Tag: love

Celebrating Valentine’s Day During Lent

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There is something a bit awkward about Valentine’s Day falling the day after Ash Wednesday this year. The day defined by chocolate, wine, flowers and basic indulgence following on the heels of the day when many Christians commit to fasting from such very indulgences presents a dilemma for those serious about observing the rhythms of the church year. The question arises – how can one participate in the Lenten practices of sacrifice on a day dedicated to celebrating the joys of love?

I wonder though if the problem is not so much this year’s particular calendar, but the individualistic ways we have come to view both Lent and love.

Lent traditionally is a season of penance and sacrifice intended to prepare the Christian community for the period of remembering the events of Holy Week, but in contemporary times those sacrifices are often only of the personal kind. We give up pleasures (chocolate) or habits (Facebook or TV) for the sake of drawing ourselves closer to God. But while pietism that relies solely on personal sacrifices that affect us and us alone can serve to draw us emotionally closer to God it can also make it easier for us to forget that our faith is not something that concerns just us.

If we believe in the Christian teachings that we exist as members of the body of Christ then the disciplines we engage in should always work towards the good of that body. The gospels speak of practices like uplifting the lowly, welcoming the outcast, and making God’s house a place of prayer for all peoples as part of what it means to work for the good of that body. While being personally closer to God might serve the good of the body in some ways, it is rare that Lenten practices are conceived in such a way. Giving up chocolate might help my diet and make it difficult to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, but it has very little to do with working for the good of others.

In fact, according to the legends, Saint Valentine provides a better example of living into those gospel ways than our modern observances of Lent. The stories hold that Valentine was a Roman priest who lived during the reign of Claudius Gothicus. The official imperial policy of the day was that it was illegal for Christians to be married or receive aid of any kind, but Valentine chose to defy the laws of the land and marry couples anyway. For this he was arrested and martyred on February 14th.

To me, Valentine’s actions embody what it means to live as a member of a body. He chose to love and serve others despite the imperial voices dictating that he withhold aid. As a priest, he could easily have devoted himself in such a time of persecution to personal devotions that would have drawn him closer to God (and saved his own neck), but instead he opted to help those in need and include those the powers-that-be demanded be excluded. He became a martyr for the sake of love.

I wonder how different the church could be if during the season of Lent this year, we Christians chose not to see Valentine’s Day as an awkward dilemma to deal with but as a guide for our practices. What if we too chose to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of love?

Instead of giving up chocolate or Facebook for Lent, we could work to aid those our culture dictates we exclude. We could provide the blessing of marriage to those our culture forbids to let marry. We could provide aid to those our culture says are unwelcome sojourners in our midst. We could work to ensure that our churches truly are a welcoming house of prayer for all peoples. It may be uncomfortable and perhaps even difficult to work for the good of those our culture would rather us despise or exclude (although I doubt it will get us beheaded), but perhaps that’s what being a martyr for the sake of love means these days.

It is a lot easier to focus on our personal spiritual development than it is to work for the good of others. Perhaps not eating chocolate for a few weeks might help us pray more, but the way of Christ implies that the discipline of sacrifice should extend beyond just ourselves to help create the sort of world where the lowly are uplifted and the outcast welcomed. Having Valentine’s Day at the very start of Lent this year can be about more than just us feeling guilty about indulging during Lent, it can remind us that sacrificing ourselves for the sake of love is the greatest sacrifice of all.

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Is Justice Violent?

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At the Wild Goose Festival Melvin Bray raised a question in one of his talks that is one that I’ve been wondering recently as well. After a few days of many of us discussing the myth of redemptive violence (as we honored the recent passing of Walter Wink), Melvin courageously asked out loud why is it that those who propose nonviolence always seem to equate violence with force? I had to applaud him for his audacity, for I, even as one who is committed to nonviolence, often find myself at odds with the primary voices within that movement because I am also committed to justice (restorative, not retributive). For as Melvin pointed out, taking action, standing-up for the oppressed, and ensuring the hungry are fed are all actions that ultimately require some sort of force – but must that force be labeled and rejected as violence?

