Grace, Magic, and Hard Work

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I love this picture that has been making the rounds on Facebook recently. Strangely enough the first thing this picture reminded me of was an argument that arose during a debate over Harry Potter I participated in years ago. The church I attended decided to host a debate about Harry Potter and I represented the pro side while just about everyone else was on the “we haven’t read the books, but we have read about the books and believe The Onion article that said J.K. Rowling worships Satan” side. Only books 1-3 were out at the time and this was during the heyday of Christian attacks on the books (long before it was obvious that the series had more Christian allegories than even the Chronicles of Narnia). Beyond the typical objections that the books will turn children into Satan-worshipers and encourage them to disrespect authority, one mom complained that she found it inappropriate that at Hogwarts food magically appears on the table at mealtime. Her argument was that she wants her children to have a good work ethic and not to believe that anything in life is free. She wanted her girls to know that preparing meals is hard work and so would therefore be sheltering them from this absurd depiction of people getting something for nothing.

I think at the time I had to restrain myself from asking if she also banned her kids from hearing the story of the feeding on the 5000 in Sunday school, but it was hard not to think about her objection a few months later as I read The Goblet of Fire and its subplot about house elves. As it revealed, food does not magically appear on the tables at Hogwarts, it is prepared by hardworking elves who in the wizarding world are generally kept as slaves. House elves have been so trained to subservience that most of them believe their identity is derived from serving their wizard master. In the books, Hermione commits herself to working for rights and fair pay for house elves. Of course her efforts are ruthlessly mocked by not only her classmates at Hogwarts, but by many readers of the books who found the “rights for elves” subplot to be a silly distraction from the real story.

I know that back in 2000, thinking about the plight of the people who worked to provide me with food was not something I had ever done. Recently out of college, I was quickly learning the hard work required to make my own meals. But at the time the food I bought at the grocery store could have magically appeared on the shelves for all I knew. I might in saying grace thank God for the food and the hands that prepared it, but that never extended beyond the kitchen to those who grew the food or did the backbreaking work of picking the produce. My perspective has changed tremendously over the past 12 years, as I now do my best to be aware of where my food comes from and the conditions faced by the workers who grow it. Sadly, the plight of the poor, mostly immigrant workers who grow our food is uncomfortably similar to that of house elves in the Harry Potter universe. Also similar is the likelihood that one will be mocked if one dares to acknowledge those workers or advocate for their rights.

Thankfully recent films like Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation have forced people to at least be aware that our food doesn’t magically appear in the grocery store and that the people who grow and process our food are generally treated poorly. But people don’t want to know about such things – because knowledge makes them feel like they may have to do something to change things. If animals are being abused in factory farms and the immigrants who work in those places are treated like animals, it makes it difficult to sit down to enjoy a feast much less mindlessly consume the cheap food such a system produces. So food companies are helping people return to states of ignorance through expensive propaganda campaigns that while acknowledging that our food comes from somewhere do so by presenting idyllic images of family farms without a poor worker or abused animal in sight. While the “happy cows come from California” was perhaps the most extreme example of this sort of misdirection in advertising, McDonald’s proud of our suppliers series is the most recent. If the McDonald’s ads are to be believed, their food comes from dreamlands that look deceiving similar to the average person’s idea of the pastoral landscape of heaven. I don’t doubt that these suppliers work for McDonald’s in some fashion, but Harry Potter seems to do a better job representing reality than these ads. Countless reports reveal the harsh conditions faced by those that grow food for fast food companies, reports that places like McDonalds are now trying to undermine with these ads. But in truth many people would rather believe the lie they’re selling than have to change their eating habits or take the unpopular path of advocating for worker’s rights. As The Meatrix shorts so brilliantly reveal, few people want to take the red pill and know the truth about where our food comes from.

As a bumper sticker on my car says, “the truth will set you free but first it will make you angry.” The McDonald’s ads are constructed to not only hide the truth, but to keep people from ever getting angry. Angry people change the world and the world doesn’t want to be changed. I agree with that mom at the Harry Potter debate, teaching our kids that food appears from some magic place (be that the grocery store or the idyllic family farm from the propaganda images) does them a disservice. Life isn’t convenient or easy despite what the fast food companies would like us to believe and problems don’t magically disappear just because we would rather not deal with them. So when we say grace we need to extend that thanks to all those who worked hard, often with barely any pay, to bring us that food. And, like Hermione, we need to advocate for and embody change – even when it’s unpopular or difficult. But whatever we do, we need to at least embrace the truth instead of being placated with lies.

