Interpreting Adam and Eve – Part 2

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The second part of my personal history of relating to the Adam and Eve narrative
(Read Part 1 here)

In college I also first encountered the significance of the Adam and Eve narrative in regard to gender roles. While I was at Wheaton College, the college, in partnership with the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, held a series of lectures on the biblical roles for men and women. Key to many of those lectures were discussions regarding the correct translation and interpretation of the term “ezer kenedgo” in Genesis. What I heard them argue was that the term meant that women were created to help and serve men. While not ontologically different than men (women are created in God’s image) women and men have complementary roles. Men therefore have the burden of leading and providing for the family and the church while women are to submit to that leadership as they help men with that difficult task.

Central to this complementarian position is the situating of the establishment of women’s identity as a helper before the Fall. Male headship and women’s role as helpers cannot then be blamed on sin, but must be accepted as God’s design for men and women. Given this interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve and the heightened awareness of that interpretation the series of lectures promoted at my college, it became very difficult to hold to any divergent interpretation. If one spoke of egalitarianism, one was told that to be a Christian who believed in the Bible one had to be a complementarian. It was the same argument based on an inerrant foundationalist approach to the Bible that I had heard used to argue against evolution, but now it was used to silence any questions about women’s roles. Similarly, girls who dared to ask a guy out on a date were mocked for usurping the leadership in the relationship. Once when a girl was asked to say a prayer during a chapel service, she was shouted down by someone who quoted Bible verses at her about women not being permitted to speak in church.

As one with emerging egalitarian leanings at the time, I struggled with this interpretation of Genesis. Yet at the same time, I believed that to question the Bible was a sin. I felt that to affirm the full equality of women I had to reject the Bible (and therefore my faith) entirely. Genesis became a battle ground. Either one accepted Genesis or one accepted science and the equality of women, there was no middle ground. It eventually took me leaving the world of conservative evangelicalism behind before I could admit that such choices presented false dichotomies.

For years after I rejected the evangelical approach to Genesis (as I had been taught), I treated the Genesis narrative with ambivalence. I knew I did not have to interpret it in light of creationism and complementarianism, but the way those ideologies had been used to silence and control questions left me with lingering uncertainties about Genesis. I finally found my way back to Genesis through my reading of authors like N.T. Wright and Brian Mclaren who focus on the Jewish cultural and theological roots of the New Testament story. Such a perspective rooted the narrative arc of the Bible in the Abrahamic Covenant of the people of God being blessed so as to be a blessing to the nations. This approach opened up for me the possibility to approach scripture, and even the Adam and Eve story, as part of a theological narrative that emerged out of a specific cultural setting. I find myself therefore recently both engaging the Genesis narrative as response to Ancient Near-Eastern mythology that shaped the Hebrew faith and as a narrative grounding for Christian theology. The historical approach fascinates me, but it is in the theological approach that I find the most meaning.

For example, instead of reading the Adam and Eve story as a story about science or gender roles, I see in it the basis for why humanity is to be valued and treated with dignity. The affirmation in this religious text that humans bear the image of God implies for me that to treat another person with injustice is to mock and mistreat the very image of God. I’ve similarly come to interpret the narrative of the Fall through a theological lens as well seeing Adam and Eve’s act less as an infraction that has to be punished, but as a failure to trust in God’s timing as they seek their telos of becoming ever more like the God they image. It is a story telling how humans are both image-bearers of the divine and yet must accept the limits of creation, time, and space. Like the tale of Pandora’s Box, Adam and Eve’s impatience and attempt to tap into instant godlikeness brought disaster. The moral of the tale is a reminder that we must accept the embodied life we have and relationally journey toward more fully reflecting the image of God as the finite creatures that we are.

This theological interpretation subsequently informs practical living. Given that the world is hurting and because our very being is to reflect God’s image we are to love the world just as God loves us. This isn’t just some inner warm-fuzzy that makes us feel close to God – it involves action. If we are moving closer to God then we will act like God and care for that which is made in God’s image – in short God’s creation. Hurting others, destroying the environment, being greedy, achieving at the expense of others – all these things don’t acknowledge our identity as being made in God’s image. Accepting who we are, our vocation as image-bearers, involves a responsibility to live for others and work for their good. God has blessed us abundantly, so by nature we are to bless others.