The argument from many within the nonviolence perspective is that to stand up to injustice is a force that implies violence. To tell sex traffickers to stop kidnapping and selling women (or to enact laws that do so) is a violent act against their wills. To stand up for fair wages does violence against those who exploit others by forcing them to put an end to their practices. Those that support nonviolence argue that Christians truly committed to such pacifism should therefore not involve themselves in actions that make use of such violent force. Christians can care for the abused woman and befriend the trafficker in hopes of modeling a different way of life, but not force them to stop hurting others. Consequently many of the most prominent voices for nonviolence also argue against social justice as it too is a form of violence in their minds.

But as Melvin pointed out, to love others means that we cannot be resigned to their suffering. To be afraid that we might do violence to another if we force them to stop hurting others in many cases allows violence to the oppressed to continue. This is why I think affirming a distinction between violence and force is so important. Many pacifists who equate the two argue that even if one sees someone being attacked or raped, one should not resort to violence to stop it. But there is a huge difference between forcing someone to stop hurting someone else and hurting them back. Yes, it requires force to stop a fight or to pull someone off a victim, but it seems far from Christian to argue that it is worse to do supposed violence to someone with such actions than it is to allow the suffering of those already being violated to continue. Same thing with injustice. Standing up against oppression and exploitation requires forceful words, actions, and laws to stop those doing violence to others, but to refuse to use such force is to essentially give approval of the violence that is already being done.

What complicates matters is that those pacifists arguing against social justice often do so from a position of power and privilege as most are straight, white, Southern males. I have a difficult time accepting the theological argument from someone in such a position that it is wrong to stand up to oppression and seek justice. This was an argument used often against Martin Luther King Jr. as the prominent white pacifists of his time criticized his nonviolent marches and calls for bus boycotts as being too forceful (and therefore violent). Yet without such uses of nonviolent force, the blatant oppression of blacks in the USA would not have changed in the way it did. Force is uncomfortable and it challenges the power of the privileged, but that does not make it violent.

I therefore appreciated Melvin’s willingness to bring up this question. I know that it is not an issue for many Christians (as nonviolence has sadly become a minority tradition in the church these days), but for those of us committed to peacemaking it is often the elephant in the room. Those of us who care about justice and work to put an end to oppression non-violently find it difficult to constantly be told by the major pacifist theologians safe in their academic positions that we are the ones sinning by standing up for justice. But the force of love that accompanies the breaking-in of the Kingdom of God in this world is not content with letting the suffering of others continue. I have to believe that letting that love push into the world and overcome the darkness is the call of Christ. I am committed deeply to peace, but because of that overwhelming force of love, I must also be committed to justice.

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Procreation, Birth Control, and Choice

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I have a feeling this post is going to get me in trouble with some people. This is a conversation that is so polarizing in our culture that it has become impossible to explore why we hold the views we do and the ways they have shaped our culture without being accused of betraying one side or the other. But I’ve been in an interesting place recently as I’ve been listening to the political rhetoric about birth control as well as almost coincidentally reading traditional church teaching on the sacrament of marriage for my ethics class in seminary. And while I fully admit to not agreeing with all that I have been reading (and acknowledge that the theological stance of the church rarely translates into the understandings of the masses), it is helping me to see the underlying point behind the impulse that has unfortunately become a war against birth control and women. So this post is my thinking aloud as I work through class discussions in relation to these recent debates.

Let me come out and say that I agree with the premise that one of the purposes of marriage is procreation. But by that I do not assume as it is taught by the Catholic Church (and recently adopted by evangelicals) that sex (marriage?) therefore must be limited to being between a man and a woman who must be open to conceiving children with every sex act. Procreation has unfortunately been co-opted into a very limited (and very culturally modern) view of family that assumes simply producing children is the ultimate goal. But the procreative orientation is far bigger than that.

Marriages should be procreative because all relationships should be oriented around encouraging and welcoming new life in all its forms. Sometimes this involves the bearing of children or the adoption of children into one’s household, but it also simply involves an openness to accepting responsibility for others. Partners, friends, communities all should be procreative – they should encourage life and take responsibility for caring for others in this world. Instead of selfishly turning inward to care only for one’s personal wants and needs (as an individual, couple, or community), it is to accept that we are all responsible for the well-being or the shalom of others. To be procreative is to care for not just our own children, but to support the children in our neighborhood or church by willingly sacrificing our time to care for and serve them. It is caring for the children in our global community who lack proper nutrition, or access to clean water and health care. It is to care enough to work to stop human trafficking and sex slavery that deny many children around the world a right to a whole and healthy life.