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Paul, Women, and New Creation

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As I mentioned last week, I’m am excited to be part of the blog tour for Daniel Kirk’s latest book Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? Drop by the blog tour website to read others’ contributions to the tour as they interact with various chapters in the book (and don’t forget to enter the contest to win a free copy of the book!). As luck would have it (or perhaps because I’m the only woman participating in the tour), I was asked to engage with Chapter 6 “Women in the Story of God.”

In my experience, the number one reason people have issues with Paul is because of the passages regarding women’s roles in his letters. A few select passages seemingly calling for women to submit to men and to be silent in church are enough for many to jettison Paul from the canon. As some read Paul (or at least have had Paul imposed upon them), he seems to be denying the very humanity and dignity of women – something that Jesus never did. With such an interpretation as a given, it’s difficult for many to figure out what to do with Paul. There are of course those that use such an interpretation of Paul to demean and oppress women. Some believing that they have no right to question that interpretation accept it and yet keep Paul at a distance, like a creepy relative that they would prefer not to show up at family gatherings. Others outright reject Paul, claiming that such a patriarchal attitude nullifies any right his words have to speak into our world today. Some accept Paul, but insist that his words restricting women must have been added by some later scribe. In light of all that, it’s easy to see how it’s hard to love Paul.

Yet I’ve generally found all those approaches to be lacking. Having to choose between rejecting the reality of the biblical context or rejecting the Bible because of the reality of the biblical context both seemed too limiting for me.

So I appreciate the approach Kirk offers in his book. In situating Paul within the context of the larger narrative of scripture, he begins by addressing how women are treated in the text beyond the traditional “clobber-women-into-submission” passages. What he reveals is a world where patriarchy is the norm and yet women are find opportunities to serve in all areas of the church. From the scriptural evidence of what women were in truth doing in the church, Kirk argues that the controversial passages have both at times been interpreted wrongly and yet give testimony to the ambiguity present in scripture. He states, “As for Scripture, it not only sows seeds of equality whose flowers never fully bloom on its pages; it also continues to reflect and, at times, affirm the inequalities endemic to its ancient cultural context.” (118). In short, the Bible contains both stories of women leading churches, preaching and prophesying, and embracing greater dignity in the church than their culture ever bestowed upon them as well as statements supporting the gender hierarchies of the time. Kirk concludes that to argue that the Bible is either fully egalitarian or fully patriarchal is to ignore its cultural situation.

But although that cultural context might be messy and not reflect fully what we might want to find in Scripture, Kirk argues that what is most important is to remember that we are part of the ongoing narrative of God’s story. He writes that this narrative “is as dramatic and sweeping a gospel narrative as one could hope for. … Paul’s narrative of salvation is nothing less than the proclamation and embodiment here and now of the coming dominion of God” (50). So therefore, “because it is a story of cosmic transformation, the story has to be embodied and lived” (51). To proclaim the dominion of God is to live in its ways here and now – to testify to its transforming power. The gospel gives “glimpses of a new creation that has no hierarchical distinction between male and female. It is not a vision that is worked out consistently in the first-century culture in which the New Testament writings grew-up, but it is one that fits within the plot of a story that turns all social hierarchies on their head as God comes to rule the world through a crucified Messiah” (137) Instead of giving sin power by letting the patriarchy of that time keep us from living out the redemptive nature of new creation now, Kirk calls us to instead embrace Christ’s redemptive work and turn upside-down the controlling hierarchies of this world.

I greatly appreciate this take on Paul that affirms both the reality of his context and the reality of what women were doing in the early church. Placing myself within a continuing narrative witnessing to new creation makes far more sense to me than just rejecting Paul because he isn’t who I would like for him to be. I do wish though that Kirk had explored whether he thought it would have been appropriate for women to live into that narrative of New Creation in periods in history where it might have caused the surrounded cultures to be offended. Should women’s dignity, worth, and equality be affirmed because such things are true or only when affirming them would not give offense within a particular culture? I get that Paul may have imposed restrictions on women so that they wouldn’t offend the culture, but I am left wondering in this interpretation at what point one should simply embrace New Creation in spite of the culture that does not understand the light shining in the darkness?