From the literalism of my youth to the contextual and theological lenses of my present readings, how I have interpreted the story of Adam and Eve has shifted dramatically over time. I look forward to being shaped in yet more ways as I continue to engage the text in the years to come.

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Interpreting Adam and Eve – Part 1

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In one of my classes recently I was asked to reflect back on the various ways I have encountered and interpreted the story of Adam and Eve over the course of my life. It was a revealing exercise because it helped us see not only how we have changed over time but also what sort of things influence how we read and interpret the Bible. I thought it would be fun to post what I wrote here to give you some background of where I came from (look for Part 2 tomorrow) and to hear about your experiences with this text as well.

As I reflect back upon my earliest recollections of being taught the Adam and Eve story (which always involved flannelgraphs), what stands out is the portrayal of Satan as the main character in the story. Before my Sunday School teacher ever began telling the story of the Fall of Man (and it was always the masculine term that was used), we were taught the story of the Fall of Satan. I vividly recall flannelgraphs of angels (all blue eyed, blond haired men in gold tinted robes) standing on clouds before a golden mansion in the sky. As the tale unfolded, Satan was too proud to obey God and so was cast out of heaven and turned into a serpent as punishment. The teachers were then quick to explain that like in the Chronicles of Narnia, in the Garden of Eden all the animals were capable of speaking and so Satan simply blended in with the other animals (which is why Adam and Eve didn’t find it odd when he spoke to them).

After establishing the history of Satan’s (the serpent’s) presence in the Garden, teachers would place the images of Adam and Eve onto the flannelboard. They were always conveniently situated behind bushes and trees, and while Adam was always blond, Eve was always a brunette. As best as I can recall from what I was taught, Eve (Adam was never involved) was persuaded to eat the fruit of the tree by the power of Satan. The story then moved to the scene of Adam and Eve fleeing the Garden into a world of darkness and an angel with a flaming sword being placed before the locked gates of Eden (which we were told still exists to this day, just concealed from human eyes).

The point of the story though was that it was powers beyond human control that caused the Fall – evil powers that are still in control of the world. Sin wasn’t so much the fault of people, but the outcome of a cosmic battle between good and evil that will not be resolved until after the Rapture and Tribulation when Satan is confined for a thousand years. After that time, as I was taught, he will be released and although he will try to then bring sin back into the world, God will finally send him into the fiery pits of Hell to be tormented forever. Our lives should then be centered around resisting Satan, which primarily means always obeying God, our parents, our teachers, and any other authority (especially the government and policemen).

As a child I remember wondering why, if Satan was the cause of sin, God didn’t send him to burn in hell right away. It also greatly confused me when in church I would hear that we are totally depraved since sin has been passed (genetically) to us from Adam and Eve. If Satan was the one to be blamed for sin, it seemed odd to me that the one act of Eve eating the fruit should affect all people forever as such. But this was the interpretation of the Adam and Eve story that I held to for most of my childhood. It actually came as a shock to me when I finally read Genesis for myself and realized that the story of the Fall of Satan was not part of the narrative. When I would ask Sunday School teachers about this, I was generally told that the Satan story was somewhere in Isaiah or Ezekiel. Since I believed that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God (i.e. had been dictated by God and was therefore without contradictions or mistakes) and if a passage talked about Satan being cast down it must be referring to an angelic being and not an earthy ruler, I took them at their word.

My perspective on the Adam and Eve story shifted in focus when I was in 6th grade and first encountered the creation vs. evolution debates. Whatever the theological spin I had been taught, underlying it was the assumption that the Genesis account was an accurate portrayal of historic events. In the modernistic epistemological framework of the churches I attended, if the Bible said God created the earth in six days, then it had to have occurred in six literal twenty-four hour days. If the Bible said that Adam and Eve were the first humans, then there could be absolutely no truth to the fairy tales of evolution. And since the Bible says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), then to deny the historic reality of the Fall was to not only deny the truth of scripture, but to deny the reality of sin and blaspheme against God. One could not be a Christian unless one admitted to one’s depravity and one could not admit to such unless he or she believed in a literal and historic Adam and Eve. Essentially the message I was taught was “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (and Creationism) and thou will be saved.”