To be in relationship is to commit to support and sustain life in such ways. Marriage, at least in the way the church has traditionally understood it, is a public covenant of that commitment. Yes, some influenced by the cultural definition that marriage is simply about feelings of love or two people trying to make each other happy, have accepted a similarly limiting definition of procreation as only being about the biological production of children. For some this restrictive stance leads them to seeing children as choices not as blessed members of the community. So when marriage is just about two people in love, then children are something that the couple must either be protected from (so therefore we must have safe-sex to prevent the unwanted dependency of children) or it is something that couples simply add on as if they were an accessory to make the family picture look complete. On the opposite extreme, this limited view produces the idea that one can impose through legislation restrictions against birth control, same-sex unions, and women’s agency. When individual choice and happiness are the guiding reasons for doing anything, morality (of any sort) can only be imposed by law and sadly gets reduced to such absurd extremes in the process.

When Mike and I got married we chose as our wedding “hymn” “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” We had a number of people question that choice since the song isn’t about romantic love (what people often assume the sole point of marriage is), but love for God and neighbor. But we knew that we were not entering into a relationship just for our sake, but to mutually strengthen each other to better serve God in this world – be that through one day caring for children or through accepting responsibility for caring for the local and global communities we are a part of. We did end up procreating by having children of our own, but even as we seem to fit this culture’s assumed normative ideas of marriage, we constantly try to work to expand what it means to be in relation with each other and our community. I don’t accept that as a mom my sole responsibility is to make my husband happy and to pour myself into my kids (which these days seems to simply just be about who can pretend to live-up to the perfection of one’s Pinterest board). Yes, loving and caring for my husband and kids is part of my responsibility, but so is loving mercy, seeking justice, and walking humbly with God. I am procreative in my so-called heteronormative marriage – but so are my single friends, my gay and lesbian friends, my childless married friends, and yes, even my children as they learn to live in communally loving and responsible ways.

I reject the absurdity of the birth control debate not just because it is hurtful, but because it misses the point. But at the same time I reject the cultural lie that my individual choices are all that matter. We are all part of a community and therefore our relationships cannot just be about meeting our personal needs, but instead must procreatively support and nurture life in all its forms. If birth control helps some people actually be more supportive of life, then let’s celebrate and fund it. Sadly birth control is often simply viewed as a matter of choice which has allowed us to view children simply as a threat to our (false sense of) independence or as an accessory to our constructed life. But banning or limiting birth control so as to impose a limited idea of procreation onto all people doesn’t solve that problem. To truly support a traditional view of the intent of procreation the place to start is instead to encourage people to think more communally, to see themselves as responsible for caring for the needs of their local, national, and global community (which might include having children), and to work to support and encourage life in whatever ways they can within those relationships. That is what good marriages – good relationships – should do. But somehow I don’t see those publicly speaking out against birth control these days deciding to call people to live communally and to support life (and children) by seeking justice for the poor and the suffering.

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To Occupy, Liberate, and Love

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Although I am late to the game, I have recently started watching through the newer seasons of Doctor Who. The Season 3 episode “Gridlock” has been haunting me since I watched it. In this episode the Doctor and Martha Jones visit New New York in the year 5 Billion and 43 where they find an underground world consisting of one massive traffic jam. In an overpopulated world, underworld families live in small flying cars on a deadly polluted underground highway. It can take years to travel a few miles, and so they exist isolated in their cars as they inch forward through the gridlock. The commuters have hope that the police will one day open more lanes or solve the traffic problems and they then take comfort in the moment by singing nostalgic but meaningless hymns (like “The Old Rugged Cross”) during broadcasted daily reflection moments. The Doctor steps into this world and breaking all established rules of traffic discovers that the overworld has been wiped out leaving the commuters stuck in hopeless and pointless gridlock. He subsequently flings open the doors to the overworld, showing them the way out if they are willing to simply fly themselves out into the light.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

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