I found myself most troubled in this chapter when immediately after arguing that we should embrace Christ’s redemptive power by affirming an egalitarian position on gender, Kirk jumped straight to the most common argument used to temper the radical assertion of equality. He is quick to say that real Christ-like egalitarianism is not therefore a call for women to seek out positions of leadership in the church as to be called to Christ is to accept the hard life of submission and servant hood. While I wouldn’t argue that following Christ does involve a servant’s heart, this is an argument that has been used over and over as simply a backhanded way of asserting patriarchy in the name of equality. I honestly don’t think Kirk intended to do so here, but I do wonder if he was unaware of how this argument has been used to give lip-service to egalitarianism while ensuring nothing really changes in the male-dominated church.

As many feminist scholars have argued, to accuse women of the sin of self-seeking pride when they attempt to use their God-given gifts leads to many women burying those gifts lest they fall into sin. They are bullied into passivity under the guise of humility. That is not what it means though to follow Christ and live into the telos of who God created us to be. Centuries though of being told that unless we submit and let men dominate us we are sinning and not being sufficiently Christ-like are difficult to overcome. The last thing women need to hear more of is that we are sinning or living in the ways of the world when we choose to accept God’s call to use the gifts God has given us.

We still live in a world marred by the oppressive ways of patriarchy. The dominion of God where there is no male or female is not yet fully realized, although we are called to live as if it is. Perhaps we still need gender specific instructions for how to live in these ways. To men, yes, counter years of living in unChrist-like ways by telling them to be servants and to not pursue positions of power in the church. But, to women, don’t reinforce the idea that they are sining by living into their gifts. Encourage them instead to reject the ways of the world by accepting their gifts and having no fear in using them to serve Christ. I don’t believe that Daniel Kirk was trying to reinforce gender hierarchies by bringing up this standard caution regarding egalitarianism, but I would be remiss to not mention what the warning can imply for women. We are still living into this narrative that affirms the breaking in of the reign of God in the here and now, and so I do greatly appreciate this book’s helpful way of realistically dealing with often unsettling texts. Even as the New Creation is yet unfolding, so it seems is our ability to figure out how to best embrace Christ’s redemption in our lives.

Although I would have liked this chapter to offer more constructive suggestions for navigating gender in the New Creation, I appreciate the ways in which it reframes the conversation regarding Paul and women. For those of us who have never felt comfortable with the options given to us for how we should handle Paul, it proposes an affirming yet realistic engagement that allows both Scripture and the transformative redemptive power of Christ to co-exist as part of the narrative of God’s people.

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Holistic Female Characters

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The conversations over the past week or so on feminine identity and image have sparked a number of discussions of what movies do portray women holistically. The trend these days in films is to make women appear strong by either stripping them of everything that is traditionally considered to be feminine and/or by making them attractive yet kick-ass action heroes. While I admit that there is a place for such portrayals, they often don’t allow women to be their full selves. So while I think it is wrong to portray women as just weak, it is equally wrong to go to the other extreme and remove all vulnerability from women as well. We’re human, let us be who we are. Let us be in love, but not be defined solely by being in love. Let us be smart, but also love our kids. Let us be strong without always having to hurt others.

So here is a (very) short list of movies and books that I think present women holistically. They are smart, strong, and kick-ass at times, but also fall in love, admit to weaknesses, and deal with pain – without being solely defined by any one of those things. I’ve started the list, I would love for readers to add to it in the comments (and yes feel free to add examples of men presented holistically as well!)

I have to start the list off with Eowyn. The quote in my blog header is from her, an image I may or may not have a version of tattooed somewhere on my body. We also named our daughter Emmaline Eowyn. So, yes, she ranks up there as my all-time favorite female character. The Lord of the Rings movies did a fair job presenting her as the strong shieldmaiden, defeating the Witchking with her declaration “I am no man.” But they only briefly showed (in the Extended Editions at that), her greatest strengths. Through all the stories she knows that she is called to do great things and fears the cages that will hold her back. In the limits of her world she assumes this means either becoming like a man in battle or marrying the future King Aragorn. He reminds her though that she is a daughter of Kings; a cage will not be her fate. But it is in the houses of healing that she discovers her true calling as a healer. Rulers in Middle Earth are healers – Aragorn is recognized as the true king because he has the ability to heal. The elves name him Elessar (my son’s middle name) because it means one who can heal. Eowyn discovers that greatness inside her once she learns to serve and heal others – that is what it means to be a ruler. I love that. I love Eowyn. And I love that it takes her a journey to discover that.