I recall becoming confused when in sixth grade at my public school my teacher said something about the dinosaurs all being extinct before people existed, so I raised my hand to say “But the Bible says Adam named all the animals, so he had to have named the dinosaurs.” My teacher told me that she didn’t believe that the Adam and Eve story really happened, and I sat there appalled and convinced that my teacher was going to hell. I often challenged teachers in public school when they would teach evolution, and felt like I was being faithful to God and the Bible for being persecuted for my beliefs (i.e. having people disagree with me). I even went before the Austin school board to complain about the religious intolerance of having to be taught evolution in school – to which the school board replied that under no circumstances is evolution allowed to be taught in Texas schools so I must be mistaken in what I was hearing from all my teachers.

As I entered high school and then attended the conservative evangelical Wheaton College, I encountered interpretations that challenged my faith in creationism in small ways. Some suggested that the term “day” in Genesis might mean something different to God than our conception of days as twenty-four hour periods, since the Bible does say that to God a thousand years is like a day. Others went so far as to wonder if God perhaps used evolution to create life and then breathed souls into a specific Adam and Eve at some point along the way. At the time these views seemed extreme and liberal for to question scripture in any way was to me to destroy the entire foundation of Christianity. But hearing those questions from committed Christians started the long process of my rethinking what I believed regarding the Bible, theology and faith.

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Dangerous Hope in The Hunger Games

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The Hunger Games is a story about hope. What begins as a hope to merely survive turns into hope that a better world is possible.

In the face of starvation, oppressive government, economic inequalities, the people of Panem have very little hope. And the ruling Capitol knows that. As the Capitol reaps children from the districts as tribute for its sick and twisted spectacle of the Hunger Games, it dangles the smallest thread of hope in front of those who have no choice but to go along with the Capitol’s mandates. For even as twenty-four young people are sent into an arena to fight to the death, the Capitol offers the hope of a life of luxury for the victor. All that person has to do is play the Capitol’s game, slaughter the other contestants, and give the watching world a good show and he or she can grasp that better world he always dreamed of.

So I loved this scene with President Snow and Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane that was added to the film version of The Hunger Games –

“Hope… it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine – as long as it’s contained.”

A little hope can keep people in line. Offer people rewards in heaven someday after they die as long as they are good submissive people now and you keep them subdued. Promise people a secure society as long as we write them a blank check to invade other countries and torture people and you can do whatever you want. Encourage people with, “may the odds be ever in your favor,” and some will actually train for the chance to win the Games.

The Capitol knows how the play the Games. It is a festival in the Capitol and something to be endured in the districts – a perfect balance of entertainment and dread that ensures nothing will ever change. One of the most disturbing images in the film was not of the Games themselves, but of a child in the Capitol opening a gift of a toy sword from his father and then using it to play-act at slaughtering his sister as if he were in the Hunger Games. When death is celebrated to the extent that it is truly child’s play or it is something that must be endured for the chance of survival and freedom – the people are effectively contained.

And we wonder why Jesus made Rome so uneasy that they publicly executed him as a warning to others. He offered people real hope. Not just the hope of a happier future someday in heaven, or the empty hope of violent rebellion – but a completely different way of living where no one went hungry, the oppressed were set free, and the marginalized welcomed. His followers were accused of turning the world upside-down and they sparked riots for how they disrupted unjust economic systems. Instead of encouraging the poor that if they too exploited others they could be rich someday, Jesus called the rich to end their practices that took advantage of others. His wasn’t a hope that ensured the status quo never changed; he offered dangerous hope, a spark that kindled into a movement that truly did turn the world upside-down.

