship however problematic, in an oversexed and overmarried culture?"

Water Is Thicker Than Blood

 

The Positive Side to Attractional Churches

This really did happen.

I Love This

I love this piece from Miroslav Volf in Exclusion & Embrace:

"Men's identity is not and cannot be only men's affair, just as women's identity is not and cannot be only women's affair."  Gender identities are essentially related and therefore the specific wholeness of each can be achieved only through the relation to the other, a relation that neither neutralizes or synthesizes the two, but negotiates the identity of each by readjusting it to the identity of the other."