Katniss Everdeen. I love the Hunger Games. I love Katniss. She is deeply vulnerable and has a long slow journey to figure out how to cope with all the pain in her life. She cares, self-sacrificially for others and yet knows what it takes to survive. From a place of utter brokenness after the death of her father, she pulled her family together and helped them survive by learning to hunt and forage. In the shadow of a totalitarian government that wants to use her as their pawn, she through trial and error figure out how to stay true to herself and yet protect those she loves. She succeeds spectacularly and fails tragically in the books and yet manages to figure out how to survive both. She isn’t cocky and she has more questions than answers. She feels pain deeply and gives tremendously. She is my hero.

President Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica. Okay she could be annoying at times, but her balance of taking charge in a crisis (the end of the world) and living in the vulnerable space of dealing with breast cancer at the same time is hard not to respect. When robots of our own creation return to annihilate the human race, I want her as my President.

Robin McKinley’s treasured The Hero and the Crown (Newberry winner) and The Blue Sword (Newberry Honor book) set the standard for strong female protagonists in beautifully written stories. The first book tells of the legendary Lady Aerin the dragon-slayer who saves her Kingdom despite her family’s assumption that she was just a worthless girl. The Blue Sword takes place centuries later as the orphaned, unladylike and socially awkward Harry discovers that she is heir to Lady Aerin’s mythical blue sword. These books have just the right amount of girls overcoming stereotyped roles without reducing them to simply being glass-ceiling smashers. Their stories are mesmerizing as you fall into them completely and find in Aerin and Harry heroes any reader can love. (On a side note, McKinley’s Sunshine is in my opinion the best vampire book ever written and it has an amazingly strong female protagonist as well).

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. So there are some major gender issues in this play, the whole denounce Hero at the altar for being unvirtuous thing is just plain creepy in today’s world. But the development of Beatrice and Benedick and their witty brilliance are worth the weirdness. She is as independent of a woman as she can be in her world and is astute enough to point out her constraints. She is smart and understands that she does not need a man to fulfill her which of course makes the relationship she stumbles upon with Benedick all the more meaningful. Emma Thompson defines this role for me (she is great at playing real, vulnerable, and yet strong women). Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more…

I love the movie Away We Go and Maya Rudolph’s character Verona in it. She is funny, smart, and creative and trying to come to terms with being pregnant. After losing family and her home young, she is trying to understand what it will mean for her to start a family. She and her husband travel the country in search of a home and in the process define for themselves what family does not mean to them. The extreme stereotypes of women (the domineering wife, the hippie attachment-parenting mom) are humorously depicted as limiting women. In short, the film is the holistic woman’s hero’s journey as she seeks a way of being in the world that allows her to be herself – intelligence, scars, humor and all.

So now it’s your turn – who would you add?

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Anti-American Christian

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I’ll admit, I follow a few celebrities on Twitter – especially the writers and actors of my favorite sci-fi shows. If I didn’t love Firefly/Serenity and Chuck, I probably wouldn’t be following Adam Baldwin (@adamsbaldwin) – pictured here at Austin ComicCon. At the same time it’s sickly fascinating to read his extreme right-wing hate speech on a regular basis. I’m still not for sure if his Twitter persona is an extension of his characters or if he simply plays himself in his shows – as his gun-loving Ronald-Reagan-obsessed characters mirror what he posts on Twitter. So whether or not his tweets are caricature or the real deal, they serve as my reminder of the extremes of individualistic nationalism that stands in direct contrast to the ways of the Kingdom of God.

A few days ago, he posted the following Tweet –

anti -American Blog! | RT @washingtonpost “Why do we overlook civilians killed in American wars?” – http://wapo.st/xhLko2 ~ #FreedomIsNotFree

At first it pissed me off. What sort of people are we if it is considered not only unpatriotic but actually anti-American to care about the innocent people our country kills? Are the deaths of children on their way to school or of a mother in the marketplace really simply the cost of the freedoms we enjoy? To not expect them to pay that cost or to even mention that they are paying that cost, is therefore a betrayal of our country? Who are we that anyone would argue that such things define our national identity?

But as I considered the idea of national identity, I realized that the very notion of rooting one’s identity in one’s nation requires that the nation be valued before all else. If who one is at their core is a citizen of the United States (as opposed to say a Christian), then defending and protecting the manifest desires of the nation must form a person’s core identity as well. What is right (what is ethical) is therefore what serves the nation no matter who it harms or uses. Freedom, defined as the nation always getting what it wants when it wants, is of course not free as anyone who stands in the way of the nation’s ascendency must pay.