This scene with President Snow in The Hunger Games of course sets up the story for the next two movies. The girl on fire becomes the spark that sets the world aflame – plunging Panem into violent rebellion. It is a hope in a better world that cannot be contained. Yet ultimately, as Katniss discovers, it is not the fires of rage but the hope of love that is most needed. The violence only continues the Capitols’ Games, with the districts play-acting like that child with the sword. But just like the Capitol citizens who were so brilliantly portrayed in the film as brightly colored and made-up facades – devoid of any substance or character at all – the violence too proves to be an empty hope.

Winning the games costs everything you are as Peeta later confesses to the people of Panem. It is not worth gaining the world and losing your soul. There is no hope in that. Where hope is found in The Hunger Games is in the image of the dandelion in the spring – the image of rebirth that sustains life. The dandelion is the symbol that one need not trust the Capitol for one’s daily bread, that self-sacrificial love is better than revenge, and that goodness survives even destruction. This is dangerous hope that declares freedom from being a piece in the Games. This is the sort of hope that got Jesus crucified. This is hope that cannot be contained.

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For more about how The Hunger Games can help us understand Jesus’ message of hope, see my book The Hunger Games and the Gospel: Bread, Circuses, and the Kingdom of God.

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Talking about The Hunger Games and the Gospel

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Things have been a bit crazy around here with the release of my book The Hunger Games and the Gospel. I loved the books (and can’t wait to see the movie), so it’s been a blessing to be able to write about the ways this powerful story can help us better understand our faith. As I wrote in the book –

To explore the intersection of The Hunger Games and the Gospel is to discover echoes of the good news in the pages of these young adult science fiction books. The good news that Jesus taught of the Kingdom of God offered tangible ways for how a world full of injustice and oppression can be transformed into one of hope—which was a message of good news back when Jesus first preached it and still is for us today. And it’s a message that resonates all throughout the imaginative narrative of The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is not the Gospel, or even an allegory of the Gospel story, but it reflects the good news, helping to illuminate the path of Kingdom living for readers today.

I wanted to share here a few of the things I have posted elsewhere about The Hunger Games as well as some of the things others have been saying about it. And for all my readers here – thank you so much for your support!

From my article The Hunger Games: An Allegory of Christian Love – Huffington Post Religion (their title, not mine).

After first reading “The Hunger Games” series, I was surprised to encounter the “Team Peeta” and “Team Gale” rivalry on many of the fansites. Maybe it is because I am not a teenage girl, but I was dismayed to see such a profound story reduced to the trivial level of Twilight’s love triangle. Yes, in this tale of young Katniss Everdeen’s struggle to survive in the dystopian world of Panem, her friends Peeta and Gale are presented as potential love interests. But “The Hunger Games” trilogy is not a mere love story; it is a story about Love.

While it might seem strange to say that a dystopian young adult novel about children killing each other for the entertainment of an indulgent privileged class is about love, as the trilogy unfolds love emerges as the theme holding the narrative together. This is not simply romantic love, but the kind of love that nurtures and sustains life. Those familiar with the teachings of Jesus would recognize it as the sort of love he requests of his followers. Love that sacrifices itself for the sake of others, that sees the hurt and pain in the world and offers healing, and that sees the hungry and feeds them.

From my article Life Under Empire – Sojourners April 2012

THE HOPE IN the face of oppression that Jesus offered is still good news for the world today. Defiant hope may be one reason Katniss’ story resonates with so many readers. We in the United States could be the new Roman Empire or the real Capitol. The districts that labor to meet our needs, often under harsh conditions and for little pay, are the countries of the developing world. Our wealth and power allow us to impose unfair trade laws and build unregulated factories in other countries so that we can live in relative opulence while others toil to provide our food, clothing, and electronics. And as in Panem, anyone who questions our supremacy may face dire consequences.