As a pure philosophy, it holds together and I respect the right of others to hold to that philosophy. The problem is of course when that religion of nationalism is sold as the right and true path for Christians. Few people would admit to rooting their identity in the nation or placing the needs of the nation at the forefront of their lives. But if they are told that in doing so they are actually serving God, then they easily jump on that bandwagon. In this way to care about the death of innocents or to question why others must pay for our expensive lifestyles is not just un-American it is unchristian. But as Walter Brueggemann has written, nations and empires “lack both patience and tolerance toward those whose ultimate loyalty belongs to someone or something other than the empire itself.” The clever way to deal with such impatience is to turn the worship of that other thing into worship of the empire. So if the nation can get those that claim to worship God to actually worship the nation in the name of God, then there is no conflict of interest. It’s idolatry of course, but it keeps the peace as it serves the nation.

So I realized that it is not so much the words of Adam Baldwin’s tweets that upset me so much, but that they echo the idolatry I hear on the lips of so many professed Christians (and, yes, before you accuse me of partisanship, liberal Christians can be trapped in idolatry as well). More and more therefore I want to embrace the anti-American label. I appreciate my country and am grateful to live here (and don’t foolishly believe anywhere else would be better). I also desire to embrace the call Jeremiah gave to the Israelites to seek the peace and prosperity of the land of their exile. But if being American means finding my identity in the nation and situating my ethics in my loyalty to it, then as a Christian I have no choice but to be anti-American. My ethics must be based on “blessed are the poor and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” instead of “We’re #1” and “freedom (for us) isn’t free.” So thank you, Adam Baldwin/Jayne/John Casey for reminding me of my identity and what it means to give my allegiance solely to the Kingdom of God.

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Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? – Blog Tour

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So I’m honored to be part of the blog tour for Daniel Kirk’s latest book Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? The premise of the book intrigued me – for those of us in the postmodern era who admittedly have issues with Paul (as he’s been presented to us at least), the book explores if we have any other options than to just deal with that unease or abandon Paul altogether. It’s a question I wrestle with and so far have been dissatisfied with the ways I’ve seen it answered. So I was grateful to be sent this book and given the opportunity to interact with it. I’m officially blogging on Chapter 6 – “Women in the story of God” for the blog tour (look for that next Monday), but there were a few ideas that I wanted to bring up about it at the start of the online discussion.

I’m a fan of Daniel Kirk’s writing. After meeting him at the 2009 Emergent Theological Conversation, I’ve enjoyed following him online. He is one of the few academics that Tweets about all aspects of life – from theological questions to what he’s making his family for breakfast. As a good postmodern who values authenticity, that’s something I admire. I like the questions he asks and his way of presenting possible answers. I don’t always agree with him, but I always respect how he engages in the conversation – which also sums up my reaction to his book. There are places in the book where I have quibbles (and a few outright objections), but on the whole I appreciate his overall vision that Paul is presenting a narrative theology of how the identity of the people of God gets formed which very much holds together with both the story of Israel and Jesus’ teachings.

Growing up as an evangelical, I received heavy doses of Paul (and little of Jesus), but the Paul I received was a Paul who was both quick to criticize and dismiss his Jewish roots and offer the hope of escaping this world soon by shuffling off the despised mortal flesh. But once I started paying attention to the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus, this Paul no longer made sense. I was one of those that the book suggests needs “a healthy deconstruction of their understanding of Paul” (5). And this book does that and does it well. In rescuing Paul from his forced isolation by demonstrating how he contributes to the ongoing narrative of God working to redeem the world, it transforms the often uncomfortable dogmatic statements and rules into vital (albeit often contextual) parts of that story.

What I appreciated most was how Kirk interpreted Paul’s writings on the hope of the resurrection. He straightforwardly demonstrates that this hope has nothing to do with escape from or rejection of creation, but instead is all about living into the new creation. This hope means that the kingdom of God is now and that Jesus is reigning over it putting it in order. As Kirk writes, what this means is that “The kingdom of God is at hand in the undoing of all the sin and death and brokenness and disorder that mar the very good world of God” (39). The advice that Paul gives in his letters is not about perfecting oneself so that one day one might be worthy of heaven, but practical advice for how the community of God lives in the kingdom here and now as part of God’s work restoring creation.

I appreciate this eschatological interpretation of Paul’s narrative theology that values the present as much as it does the future. It is hard to love the world enough to desire its transformation (as Jesus and the Old Testament prophets did) if one simply desires to escape it someday. But as the book argues, Paul is presenting a vision for how people continue in the way of Jesus and live transformativly in the present. And this is possible because “new creation is not simply something that we look forward to; it is something in which we already participate. The culmination of the story is exerting a sort of backward force, such that the future, by power of the life-giving Spirit, is intruding on the present and transforming it” (47). As one who has had Paul imposed on me as apology for why I shouldn’t care about seeking justice in the world, this rescuing of Paul from his escapist captivity is refreshing. For those who have been uneasy with the Paul they were taught (who seemed to have little to do with the Jesus they love) and who respect the Bible too much to simply reject Paul’s writing, this returning of Paul to the larger narrative context of scripture is a blessing making the book well worth the read. I will be engaging specifically the books’ perspective on Paul’s writings on women next week where I will address a few of my minor concerns with the book, but I wanted to highlight here the book’s exceedingly helpful presentation of Paul in light of the rest of scripture. I encourage readers to follow the blog tour and engage in the conversation as it unfolds.

Be sure to stop by the Blog Tour Hub for a chance to win a free copy of the book!

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Femininity, Image, and Identity

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In response to my last post, Bo Sanders over at Homebrewed Christianity brought up some related ideas and addressed a few questions to me. Here’s my (long and somewhat rambling) response. He writes –

Last week I saw two movies and was quite intrigued by a pattern I noticed during the trailers: women being tough guys. The three trailers were for Underword:Awakening with Kate Beckinsdale, Haywire with Gina Carano (both action films) and The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher.

I have read enough feminist literature to know that there is a principle (which Thatcher made famous) that “In a man’s world …” a women often has to out ‘man’ the guys in order to break into the boys club and be taken seriously….

What do we do with the karate-chopping drop-kicking heroines of violence on the silver screen these days? On one hand, it is nice to women getting these big-deal leading roles in major films… on the other hand, are they real portrayals of women-ness or is it the bad kind of mimicry – like ‘Girls Gone Wild’ as a picture of sexual liberation or power.

Bo brings up some really good questions to which there are no easy cut and dry answers. I ranted/blogged about this general topic a few years ago, but the issues still exist, and perhaps are even intensified. On one hand, I would start by pointing out that just because a woman is an action hero, tough as nails, or possess traditional leadership qualities doesn’t mean she is acting like a man. That could simply be just who she is and she should be given space to be herself without being judged. But at the same time, I agree that it is a widespread cultural issue that women often feel like they must put on the persona of men in order to succeed. Our culture doesn’t know how to handle women who are strong, intelligent, and assertive. So women who are those things must become overtly masculine (like Thatcher) or play up objectified femininity in order to appear safe (be in perfect shape, always look pretty and put together, or be the supermom). For instance, I’ve found in settings like seminary, church, or conferences if I am even half as vocal and assertive as the guys around me I get told I am rude or am mocked. But if I can talk about my kids, help with a family event, or provide food for something, I am seen as more feminine and therefore safe. Like you said, we have to find ways to overdo it in order to gain credibility.

The main issue for women at hand here is how aspects of our self (traditionally labeled as feminine) are objectified and therefore not embraced as strengths but become symbols of our weakness or inferiority that make us safe and acceptable. Most action movies with female leads give us physically strong women who are also eye candy and use that to their advantage (seriously, who does martial arts in a leather catsuit and high heels? It’s not even physically possible). These strong women are safe because they can be objectified as sex objects. It is the rare film that breaks that trend. I recall after watching Salt that that it was refreshing that Angelina Jolie never once used her sexuality as one of her weapons in the film, she was simply a slightly awkward, highly intelligent, kick-ass spy. Then I found out the part had originally been written for a man, mystery solved. Sucker Punch also brilliantly deconstructed and critiqued the pattern in movies of women entering worlds controlled by men and having to become oversexualized and exceptional in order to succeed in those places. But neither Salt or Sucker Punch did well in the theaters – they strayed too far from the mold.