Praise for The Hunger Games and the Gospel

  • “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Julie Clawson finds everyday justice in the Hunger Games trilogy, but what may surprise and delight is that she reads the story so well and writes so beautifully about the lessons she finds there. Everyone who loves The Hunger Games should read this book.”
    – Greg Garrett, author of Faithful Citizenship, One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter, and The Other Jesus
  • “Are we living in the United States of Panem? The Hunger Games trilogy’s depiction of a wealthy, totalitarian regime that exploits its conquered neighbors is more than fiction. The series brings to life the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day and suggests a searing indictment of contemporary American imperialism. Using a framing structure of the Beatitudes, Julie Clawson powerfully explores Katniss’s suffering as a lens for understanding Jesus’ passion for loving our neighbors and building a better world.”
    – Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood and What Would Buffy Do?
    Jana posted further comments at her blog as well.
  • “What happens when the dystopic world of Panem, ancient biblical faith and contemporary life in a consumerist culture all meet? You get a book like “The Hunger Games and the Gospel.” And it all comes down to living under the oppressive power of empire. Suzanne Collins’ wonderful Hunger Games trilogy cries out for precisely this kind of Christian cultural engagement. Always honoring the integrity of Collins’ work, Julie Clawson plays with the resonances and analogies that can be drawn between the trilogy, the Bible and contemporary life in empire. Working from a breadth of biblical knowledge and taking the virtue ethic of Jesus (usually named the Beatitudes) as her starting point, Clawson offers us a reading rich in wisdom, prophetic insight and hope for living a subversive life in the face of empire. I am very excited about this book–and it is sending me back to the original trilogy for yet another read.”
    – Brian J. Walsh, author of Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination and co-author of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement 

    Brian also posted about the book at the Empire Remixed blog.

  • “There is no questions that The Hunger Games Triology has touched something deep in the psyche of its millions of readers, stirring up the questions and uncertainties that we all foster about our future. With sharp clarity and stunning insight, Julie Clawson not only helps us understand our visceral response to the series, but does so by interweaving it with Jesus’ Beatitudes. The result points realistic a hope for today and for the future.”
    -Jamie Arpin-Ricci, author The Cost of Community: Jesus, St. Francis & Life in the Kingdom
  • A great review from Marty Alan Michelson
  • Rachel Held Evans writes –
    “I admit I am usually skeptical about books that claim to offer a “Christian perspective” on popular culture. But I trust Julie Clawson. And she does not disappoint. Not unlike the Hunger Games series itself, I read The Hunger Games and the Gospel in one sitting. Clawson does a fantastic job of reminding readers that Collins’ world of occupation, oppression, excess, and poverty is not so far removed from our own, and that it is exactly the kind of world in which Jesus himself lived.”
  • And mentions in the Desert News and the National Review.
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The World is Watching The Hunger Games

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In one week the world will be watching as the The Hunger Games movie hits the large screen. Some are heralding this film as the most important movie of our time. Why? Because it tackles deep political and ethical issues while still remaining a popular film. In other words, its reach is far wider than any other medium addressing issues like oppression, poverty, and social injustice. Yes, it is a tale of adventure and survival against all odds, but it is the only popular medium in recent years to tackle the tough questions about economic oppression and not be dismissed immediately as socialist. On the contrary, the film is being embraced and is posed to be one of the largest blockbusters ever.

Granted, not everyone is embracing the film for its political message. The stars of the show have graced the covers of numerous magazines, the red-carpet premiere was broadcast live on television, and tumblr and Pinterest sites are flooded with images of fans’ favorite celebrities from the film. I recently picked up a copy of Glamour magazine to see Jennifer Lawrence (who plays Katniss) not only on the cover but in a multiple page spread in a variety of stylish dresses and hair-dos. In short, Jennifer has had done to her what the Capitol does to Katniss – beautify her for the public’s consumption. And just like the Capitol with the Hunger Games Tributes, we are devouring the celebrity hype.

The process of glamourizing a person to appeal to a cultural idea of beauty in The Hunger Games book was an indictment of the shallowness of the Capitol. It was a sign of their frivolity and excess that is juxtaposed against the dire poverty of the surrounding districts. The people in the Capitol threw their money at body modifications and lavish parties while the districts starved. Not much different than us in the United States who have no problem buying cheap clothing and luxury goods produced by oppressed and underpaid workers in the districts developing countries that surround us.