In college I recall reading a novel for class and thinking that it had the best portrayal of women that I had read all semester. In class though the professor tore the book apart for its horribly unrealistic portrayal of women. He argued that not just in fiction, but in reality all women fit the Madonna or whore category (pure saints or sensual sinners) – for him (to the shock of many of the women in the class) women can’t be real people we can only be those archetypes. That is what the world expects as well, so our movies deliver – we get weak princesses in need of rescue or sexualized action heroes – but very few real strong women. Don’t get me wrong, I like the kick-ass female action heroes. After we saw the Haywire trailer, my husband leaned over and said “that is soo your type of movie.” Sydney Bristow and Mara Jade are my heroes. Accepting even objectified strong women is at least a first step (albeit flawed) towards accepting strong women for who they are. (My hope is that with Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (pictured) we will be getting a wholistic strong woman who captures audiences’ attention.)

In an ideal world women could be strong, kick-ass, and intelligent without being objectified or assumed to be acting masculine. And our other strengths – even the traditionally feminine ones like mothering, or cooking, or artistry – will be seen not as things that make us safe because as the weaker sex we should be limited to them, but as strengths in and of themselves that are all part of the matrix of who we are (the Doctor Who Christmas Special this year did a fantastic job portraying this btw). As a mother my identity should not be reduced to that role, but neither should it be something I should be ashamed of or use to prove I can succeed at everything. Women should be able to be strong without having out out-violence or out-revenge the men. Women should be able to be smart without having to either be the smartest in the room or search for ways to make her intelligence acceptable to men. Women should be able to feel pretty and accept their sexuality without being turned into be eye-candy or live in fear that they are causing men to stumble. Women (and men) should be valued as themselves regardless of whether or not they fit traditional masculine or feminine labels.

The world is not there yet. And the church certainly is not. But the rise of the female action hero means that the conversation is started. The confines of gender stereotyped identity are being deconstructed, we simply have not gone far enough yet. Instead of allowing people to be whole in who they are, we assume that to not be feminine is to therefore be masculine (or vice versa) and therefore that the person is lacking for not conforming to our gender expectations. I don’t know if we will ever get rid of the categories of masculine and feminine (which sadly always portrays the feminine as weaker and lesser) in favor of simply naming strengths and virtues for all people. Perhaps the place to start is in making our heroes women who display “masculine” strengths and men who display “feminine” ones in hopes that the definitions will one day become too blurred to be distinguished, or at least the feminine traits valued more. I know for me, I am encouraging my kids (as I did when I worked with youth) to question those limits, to interrogate images in movies and television, and embrace their strengths no matter how they are labeled. I am still trying to navigate how to be a woman in a world that tries to limit, ignore, or objectify me so I know it is not an easy task. But being aware that it is a struggle, and helping my kids be aware as well, I think helps make it more doable.

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What It Is Is Beautiful

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This LEGO ad from 1981 has been making its way around Facebook. With LEGO’s recent campaign to market its “girl toys” (very pink and purple buildings sets featuring a beauty parlor, fashion design studio, bakery, convertible and pool party) prompting irate responses (and rightly so) from those who don’t see why play and creativity must be limited by such gender stereotypes, this ad has stirred up nostalgic desires for a different world. While such a stereotype-free world might never have actually existed, this ad with a real girl in blue jeans (and no pink in sight) simply being creative symbolizes a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to find these days. That it once existed in the realm of advertising – which like it or not determines our culture’s idea of how the world works – is both a painful reminder of what has been lost as well as a rallying cry that things need to change.

Parents of real kids know that our girls (and boys) don’t fit any gender stereotyped box. My daughter loves dressing up as a princess and playing with her fairy dolls just as much as she loves imaginative pirate adventures in the backyard and pretend space battles with her Star Wars figures. Assuming any of those activities to be more for girls or boys denies her of her true self. If building spaceships as opposed to a bikini pool party scene is for boys, then girls that like doing so are implicitly labeled as not being real girls. This message assumes there is something wrong with them – which if they are not bullied for they often learn to be ashamed of and hide. Who they are supposed to be is dictated to them by these stereotypes – defining for them what they should look like, what they should enjoy, and what they should do with their lives. Who they really are, the person God created them to be, gets denied as they try to live up to these images. This holds true for boys as well, but it is often intensified for girls.

This denial of the true self was brought home to me as I recently read the poignant blog post, How
Modesty Made Me Fat. The author honestly tells of how the message that it was her responsibility to ensure that she never cause a man to stumble led her to serious eating disorders and health issues. The message she received was that who she was as a person didn’t matter, all that mattered was how she appeared to the world. She writes –

Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing. Worrying about modesty, and being vigilant not to be sexy, made me even more obsessed with my looks than the women in short shorts and spray tans I was taught to hate.

Her post wasn’t a call to immodesty (the pressure to be sexy is of course just as damaging), but an attempt to expose the modesty culture as simply being the flip side of that same coin. When women are reduced to appearance, just as when girls are limited to stereotypes, it takes away their true self. The personality, the intelligence, the creativity, and the vibrancy of who they are are silenced as they are replaced with a puppet version of themselves – controlled by the hand of another.

It is easy to get distracted by the debates surrounding these issues without realizing what is happening to actual people. In the debates – Are girls different than boys? Is she dressed too sexy or not sexy enough? – we can miss looking at actual girls and women and seeing who they truly are in all their creativity and emotional depth. To be able to say of any girl or woman, “what it is is beautiful,” we first have to let them be themselves.

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2011 Books

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For the past six years I have been posting at year’s end all the books I read in the previous year. The list is mostly for myself as it is a convenient way to keep track of when I read certain things, but I know I also love looking at other people’s reading lists, so I might as well put mine out there as well. This year’s list is not as diverse as in past years as seminary has me reading mostly theology books, but they were good reads and I finally got to read some books that I had been meaning to for some time. I did return to favorites this year – reading the Hunger Games again and the Kushiel books for what must have been the 7th or 8th time. I also finally got around to reading the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, which I highly recommend. In the fiction realm as well, I also really enjoyed Veronica Roth’s Divergent – a dystopian young adult novel about a world where people are divided into factions depending on the virtue they exhibit most strongly. It reads a bit like Hunger Games meets Ender’s Game, but if you’ve spent time in Chicago, the book is worth it just for the post-apocalyptic downtown Chicago setting. As for non-fiction, it was nice to finally read through Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and Desmond Tutu’s No Future Without Forgiveness – both were great reads. I also loved James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, which I think should be required reading in order for anyone to graduate college. The book highlighted for me how much I don’t know about history as well as the ways education is often used as a tool of control instead of as a means of teaching truth or encouraging students to think. It’s a disturbing, but helpful read.

I wish I had more time to read these days, but here’s my list of books I read this past year. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these books, and any recommendations for what I should read next year.

Non-fiction

Fiction

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Advent 4 – Let Us Find Our Rest in Thee

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Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.

Advent is the breaking-in of the promises of God into the world. But it isn’t simply God as an attachment. Hope isn’t an option tacked on as an afterthought available for whoever feels like applying it to their lives. Advent is the ushering in of a new creation – a transformative reality that allows us not simply to have hope but to live in hope. It is the establishment of an utterly new way of being in the world that grants us the opportunity to become the very people we were created to be.

It is in accepting that vocation that we find our rest in God.

There are so many ways to think about resting in God. We take Sabbaths from work, we let go of the need to fix the world by ourselves, we stop placing systems of busyness, ritual, and performance between us and our worship of God – but I’m slowly coming to believe that all of those ways find their roots in our accepting who God made us to be. It is hard to live a façade, to pretend to be something we are not. Our frantic schedules, our pursuit of success, our masquerades of worship are all us trying to live up to expectations of our own creation. And it’s exhausting. But in this world transformed by hope, learning to be comfortable in our own skin and pursuing the passions God has placed on our hearts feeds our souls because we are doing the very things God intends for us to be doing. Replenishment is rest – it is the revitalization of who we are.

Resting in God doesn’t mean doing nothing. To do nothing means I have forgotten who I am, I have stopped living into the hope of the new creation. To do nothing is to say no to all expectations regarding who I am – even the very ones that will give me life to the full. Finding our rest in God means being exactly who we are at our core. It isn’t a rejection of all compulsions, merely those that divert us from our path of fulfillment. We stop trying to be something we are not, but we are still at work spreading the transformative way of hope by living into our callings. Rest is never static; it is rather the active pursuit of our God-given place in the world.

So during this season of Advent as we are encouraged to pause from the busyness of life in order to anticipate and hope, I wish the message we would hear would not be simply “do less” (although that is often needed) but a more revitalizing and hopeful “do what is fitting.” Stop pretending. Stop exhausting ourselves with the false expectations of life. But instead fit – perfectly and restfully – into our own lives as we accept the transformative advent of the new creation.

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