I appreciate the ironic gesture that the marketers of the film developed. They know that the United States is Panem, but that even as the viewing audiences cheer on the poor girl from District 12, they will consume her as if they were Capitol citizens. So they developed the Capitol Couture website, highlighting the very fashions the book indicts. China Glaze issued a line of Hunger Games inspired nail polish. The actors playing the Tributes are treated just like Tributes as they are done-up and paraded around to premieres and photo shoots. It’s ironic in that the average viewer does not grasp the irony or the message of the story that such circuses distract from the fact that children are sent to be slaughtered in the arena for entertainment. In fact many will watch the film for simply the entertainment of seeing the Hunger Games visually portrayed.

But even as we, like the Capitol, allow ourselves to be distracted by the hype – we are still encountering a story that calls for the undermining of systems that placate the masses with bread and circuses so that they are too distracted to care about justice. Katniss and Peeta strive to not just be pieces in the Capitol’s games. They see through the façade of the Capitol and its shallow ways. They want to hold the Capitol responsible for the ways it oppresses the districts, allows the masses to starve while the few live in luxury, and treats even children as if they were things to be used instead of people deserving of dignity.

The United States may be the Capitol of Panem, and some may be treating The Hunger Games as just another circus, but that message of subversive living is being heard even if just subconsciously. This is an important film because of that. Katniss Everdeen is more than just another beautiful celebrity – she is a voice calling for us to put an end to injustice and oppression. And the world is watching.

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To read more on the connections between Panem and the United States today, check out my book The Hunger Games and the Gospel: Bread, Circuses, and the Kingdom of God.

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Why International Women’s Day is Important

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When Abby Kelley, a 19th century abolitionist, expressed a desire to address the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society this is how a local minister argued against her right to do so –

No woman will speak or vote where I am moderator. It is enough for a woman to rule at home… she has no business to come into this meeting and by speaking and voting lord it over men. Where woman’s enticing eloquence is heard, men are incapable of right and efficient action. She beguiles and binds men by her smiles and her bland winning voice… I will not sit in a meeting where the sorcery of a woman’s tongue is thrown around my heart. I will not submit to PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT. No woman shall ever lord it over me. I am Major-Domo in my own house. cited here

When I read that quote recently, it at first of course angered me and made me grateful to not be living in those times. Then as I reflected on it, I began to think on the ways a similar message is conveyed today. The words may be different and the attitude less contemptuous and harsh (but not always), but the effect is often the same.

So, it bothers me when a passage like this is read and the first thing a guy does is make a “joke” about women needing to be taught their place. It bothers me when women desire to have a voice in conversations about social justice but are told that in advocating for women’s voices they are drawing attention away from the really important issues. It bothers me when women get accused of slandering the body of Christ for simply sharing quotes like this. It bothers me that women are attacked and dismissed as too divisive for daring to ask men to refrain from or apologize for slandering women.

The irony is that this quote came from an abolitionist minister – one devoted to the work of freeing the captives and proclaiming the way of the Lord. And it is often those in the church today, even those committed to working for justice, making these responses. Such failure of the church to be the church is telling. It means hearts still need to be changed; there is still work to be done. That is why I celebrate and uphold International’s Women’s Day. Even the small reminders that women still need advocates, that women’s voices must be heard, are helpful. There is much work left to do, but whatever can focus our attention on helping instead of ignoring or hurting is a blessing.

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The Hunger Games and the Gospel

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My new book, The Hunger Games and the Gospel, is soon to be released as an ebook through Patheos Press and I’m excited to finally get to share the cover. Pretty awesome.

As most of you know I am a huge sci-fi/fantasy geek and fell in love with the Hunger Games trilogy as soon as I read it. Writing this book not only allowed me to spend time with a story I deeply appreciated, but to connect it to my Christian convictions and passion for justice. Stay tuned for more details, but for now I’ll leave you with a brief overview of the book –

In a globalized world full of uncertainty and injustice, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series has captured the imaginations of readers looking for glimmers of hope. The tale of Katniss Everdeen’s journey of survival in the post-apocalyptic country of Panem, where bread and circuses distract the privileged and allow a totalitarian regime to oppress the masses, parallels situations in our world today. Our culture’s hyper-consumerism and obsession with constant entertainment as well as the worldwide economic and political systems that prey upon the weak and the poor are evidence that the imbalances and injustices described in Panem don’t just exist in speculative fiction. At the same time, the series’ themes of resistance to oppression and hope for a better world, portrayed honestly as messy and difficult endeavors, echo the transformative way of life Jesus offered his followers.

The Hunger Games and the Gospel explores these themes in the Hunger Games that have resonated so deeply with readers by examining their similarity to the good news found in Jesus’ message about living in the ways of God’s Kingdom. Taking the rich statements of the Beatitudes which serve as mini-pictures of God’s dreams realized on earth as in heaven, each chapter reflects on how those pictures are exhibited both in the narrative of the Hunger Games, and in Jesus’ time, and then explores their significance for our own world. Readers are invited to allow the inspiration of the Hunger Games help them live in the ways of the Kingdom of God by discovering how they too can work towards to possibility of a better world.

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Reading the Magnificat During Lent

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I’m taking a class on the Gospel of Luke this semester and one of my assignments is to engage in an ongoing spiritual practice related to that particular Gospel. So for the entire semester I am reading the Magnificat daily. It’s a passage that I’ve been drawn to in recent years, but it has been particularly illuminating to be dwelling on it during Lent this year since it is typically confined to the Advent season. Somehow the triumphal language of the justice that God has already accomplished fits with the modern treatment of Advent as a celebratory season. But Lent is a season of penance which puts an entirely different spin on the text.

I’ve been intrigued to discover as I study Luke this time that the language in the Magnificat of the mighty being brought down from their thrones and the lowly uplifted is a recurring motif throughout the book. John the Baptist changes the scripture he quotes from Isaiah to talk about every valley being filled and every hill and mountains made low. Jesus always comes down from the mountain to preach on a plain, and Luke even has the Beatitudes delivered on a plain instead of a mount. God is at work making all things level – bringing down those who prosper now and uplifting those who suffer now. A message that we sometimes can accept at Christmas with its reminder that the Savior of the world was laid in a lowly manger. But in Lent it is far more unsettling.

This is a season of penance and sacrifice, but often only of the personal kind. We give up pleasures or habits for the sake of drawing ourselves closer to God. For many the discipline of such sacrifice is simply a means of reorienting their worship and devotion to God so as to strengthen that commitment overall. The discipline prepares one for deeper relationship with God. But as John proclaimed, preparing the way of the Lord involves bringing down and lifting up. And as Mary asserts, one magnifies the Lord because God has and is in the process of continuing to bring down and lift up. But how often do our Lenten practices participate in this sort of leveling out?

Pietism that relies solely on personal sacrifices that affect us and us alone can serve to draw us emotionally closer to God, but our faith is not something that concerns just us. We exist as a body and as members of the body of Christ the disciplines we engage in should always work towards 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. The recent popularity if the images included here attest that at least in popular perception Lent has nothing to do with working for the good of others, of righting relationships that are unbalanced, but is instead merely a selfish (and therefore) pointless practice.

What if our acts of repentance and confession instead served to care for the body as a whole? What if we confessed the ways we have uplifted the mighty (ourselves included) and brought down the lowly? What if our penance and sacrifice involved reversing that imbalance and preparing the way of the Lord by leveling out those relationships? Yes, it is far more difficult to sacrifice a position of privilege and power than it is to give up chocolate or coffee for a few weeks, but it seems to far better reflect the ways God has called us to worship and follow after him. Sacrifice just for the sake of ourselves misses the point. The reminder to bring down and uplift pushes us beyond ourselves to acts of love, repentance, and worship that serve the entire body and not just our particular part.

So while Magnificat is not normally a Lenten text, my meditation on it this year is teaching me that perhaps it should be.

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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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Loving Women

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So with starting the semester, attending two conferences, finishing a major writing project, and having my laptop crash this blog has been a bit neglected the past couple of weeks. I’m still working on a follow-up post on Process Theology and will be launching a blog series in relation to a class project later this week, but today in honor of Valentine’s Day, I think a post on gender is called for.

Thankfully, being so busy recently has (mostly) shielded me from the latest sexism in the church controversy. Apparently John Piper once again said something offensive effectively denigrating women in the church; I haven’t bothered to pay that much attention to it. Then I attended the regional Popular Culture Association conference where I got to hear a bunch of talks on how we are living in a postfeminist world and so don’t need to bother with seeking gender egalitarianism anymore since that is just the air we breathe these days. The whole – women are strong independent individuals who don’t need to rely on anyone any longer, we are the stars of our own stories, how dare second and third wave feminism hold us back! Oh, the irony.

During one session on a postfeminist assessment on Hermione Granger, I had to speak up and challenge the assumed benefits of postfeminism. Just as the patriarchy kept women oppressed by telling us we need men to care for and or complete us, postfeminism holds women back by making us believe we can do it all on our own. This independent woman thing is actually backfiring for women. Instead of networking and relying on friends to help them advance in this world, women often think they must be self-made in order to be considered successful. Instead of surrounding ourselves with a community of support, we women often feel that we must be strong enough to manage by ourselves. To me this is just another ploy to resist the goals of the feminist movement and keep women powerless and vulnerable. Men take advantage of such things, but women sacrifice the strong support structure of community in an attempt to live up to this postfeminist lie that they don’t need help from no one.

I see just as many issues in telling women that they don’t need the support of community as I do in Piper saying that the church has a masculine feel. Both exclude women, cut women out of the core group. It has the feel of a predator stalking its prey – trying to separate it from the herd so it is more vulnerable and easier to take down. To reverse that metaphor, this seems to be based in a deep rooted fear of women. Fear that women – when strong in and of themselves and with the support of a network or community – are worthy and deserving of respect. For men who see having to acknowledge the worth of women as threat to their own positions of power and privilege (as opposed to those who see power as something the worthy should by nature share in service to all), strong women are to be feared and weakened by whatever means necessary.

One session I attended presented a historical overview of the idea of the Virago. In its original conception it was simply the female counterpart of the virtus – a person of strength, courage, and stature. Overtime it came to be a term for a woman who had transgressed her gender, become like a man and abandoned her female characteristics in order to succeed. So in dictionaries these days the terms is defined both as a woman who is strong and courageous as well as a woman who is loud, scolding, and domineering (the insults usually used to weaken smart or strong women). A term originally used to describe the strength of women was twisted into a term of insult that served to demean all women who showed signs of strength and courage. What was feared had to be brought down.

Even in this day and age as women (in some realms) are treated with greater respect than we have been historically, there is still an undercurrent of fear that needs to denigrate women. The sexual objectification of women is an obvious example of this, but even common parlance serves this function as well. Consider the ubiquity of the term “douchebag” as an insult these days. Even the most progressive self-labeling feminists I know use this term to describe the lowest, most despised jerks in our culture. This (to use Catherine Keller’s term) tehomophobia of the deep waters and funk of the womb, represents the underlying fear of women. Our sexuality, and especially our ability to bear children, becomes just another way for women to be redefined as weak or offensive. We are taught to despise our strengths, and even of late to call it sexist to list motherhood as a female strength. Fear runs so deep that even those that respect women are manipulated into twisting our strengths into negative qualities and therefore into keeping us weak.

I’m over that. I don’t care if it is a stereotypical sexist pastor or a postfeminist hipster, I’m tired of people trying to keep me weak. I have strengths and I do not fear them. So on this day devoted to showing love, I move that we start loving women instead of fearing them (that goes for us women too). That we stop separating women from the herd to make us vulnerable or use female sexuality as our preferred form of insult. Forget flowers and chocolate, let’s truly start to love women by celebrating instead of diminishing our strengths.

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